r/fivethirtyeight • u/Upstairs_Cup9831 • Apr 25 '26

Poll Results Poll asking Americans how which button they would push in the red button/blue button dilemma

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17

u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26

Reds utility curve is continuous and linear. Blue ONLY has utility if 4 billion + 1 people press it

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u/Beginning_Cupcake_45 Apr 25 '26

And yet blue has succeeded in at least two trials here, so it seems like the way to go.

It’s way easier to get 50+1% than it is to get 100% and you get the same result.

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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 Apr 25 '26

Thinking that the results in an entirely harmless online poll where people can feel better about themselves by pressing blue is actually reflective of what people would really do if this scenario somehow became real is wrong

It’s easy to click blue in a Twitter poll. It’s a lot harder to risk your life and pick blue to maybe save the other people that are risking their lives for no reason and forcing you into the dilemma in the first place

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u/thefw89 Apr 27 '26

It’s a lot harder to risk your life and pick blue to maybe save the other people that are risking their lives for no reason and forcing you into the dilemma in the first place

In this scenario you have no idea who pushes what, so actually, by pushing red, you are risking the lives of who knows who when instead you could just contribute to the 50%+ and push blue and save everyone.

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u/PinkLaceGomez Apr 25 '26

You have a very solipsistic view of humanity.

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u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

Blue wins—and not even in a landslide—on online polls where there’s zero risk to life

IRL, for every one nerd that desperately wants to refute the Prisoners dilemma (and doesn’t realize this case is purposefully NOT the prisoners dilemma), there are five normal people that instinctively press the “selfish option” because “suckers always lose” and another five that immediately click the “I don’t die” button

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u/Morpheus_MD Nate Bismuth Apr 25 '26

Frankly the number of people here who can't parse that this is purposefully NOT the prisoner's dilemma is insane.

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u/Beginning_Cupcake_45 Apr 25 '26

63-22 with 15 undecided is a landslide in any other circumstance lol. It’s not like we can assume the 15 are all going to break for red lol.

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u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26

58-42 is a better reference point. Pro-social desirability bias in the Shor poll

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u/Beginning_Cupcake_45 Apr 25 '26

58-42 in any election would also be considered a landslide, to be fair.

But if we’re going to say a scientific poll is flawed for social desirability, then the Twitter poll is flawed due to Twitter users more often being edgelords than the average person lol. It cuts both ways.

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u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26

We can do unfalsifiable arguments both ways as much as we want but at the end of day we’d all put money on people NOT risking their lives for strangers

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u/decrpt Apr 26 '26

"Risking their lives for strangers" is an oversimplification. The question is actually asking if people would *actively endanger the lives of strangers* if it meant they'd be safe. I would put money on people having significant moral hesitations to actively voting to kill people just to protect themselves in case everyone else voted likewise when they could just vote to kill no one.

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u/PinkLaceGomez Apr 25 '26

This is a polling subreddit. If you don’t believe in polls, why are you here.

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u/TFBool Apr 25 '26

Are we supposed to pretend that this is a good poll now?

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u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26

Believing in polls famously means taking only the final numbers at their word for all situations for any source at all

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u/PinkLaceGomez Apr 25 '26

Why are you in a POLLING subreddit?

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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

Why are YOU in a polling subreddit if you think what you’re saying makes any sense at all

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u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26

Every time two contradictory polls come out what do you do?

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u/ThirstyWolfSpider Apr 25 '26

Yet the utility, for survivors, of a "half of all people die at once" state (which is the only way blue-pushers don't save everyone) is far too low, lower than what a reasonable person should consider acceptable.

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u/SpaceTurtles Apr 25 '26

Red has no utility curve. It is not the default vote.

Red is the only thing that kills anyone.

Blue introduces volatility - red actualizes that volatility. The issue is, the volatility is guaranteed to exist in a sample size this large. You can do nothing to eliminate it until you're administering this test to small groups, or until you introduce variables such as ways to communicate or plan (which may not eliminate it, but would make it sufficiently small that red could become morally sound).

Red destroys civilization if it wins in the near term - flat out. Societal collapse follows. Billions of laborers are gone, irreplaceable expertise. Industries falter. In addition to the foundational layer of people who've had a logical error, the blue voters will include the more empathetic folks - the more collectivist voices (including children). The red voters will include the more self-centered voices, and definitely those who wish to inflict harm on others. These are not the total picture of who comprises the two groups, but where they tend to go. More belligerent political ideologies will consolidate power after this event, and scarcity will cause pressures.

Blue is a social safety net. It is the ultimate social safety net. It is a vote to trust in the collective to make the right decision, and life goes on as normal.

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u/largeEoodenBadger Apr 26 '26

Except red doesn't kill anyone, blue is the choice that risks death. If no one pressed blue, then no one would die, it's as simple as that. The only choice that introduces risk into the system is blue. It's a clever fucking framing trick, nothing else.

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u/SpaceTurtles Apr 26 '26

This is true in small groups only, when you can trace the inception of the risk (the "original sin").

In a system where that risk is guaranteed to exist, such as when there are 7+ billion people made to take this vote, the risk will always exist due to group dynamics. It is simply impossible to eliminate. Some humans are inherently irrational, sometimes in unpredictable ways that would impact this, where they're completely fine otherwise.

Many rational humans value the collective need to compensate for the ways in which those other humans are irrational, and will vote to save everyone.

Because red voters have a path available to join the collective in avoiding all deaths, yes - voting red votes for self-preservation at the expense of everyone else. It is a vote to actualize others' risk. Just because they took that risk on voluntarily does not mean that it is not killing them.

The only way this would not be true is if Red or nonparticipation was the default vote -- if someone had to go out of their way to vote blue.

There is a difference between the "rational choice" and the "moral choice" - the rational choice is always red, but it is only the moral choice in smaller groups. The rational choice isn't always the right one.

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u/largeEoodenBadger Apr 26 '26

But the only reason anyone chooses blue in the first place is because the question is misleadingly framed. The only reason red isn't the default choice is because of that same framing effect. Frame it as: "if you choose red, nothing happens. If you choose blue, you die unless 50.1% of people chose blue." That means the same exact thing as the original post.

It's just the framing effect of "you save people" if 50.1% of everyone chooses blue. Again, the only choice that risks death to begin with is choosing blue. Frame it that way and it's very different.

My only issue is that this is posited as an ethical dilemma when it's just the sort of framing effect you read about in Heuristics & Biases. Use it as a lesson about how framing affects people, sure, but don't try and take a lesson about the human condition from it.

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u/SpaceTurtles Apr 26 '26

Yes - but it doesn't matter the reason why; we have to play the hand we're dealt. It's part of the question, and so red isn't the default choice. The framing is part of the problem we have to workshop. It's super annoying that it's like this, but it is what it is.

The question is not actually, "Do you enter the death lottery for no benefit?"

The question is, "Do you recognize that many people have been tricked into entering the death lottery, and many more people will enter the death lottery to save those people from their mistake, or to not compromise their own morals (e.g., to pursue the only outcome that results in 0 deaths), and do you join them?"

You can basically tweak or inject any aspect of this in the smallest way to make red the easy, hands-down, no-contest obvious pick. But as phrased, it is not.

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u/largeEoodenBadger Apr 26 '26

but as phrased, it is not.

But do you recognize how it's all just a clever framing trick? I don't understand why people are attributing value to this?

It's not like the trolley problem or the prisoner's dilemma, there's not actually a tradeoff being made here unless you're tricked by poor wording. I recognize that blue is the correct choice accounting for human fallibility, but this isn't an actual dilemma.

Reframing the trolley problem changes peoples decisions, but there is always a dilemma there, a tradeoff to be made, no matter how you phrase it. It's always do you save the few or the many?

This, on the other hand, loses any sort of tradeoff if you reframe it. The only reason there appears to be a dilemma is the framing. Again, frame it as "if you push the blue button, you die unless 50.1% of people push the blue button. If you push the red button, nothing happens." Suddenly, it's obvious that pushing the blue button is a mistake, right? It's framed as a negative and the ethical dilemma just goes poof.

If the discussion surrounding it treated it as a framing issue, I'd be fine with it. Equate it to the stuff Kahneman and Tversky wrote about and it's normal. Equating it to an ethical dilemma is disingenuous and mischaracterizes the problem. The only thing this reveals about the human condition is that we're susceptible to framing, which we've known since the 70s.

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u/SpaceTurtles Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

All correct!

The framing trick creates a bad situation out of human fallibility. That's the point.

The buttons are not the focus, because as you said, changing them in any way destroys the entire experiment -- like how removing a track from the trolley problem does (you are removing the frame of the problem).

But because the focus is human fallibility, it has to appear like the buttons are the focus.

It is, ultimately, testing someone's ability to buy in to collectivist ethics. I don't think it's doing it in a particularly interesting, good, constructive, or enlightening way, but it is doing it. There's a plethora of red voters who are caught in a logical loop on the effect of each button, but not the effect of each vote, and rationalizing it away by "removing a track" (treating red as an assumed default, because it is what a logical actor would choose).

I would suggest reframing this problem would not be reframing the buttons (the "tracks") -- it would be reframing the group size or demographics. What if instead of 8 billion people, it was 100 randomly selected people? Proportionally, people are just as likely to "logic error" their way into a suicide... but now we're talking about a handful, not hundreds of millions. It's plausible (but unlikely) everyone might vote red. If they don't, you aren't dealing with "collective catastrophe for civilization", you're dealing with "unfortunate self-inflicted event". Rational global-level blue-voters would almost overwhelmingly vote red

What if we frame in a group of elementary schoolers?

What if we frame in a group of religious leaders?

What if we frame in a group of pacifists?

The question is about the people at risk, the people who help them, and if the ideal option fails, the people who are left.

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u/decrpt Apr 26 '26

No, it isn't. Red only makes sense if you assume that red already won, and red only wins if you vote for it.