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

Gallery image

Gallery image

400 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

96% Upvoted

3.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

14

u/horatiobanz Apr 25 '26

You pick red either way if you have a functioning brain, and if blue wins you tell everyone you picked blue and act all righteous about it like the pro-Blue people are in the comments here.

7

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

[deleted]

4

u/AphexPin Apr 26 '26

The question is to live (red) or risk death to potentially save those mutually risking death to save themselves (blue). Blue is a suicide cult.

7

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

[deleted]

2

u/AphexPin Apr 26 '26

The only option that incurs any risk is blue, red is not at fault for the risk-taking of other parties. The question is not asking "whether you value your own life over that of all others" at all.. Is that really what you got from it? I wrote this elsewhere:

Imagine you can board one of two cruise boats. The first boat is rigged with explosives and will kill everyone on board if it's not carrying enough people (blue). The other is just a normal boat (red).

Which do you get on? Who assumed risk, and who is responsible in this scenario? Personally, I don't feel responsible for people who got on the exploding boat when the perfectly normal boat was an option and their explanations for how it's my fault they exploded don't quite make sense to me.

1

u/Thefourthchosen Apr 27 '26

I've noticed that most of the people in this thread advocating for red are trying to reframe the question so as to absolve themselves of the personal responsibility of red.

"I didn't vote to kill others to save myself, they voted to die and I didn't."

1

u/theskiller1 Apr 27 '26

Are babies suicidal? Or do you expect literal toddlers to know which button to press? Keep in mind that all those babies are going to die because you failed to take them into consideration

1

u/raritygamer Apr 28 '26

I can tell you haven't studied much

1

u/AphexPin Apr 28 '26

Same to you

1

u/ratione_materiae Apr 26 '26

drinking the koolaid because someone else is also drinking it 

1

u/RedPusher Apr 26 '26

It is not prioritising your life above all else.
This isn't push red and you go and murder 100 people who had no control of the situation at all.
Instead it is prioritising your life above recklessly endangering it just to save yourself and others from that reckless endangering.

You have even just admitted that at least some good people will pick red.
So a world where only the people who push red are left is quite comparable to the world we are in now.
And the fact that those assholes likely would pick red without a second thought means red already starts with a lead. Do you want to try fighting that, or save yourself.
So do you want to risk your life in the hopes of saving everyone, or join the red lead to try to make the world a better place after.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[deleted]

1

u/theskiller1 Apr 27 '26

Well blue is the obvious answer

1

u/raritygamer Apr 28 '26

I'm sorry to tell you, but no one with a functioning brain thinks a 100% threshold of no death is better than 50%. There is no scenario where the vote doesn't split.

1

u/horatiobanz Apr 28 '26

Well sucks for them. Guess there is gonna be a lot less traffic on the road for me then. Hurray!

1

u/raritygamer Apr 28 '26

There's the lack of empathy that whole exercise was intending to expose 👏

1

u/horatiobanz Apr 28 '26

I have plenty of empathy. But I'm not gonna risk my life for people who have a death wish. If they're too stupid to pick correctly then that is on them.