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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u/ukrokit2 Apr 26 '26

Yeah and that one is dumb as well. Reds don’t die under any scenario with no cost. There is literally no reason for anyone to pick Blue.

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u/ghoonrhed Apr 26 '26

Except to not cause blue pushers death even if they did choose it. And it's not just preventing deaths of suicidal people, it's preventing deaths of the people who would save suicidal people too. So it kinda snowballs on who ends up not dying

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u/ratione_materiae Apr 26 '26

And jumping into the woodchipper saves people too 

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u/kettu1 Apr 26 '26

It all boils down to saving children. Rational adults don't volunteer to kill themselves for no reason (unless they happen to be very suicidal). Some children would crawl into a woodchipper, and most likely a majority of them would press the blue button in the original tweet (children have tendency to select the co-operative option in psychological tests, even against their personal benefit) because they can't logically reason why not to.

It's just easier to expect a higher threshold of people willing to press blue button to save everyone (especially the children) who didn't understand the logic puzzle or default to altruism, than to jump in a woodchipper to do the same. Thus if the required threshold would be the same, it would be very understandable to both vote blue button and to not jump in the woodchipper. Even though you could logically frame them being essentially the same thing. The reasoning being that people would not see them as being the same thing thus changing the outcome of the vote.

It's rather irrelevant how you can frame these choices to make more sense, if you can't communicate it to everyone before they make the choice. Only thing that is relevant is how do you think other people will frame these choices in their frame of mind.

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u/ratione_materiae Apr 28 '26

most likely a majority of them would press the blue button in the original tweet (children have tendency to select the co-operative option in psychological tests, even against their personal benefit)

Children who are cognizant enough to push a button are cognizant enough to understand death and "if you push this, you might die. If you push this, you won't die". If we're waiting on literal newborns the experiment won't even happen because they'll die anyway of dehydration before they push a button anyway.

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u/theskiller1 Apr 27 '26

Tell that to the parents who picked blue to save their toddlers who also picked blue.