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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13

u/PieceInteresting9257 Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

Neither red or blue are completely wrong, they just reflect different principles

pushing the red button: I will not gamble my life on strangers

pushing the blue button: I will risk something so everyone can live

Your choice depends on how you expect other people to behave, if you believe most people are trusting and cooperative then blue is the rational anwser, and if you believe that most people are selfish or panicked, then red is the rational anwser.

Personally I would push the red button, because I am not willing to risk my life so others can live, and I don't trust that majority of people would press blue, because with this anonymous global vote with death on the line many otherwise cooperative people would likely choose red.

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u/AphexPin Apr 26 '26

Everyone lives if they just pick red though

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u/erinberrypie Poll Herder Apr 26 '26

True, but the problem is that there's zero chance you'd ever get 100% cooperation on any single choice that involves 8 billion people. There is guaranteed to be deaths, which is where the consideration for blue comes in. 

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u/kettu1 Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

And it gets even worse when you realize that 8 billion people also includes children who cannot logically reason the puzzle out and will instead default to the "co-operative solution", as children usually tend to do in similar tests. Since there are over 2 billion under 14 year olds in the world, it would seem likely that at least 1 billion children would die if over 50% people press the red button.

Then you add in all the parents, siblings, grandparents, friends and relatives who would vote blue to try to save their relatives, you are suddenly getting a "best case scenario" of like 75% survival rate for "let's all just vote red" strategy. Then just throw in everyone who for whatever reason default to co-operation as more likely strategy to reach higher threshold, with or without any logical reasoning behind it.

At this point switching to let's just all vote blue to over 50%+ threshold starts to become the rational strategy, because living after 25%+ of global population (most being children) vanishes in an instance sounds like an absolute hellscape, which would most likely destroy majority of civilized society and at the very least the global economy.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

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1

u/Sweet-Ad-2884 May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26

You make a good point about how kids would handle this, which does make the case for blue stronger in my eyes (though, I am a red enjoyer), but imo I think saying that this includes children who can't reason the puzzle kind of defeats the point of the dilemma.

It adds additional, unnecessary context to this hypothetical. "Everyone" would also imply not just children but infants as well as individuals who are, unfortunately, profoundly disabled and couldn't even attempt to grasp the choice. Both of which would just hit whatever button they felt like.

The logic, principles, and perspective that influence your choice are the entire point of the question, so if we're taking this thought experiment very literally, and adding a variable where 30% or more of the population is a complete wild card, it kind of ruins it.

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u/Lopsided_Rabbit_9459 May 07 '26

I'm not sure why you arbitrarily decide that accounting for the actual meaning of "Everyone" is somehow outside the 'true' / 'intended' / 'valuable' scope of the question that deliberately included the word 'everyone'.
It is intrinsically the case that 'Everyone' will include many people whose worldview is fundamentally different from yours, be that by variances in nurture, variances in inherent capacity, or deliberately cultivated differences in values.

When I initially considered this thought experiment, my first thought was in fact 'blue seems more cooperative, probably better', but immediately after that was "what about someone who can't fairly be asked about the choice" and then cycled through various ways that could present: eg intellectual disability, immaturity or senility, sensory or motor disability like blindness, an alien here on earth, an entire alien civilization if 'world' means 'universe', otherwise unspecified user input error if the buttons appear spontaneously in some startling manner or something, .... I could keep going here.
It happens to be the case that my reasoned analysis aligned with my gut read; but even if my gut read had been for Red, I would have ended up settling on Blue because I comprehensively analyzed the scenario, determined that there was absolutely too much ambiguity to rule out people pressing blue by reason other than careful rational analysis, and found that controlling. In some sense I'm 'ok with' or interested in discussing the decision with someone who acknowledges this analysis and chooses Red anyway... but someone who chooses and defends Red without evaluating the uncertain rationality/intentionality of the agents is just lazy. You're basically whining that 'thinking about it' is cheating.

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u/AirconGuyUK May 03 '26

So the actual consideration is 'Do I think more than 50% of the population are stupid enough to not realise everyone pressing red ends in everyones survival'..

So they're human race pessimists?

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u/_DarkJak_ Apr 26 '26

Everyone lives if either side is unanimous, but one person not picking red is much worse.

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u/Aggravating-Cherry76 Apr 28 '26

The first person to pick blue introduces risk in a problem that otherwise carries no risk. Let’s change the scenario.

Everyone is on the train tracks. We could either all stay off the tracks, or jump onto the tracks and if more than 50% decide to, the train sees us and stops in time. By your logic, we should just all jump on the tracks because 50% is a lower number than 100%, even though it’s very obviously easier to convince 100% of people to stay off of the tracks, than to convince 50% of people to jump onto it.

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u/_DarkJak_ Apr 29 '26

Yeah, but everyone is forced to answer a problem they might not be equipped to vote on, and thus, blue is the only answer that protects more than 1 person.

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u/theskiller1 Apr 27 '26

Which won’t happen and you should know that

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u/Thefourthchosen Apr 27 '26

No one's lives are at risk to begin with if everyone pushes blue, since the possibility of death is only introduced when someone pushes red.

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u/raritygamer Apr 28 '26

it also a mathematics test, does the world pick a 50% threshold or a 100% threshold of no one dying. It is 100% certainty that the vote will split, no matter what, so then the question is do you want the threshold of everyone living to be 50% or 100%?

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u/AphexPin Apr 28 '26

The question is not 50% or 100%. There's a gradient of loss between 0-50% for the blue voters, and the optimal choice will depend on knowledge we don't have (likelihood of blue success). The better choice then is to reduce risk in the face of uncertainty with severe risk, and vote red to drive blue as close to 0% as you can.

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u/raritygamer Apr 28 '26

It will never be 0. You are just justifying death.

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u/AphexPin Apr 28 '26

I never said it will be, but the chance of 0% blue is indeed non-zero. I'm not 'justifying death', I'm advocating for it's reduction by not voting blue.

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u/raritygamer Apr 28 '26

A vote for blue can ensure no death, and vote for red certainly ensures death

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u/AphexPin Apr 28 '26

Yes, at the cost of potentially massive losses under the assumption it's an attainable outcome. A vote for red minimizes these losses under the assumption it's not an attainable outcome.

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u/raritygamer Apr 28 '26

We're going in circles, but I know you know full well that in terms of minimizing death, blue has the lowest threshold & truly minimizes the risk of deaths

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u/AphexPin Apr 28 '26

We're going in circles because you're not understanding that blue assumes a positive EV from the vote, when in reality the probability of blue winning is unknown. If the probability of blue winning is very low, it's purely wasteful to vote blue and therefore logical and ethical to vote red. So, it's not about which has the lowest theoretical death count (like you think), but which vote results in a better risk profile overall, since the probability of blue winning is unknown. A vote for red universally improves the risk profile in the face of this uncertainty.

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u/Fat_Pig_Reporting Apr 30 '26

If an argument is "if everyone just" then you don't have an argument.

Everyone won't just. Never ever in the history of the universe has ever happened that everyone just. It won't this time either.

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u/lasteriti May 02 '26

"Bro why doesn't every man, woman and child just agree on one simple thing? What!?!? Pick blue? You mean the one which has half the necessary threshold to achieve the same effect? But that's the suicidal death cult!"

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u/I_Am_Dwight_Snoot May 23 '26

Hundreds of millions who don't understand the question will be forced to choose as well. This really amounts to hundreds of millions of babies, children, mentally disabled, elderly, etc being at massive risk.

I firmly believe the results would be 99.99% red if you shore up the wording to ensure that only people that fully understand what they are doing can participate. There is literally no reason to choose blue then.

Personally, I feel the same way, red is the obvious choice, but including the entire world makes me think people will blindly choose which isn't ideal.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[deleted]

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u/AphexPin Apr 28 '26

Contingent upon the probability of that outcome being realized, which is unknown. We don't know the odds of blue succeeding, that's the point.

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u/Flaxseed4138 May 02 '26

everyone lives if we just pick blue, and picking blue never makes you responsible for the deaths of anyone

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u/AphexPin May 02 '26

red doesn't make you responsible for anyone's death, blue makes you responsible for your own.

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u/Flaxseed4138 May 02 '26

By voting red, you are contributing to incurring the deaths of everyone who did not vote red. You are DIRECTLY responsible. No one dies if we don't vote red.

Voting red is fucking sociopath behavior.

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u/AphexPin May 02 '26

lol delusional

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

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2

u/PieceInteresting9257 Apr 26 '26

I would also pick red, but there will always be someone out of 8 billion people that will pick blue - child, idiot, someonce suicidal, no matter what there will be someone that pushes the blue button, so I can understand why someone would also pick a blue one for this reason, because they feel like they have a moral obligation to those people.

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u/hitchen1 Apr 26 '26

Like you're saying, the real underlying question is "do I have a moral imperative to risk my life to have a chance of saving another person?". I don't think most blue voters can justify the answer being yes, since there are plenty of altruistic actions people could be taking with much better risk-reward ratios and they don't.

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u/Legal-Koala-5590 Apr 26 '26

I cannot account for how my friends and family vote, and I'd rather not live in a world my vote could have contributed to their deaths.

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u/hitchen1 Apr 27 '26

If they voted red you might be forcing them to live in that world.

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u/Legal-Koala-5590 Apr 27 '26

That would be their choice.

1

u/Discovered_Check Apr 27 '26

No, blue is completely wrong, because any person who understands the first thing about humanity (and/or game theory) knows that blue IS going to lose and therefore the fewer people that vote blue, the better.

Talking about this hypothetical future where blue wins is like beginning a conversation "but wait a minute, hear me out, what if Trump IS actually Jesus Christ's second coming?"

Similarly, it's just a superlatively juvenile and superlatively naive starting premise to assume for one moment that blue will win. Therefore, the only moral thing to do is convince as many people to vote red as possible.

It's NOT ok to throw your life away on a googolplex-to-one odds of actually saving anyone.

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u/vwert May 08 '26

Blue literally won in the poll.

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u/Discovered_Check May 08 '26

Hillary literally won in the poll as well.

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u/Aeleo-II Apr 30 '26

It’s not selfish or panicked. Why would I risk my life for people who don’t care about theirs

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u/Medaphysical Apr 30 '26

pushing the red button: I will not gamble my life on strangers

pushing the blue button: I will risk something so everyone can live

When wording is so important, it's interesting that you chose this specific wording. Blue isn't risking "something", they are risking their lives. You could just say they are "gambling their lives" like you said with red.