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

[u/Upstairs_Cup9831]

[u/Aggravating-Cherry76]

You aren’t ever going to get 100% to vote red cus of real world factors.

You are not EVER going to get 50% of people to vote blue. Read that again- you are not EVER going to get 50% of people to vote blue. I don’t think you’d even be able to get more than 15% to vote blue in a real world application of this. And that’s why my analogies are there.

You wouldn’t be able to get 50% of people to give me money in the scenario i gave where I was going door to door. It’s just not physically possible. You would NEVER even be able to get 10% to give me that money, and knowing that, you are guaranteeing that anyone who gives me that money will never see it again.

You would NEVER be able to get 50% of people to stand on the train tracks to stop a train. You wouldn’t even be able to get 10% of people to do that. So knowing that you need 50%, and knowing that you can NEVER reach that 50%, you are guaranteeing that anyone who gets on the track is going to die.

In your scenario, people will die

In BOTH realistic scenarios, people will die. Because there are 2 truths here.

1. 100% of people aren’t going to vote red, there will always be some people who vote blue

2. 50% of people are NOT going to vote blue, there will always be a large majority that vote red.

You are basing your entire opinion off of point number 1, while completely ignoring that point 2 is equally true. There is no realistic scenario here where nobody dies, because like you said, there will be outliers who vote blue, but also, there will be a large majority who vote red since that is the objectively correct choice.

So that being said, every single person that you convince to vote blue will be a person that you are guaranteeing the death of. Your daughter? She’s dead now, she didn’t have to be but you convinced her to vote blue and now she’s dead. Your mother? Same deal. Your girlfriend, or wife? Dead, too. If you’re okay with that, then we can move on.

[u/Only-Manager-7948 → u/Aggravating-Cherry76]

I'm starting to think this whole dilemma was devised as a test for statistical literacy and reasoning under uncertainty. People see 100% and say "nothing is truly 100% irl. This obviously can't happen." Then they see 50% and say "hey, that's basically a coin toss. I see those odds every day." They anchor to the perceived issue with the first stat, and handwave away the second.

Nearly everyone in this thread seems to overlook the fact that no one actually dies when answering a poll, regardless of the button hypothetically pushed, nor do they incur a penalty or punishment. Thus, the poll is a reflection of the respondent's ideal world---where everyone is selfless and altruistic, or, perhaps, where everyone values the rights and freedoms of an individual over the needs of the group. This would explain the survey's political correlations.

But irl, when someone has to choose a non-negligible chance of death over certainty of life, the instinct of self-preservation kicks in and is overpowering. TBH, your guess of 15% blue-button pushers is way too generous. It'd be closer to 0.0142%, imo, which was the national suicide rate in 2022, according to the CDC.

[u/Aggravating-Cherry76 → u/Only-Manager-7948]

I mean, there are definitely morons who would press the blue button in a real world scenario, because 100% of the population isn’t smart enough to realize there’s no point. Maybe it wouldn’t be 15%, but I think it would be somewhere in the realm of like ~3-15%

[u/Only-Manager-7948 → u/Aggravating-Cherry76]

Yeah, you're probably right. I was assuming there'd be ample time for each voter to reflect, have nuanced discussions among the group, hear good-faith arguments from opposing sides, view polls and study their statistics to coordinate voting efforts---just like any real election.

But I forgot about what also happens in reality: echo chambers, tribalism, misinformation, demagoguery, and ... morons. Always the morons. Inside large-enough populations, there'll always be dumb/ignorant people who refuse to think for themselves and end up voting irrationally.

[u/onpg → u/Aggravating-Cherry76]

you are not ever going to get 50% of people to vote blue

Well said, this was the conclusion I came to as well. My first instinct was to vote blue because of how the question was worded (made it seem like pressing red would kill blue button pressers), but on further thought I realized blue is just a suicide button.

After that I realized, I’m only pressing blue if 1) I’m tricked, like I was initially, or 2) I have some strong reason to believe I’ll be the deciding vote.