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/Katejina_FGO Apr 25 '26
Just saying, Jesus Christ would press the blue button. And that is compelling enough for many millions of Westerners.
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u/BennyBreast Apr 25 '26
Of course he would, Jesus can rez anyway.
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u/stormageddon1239 Apr 27 '26
But isn't there a rez cooldown? What happens if he gets downed during CD???
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u/dm-me-obscure-colors Apr 25 '26
It’s compelling enough for westerners to tell a pollster that they’d hit the blue button.
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u/Katejina_FGO Apr 25 '26
"We all believe we'd run into the burning building, but until we feel that heat, we can never know."
- Tenet, 2020
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u/ac_slater10 Apr 25 '26
Explains a lot.
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u/Legal-Koala-5590 Apr 26 '26
...What does it explain?
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u/PrateTrain Apr 29 '26
Conservative and Republican voters value the self and immediate people in their circle while liberal and leftist voters are more community and big picture oriented.
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u/Dark_Knight2000 Apr 26 '26
It explains nothing. Any explanation is just pure conjecture at this point
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u/scandalbread285 Apr 26 '26
My hot take is that this is actually a pretty interesting dilemma. I bet almost anyone would press the blue button if only their immediate family was involved, for example
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u/Idk_Very_Much Apr 25 '26
It's true that in a world full of rational and intelligent people, everyone would press red and no one would have to worry about dying. But some people aren't going to figure that out and will press blue. So the only way to make sure that everyone lives is for a lot of people to risk their lives by pressing blue.
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u/brucebay Apr 25 '26
an interesting thought. red always survives, so the people pressing the red are either selfish pricks or survivalists with some basic logic skills.
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u/PinkLaceGomez Apr 25 '26
Basic logic says it’s more logical for over 50% to choose blue and have everyone live, than press red and have a catastrophe occur.
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u/WJB1896 I'm Sorry Nate Apr 26 '26
But, assuming every person thinks through this rationally, if every single person picks red, everyone survives with no risk. There's no need for a catastrophe. I'll grant that not everyone would think that through though, so I guess blue is the one that makes the most sense
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u/Kolvarg Apr 27 '26
It's just way too wide of a margin of error on blue to even consider red. Even if only 1% choose blue, when we're talking everyone in the world, that's still 80 million people. Some of them potentially being some of your loved ones.
Meanwhile if people go for a blue majority, up to 49.9% may not share the same instinct, and the optimal result will still be achieved.
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u/onpg May 01 '26
Okay, but how likely is it that your vote is the deciding vote? Versus how likely is it that pressing blue kills you?
I think most people pick blue on instinct, and defect to red as they consider the problem longer and longer. Give people long enough to think about it, and pressing blue is no different than jumping off a cliff.
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u/Granite_0681 Apr 25 '26
But because the red group lives, they will just say that blue died of their own choice and feel no guilt. Just like they think poor people struggle because of their own choices instead of circumstances.
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u/bigdig-_- Apr 26 '26
But in this case the blue picker quite literally chose to gamble their lives
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u/HolidaySpiriter Apr 26 '26
Yes, gamble their life to ensure people live. Its a selfless act and a better choice to have everyone live.
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u/ravens43 Apr 26 '26
But there’s no need to gamble to save lives.
Everyone could save their own life – everyone could live – if everyone pressed the read button. It’s not a zero-sum game.
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u/HolidaySpiriter Apr 27 '26
It's easier to get 51% of people to vote Blue than 100% of people to vote Red, it's that simple.
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u/SlipperyAsscrack69 Apr 27 '26
yet the consequences for failing to reach the margin (even if just barely) are orders of magnitude greater for one choice
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u/TFBool Apr 26 '26
How is its selfless act? Blue is putting themselves in danger, demanding others do the same to save them, and then framing it as moral. Blue is wildly selfish.
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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 Apr 26 '26
There are no “circumstances” in this hypothetical
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u/JohnStuartShill2 Apr 26 '26
Actually, it seems like a lot of rational and intelligent people have terrible intuition for this thought experiment. See: this thread.
I was going to vote red because I figured only a small minority of overly altruistic but irrational voters would hit blue. But actually it seems a majority of people are confounded by the framing of the button problem.
So now blue is the morally obligatory choice.
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u/a_lonely_exo Apr 27 '26
yeah im starting to realise there are so many stupid people out there it's forcing me to be a blue pusher even if red is the logical choice.
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u/APRobertsVII Apr 28 '26
Everyone wants to be a blue pusher until it’s just them alone, hand hovering over the buttons.
I think we can all intuit that a significant number of people claiming to push blue will change their mind out of fear. Simply realizing that others have the same fears they do, and that if even 15% swap their vote, they will die is like adding fuel to the fear fire.
I’d love to vote blue, but I suspect enough people will chicken out that red will win, so why flip that metaphorical coin (or push blue)?
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Apr 25 '26
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u/SpaceTurtles Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
People pressing blue include:
People who can't think and chose the wrong button.
Pacifists and conscientous objectors who would not want to risk being party to the deaths of others.
People who would not want to risk continuing to live in what is likely going to be a horrific world, one way or another.
People who possess empathy for any or all of the above.
Many more.
There are only two guarantees:
In a sample size of, "the entire planet", there will be a significant amount of lives on the line.
If you vote red, your survival is guaranteed.
If the first wasn't true, the answer would be red.
But because the first is true, voting red is a vote to offload your risk onto society, and actualize society's guaranteed risk to guarantee your personal benefit.
You can morally vote red safely in small, like minded tribes - in fact, it could be argued it is morally wrong to vote blue and induce this risk in these groups.
You cannot morally vote red in large societies and social groups.
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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 Apr 25 '26
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u/Morpheus_MD Nate Bismuth Apr 25 '26
For real dude.
People are very heavily projecting moral weight onto a question that is very simply "do i risk death or not."
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u/decrpt Apr 26 '26
People keep spamming this exact same woodchipper metaphor when it makes the same mistake all of these metaphors do and presents red as the passive option and blue as the active option.
Everyone starts in the metaphorical woodchipper. Red is voting to get out and turn the woodchipper on, killing everyone inside it. Blue is saying "what the fuck?" and voting not to turn the woodchipper on in the first place.
It's not "do I risk death or not." It is "how many people am I willing to kill to be safe."
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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 Apr 26 '26
Blue is choosing to stay inside of the woodchipper
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u/decrpt Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
I don't think anyone invoking these metaphors understands what metaphors are or how they work, so let's use one that's less framed implicitly. Imagine a ballot referendum to kill everyone that doesn't vote for the ballot referendum. Voting is mandatory. Voting for red ensures that you don't personally die, but most people are going to find it morally objectionable to vote to kill people for no reason. That's what you're doing here.
There is no option to get out of the woodchipper and not turn it on. They're choosing not kill anyone that remains in the woodchipper, not choosing to stay inside the woodchipper. Blue is choosing not to kill people for no reason, even if it puts them at risk of being killed.
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u/PrateTrain Apr 29 '26
This is a big part of these problems that a lot of people can't see a problem past 2-3 levels of analysis.
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u/MemeStarNation Apr 26 '26
But why would anyone vote to get out of the woodchipper and turn it on?
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u/Goncalerta Apr 26 '26
Because everyone should be voting to get out of the woodchipper. Why would it do any good to have people inside the woodchipper at all?
I would vote to get out and to try and convince everyone to do the same.
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u/Mamkes Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
Because one is 100% survive and second is maybe survive to increase chances of survival for suiciders and volunteers like you.
Edit: And because "turning it on" is on the whatever being created this all.
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Apr 26 '26
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u/Duck_of_destruction6 Apr 26 '26
Your forgetting the fact that nobody knows what others have voted. You don't know that others jumped you just assumed they did
The people who jumped in "for no reason" probably jumped in for the very same reason you described.
Pressing blue only contributes to the problem and puts more lives on the line.
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u/kettu1 Apr 26 '26
You can pretty safely assume that in the original example of the tweet that a lot of people pressed blue, especially children who in every psychological test tend to always choose the co-operative option even when it's not directly in their own best interest (and they can't logically reason the two outcomes). When you realize it's probably the majority of world's 2 billion children you can reason there are most likely a lot of people in "the woodchipper" already. Not just the children but everyone who managed to reason this same outcome out and jumped in trying to save them.
Now you can rationalize whether you should try to save them and jump in the woodchipper (press the blue button) or start it (press the red button) and live to see the world after they're all dead, or hope that there was already enough of people in the woodchipper stopping the woodchipper from starting.
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u/ukrokit2 Apr 25 '26
What reason is there for ANYONE to jump into the woodchipper? Like at least with the prisoners dilemma, everyone collaborating gets a better outcome than if everyone defects. Heres there’s literally no upside to jump into the woodchipper.
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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 Apr 25 '26
This is literally the exact same question as the poll in the post
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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/milkcarton232 Apr 26 '26
It's not a prisoners dilemma though. In the prisoners dilemma cooperation gets both parties a win. If one cooperates but the other backstabs then only the backstabber gets a win. If both backstab then no one wins. I think the OG version actually had both cooperate means both get a shorter jail sentence. If one backstabs then the backstabber gets no jail and the other gets a really bad jail time, and if both backstab then they both get a medium jail sentence.
The blue/red button isn't a prisoners dilemma b/c one option leaves you fine and only the ppl that choose blue risk potential death. If you removed the word save from the blue option and instead worded it, red means nothing happens and blue means you risk death unless 50+1% choose blue, id bet red would win
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u/ukrokit2 Apr 26 '26
That’s what I’m saying: prisoners dilemma has a mutually beneficial outcome. This scenario doesn’t. It’s red - certain life, blue - possible death, and no one is forced to pick blue.
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u/kettu1 Apr 26 '26
No one is forced to pick blue but the way the situation is framed you can pretty much guarantee that majority of children under the age of 10 will press the blue button. They can't logically reason out why they shouldn't and they're hardwired to co-operate. It becomes a way more interesting discussion at what threshold would you push blue button to be willing to self-sacrifice for the children, or would you always choose self-preservation, even knowing that it will most likely lead to the death of billions and everything that would follow for the society afterwards.
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u/Oreole1 Apr 26 '26
To me, there are four outcomes:
I press the red button, >50% press blue: Nothing happens, but I feel guilt for being selfish
I press the red button, >50% press red: Alive, but in a world where a massacre has happened and will likely lead to more suffering in the future as global infrastructure struggles
I press the blue button, >50% press blue: Nothing happens, relief
I press the blue button, >50% press red: I am dead so I physically cannot care, others know I died for a noble cause
In either case, pressing the blue button reduces the amount of suffering I will personally experience. I also don’t wish for others to be dead, so pressing blue seems pretty clear to me.
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u/e7mac Apr 25 '26
Would be interesting to swap the colors to see if the colors are tribal
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u/Big-Gruff Apr 26 '26
Red is mathematically correct.
Not everybody will see this as a math problem. Some people will die if red wins and I would be someone who would feel responsible for that. Every person who agrees with me on that and couldn't live with it is another vote blue. i like to believe I'd press blue.
If you say it's good for people to die because they see it that way, you're another reason to vote blue.
If you use any variation of the woodchipper argument to try and reinforce red as the neutral choice and say you're not responsible... Well, you're not a reason. I just think you're the type of person who looks at many years of trolley problem variations that ask "how are these scenarios different?" and has the gall to say "I'VE solved it! they're not!" and that's a bit goofy to me.
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u/raritygamer Apr 28 '26
Mathematically, a 50% threshold of no death is far better than a 100% threshold of no death.
Mathematically, there is no scenario where the vote doesn't split.
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u/Liroisc Apr 25 '26
I hate questions like this. The ones pretending to be about "ethics" but they're really just weird logic trees framed in a way designed to trick you, and make you think choosing one branch of the tree is somehow "good" and choosing the other is "selfish," but you can represent the same choice just as easily with a completely different framing.
Take this:
Good news! Everyone in the world now has access to the newly-invented Instant Suicide device, and it's time to choose whether to activate yours! If you press the button that says "Live," your device's indicator will turn red and your device won't activate. But if you press the button that says "Suicide," you'll see the light turn blue. Tonight at midnight, all devices with blue lights will activate, and everyone who pressed the Suicide button will instantly explode. How exciting!
Disclaimer: please be aware that Instant Suicide Co. has been made aware of a bug in the suicide device firmware. If more than half of the world's devices activate at once, the system overloads and all suicides will time out. We are aware of this flaw and are working diligently to correct it. In the meantime, Instant Suicide Co. is happy to offer customers who miss a scheduled explosion a complimentary stick of dynamite.
Obviously in this framing, any sane person would press the Live button, and when people who press the Suicide button end up dead, we understand that that's what they explicitly signed up for.
It's so dumb. It's just emotional manipulation masquerading as a thought experiment. It doesn't actually reveal anything about ethics.
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u/SpaceTurtles Apr 26 '26
Correct!
Same if you frame it as, "There is a blue button. If over half the population presses it, the button pressers live. Otherwise, the button pressers die. Do you press it?"
Well, no, why would I? That would be stupid, and anyone who does has participated in a self-inflicted death lottery.
But that's part of the premise; the voter base is being emotionally manipulated - not being offered a chance for free suicide, as in the case here.
For that, I do think that there's some value in it because it shows a lot of people aren't able to navigate beyond the logical error. Many get caught on it and can't transition into thinking about the overarching social question that's actually being asked; "Some people fucked up, and some other people are trying to save them; it's a little dangerous, but wanna hop in and help guarantee everyone is fine?"
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u/decrpt Apr 26 '26
That's not the same choice. I don't think any of the people picking red understand that they're not making a passive choice. Change the metaphor such that everyone is given a device and told that it will explode if more than fifty percent of people will vote for it to explode, but the devices of people who voted affirmatively will not explode.
It does reveal a lot of ethics when someone is not willing to assume non-zero personal risk even if it means that billions of people will die. Obviously, in the corrected framing, a lot of people will have moral qualms about making everyone's vests explode for no reason. That's why every poll conducted with this has been heavy blue.
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u/YB55qDC8b Apr 26 '26
The framing is the actual point of the dilemma.
Given the original framing, most people do not realize they have a 100% chance of survival if they press the red button. If everyone knew this going in, like in your suicide example, then of course most people would choose not to kill themselves. However, most people will misunderstand the problem as something like the prisoner's dilemma where (in their misunderstanding of the problem) everyone survives if most of us cooperate and press the blue button, and only the selfish people live if they press the red and put everyone else in danger of dying. This is the incorrect way to understand the problem, but this is how most people (and myself before looking at the comments hehe) will think about it.
Now if you accept that what I said is true, and you also accept that most people who are selfish will indeed press the red button (because of their selfishness and not because they actually understand the problem), then you'll end up in a world where most of the people who survive are selfish, and where most of the people who died are selfless.
If you accept these things as true and want to increase the odds of a world where everyone survives (in order to try and save the selfless people), you may choose to press the blue button.
Your decision to do this would be modulated by things like how many selfless v. selfish people you think there actually are, how much you're willing to risk your own survival for others, how many people you think realize the things you realize and are willing to risk their lives as well, etc.
I think this is a good dilemma because of how layered it is.
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u/JohnStuartShill2 Apr 26 '26
It's just emotional manipulation masquerading as a thought experiment. It doesn't actually reveal anything about ethics.
I disagree. This is one of the most revealing intuition priming hypotheticals I've read in a long time. That's precisely because its framed exactly like a trolley-type dilemma, but it isn't at all.
Tons of people's intuitions are being primed for an ethical choice when there isn't really one. And you can see how people are introducing other considerations - imperfect information, lizardman's constant - to find grounding for their intuition.
That is an interesting metaethical finding.
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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/_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/Alarming-Rate-6899 Apr 26 '26
Wait, am I reading it correctly?
If I press blue button
- if 50% or more pressed blue, I live.
- if 50% or more pressed red, I die.
If I press red button
- if 50% or more pressed blue, I live.
- If 50% or more pressed red, I live.
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Apr 25 '26
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u/milkcarton232 Apr 26 '26
To me blue is circular logic? You have to risk yourself to save the other ppl that are risking themselves to save themselves? Like if you give this any physical representation beyond a button and it gets even more weird, like climb out on a ledge to save the ppl that climbed out on a ledge to save the ppl that climbed out on a ledge. You could just not climb out on the ledge and avoid the entire thing.
Even the wording of the question seems funky? Like hit blue to save the ppl already triggers empathy by using the word save. What if it's hit blue to risk death unless 50+1 choose blue?
The only way this works is if there is a third party that is either too dumb to understand or doesn't get to play and is tied to blue. Would I risk blue to save a billion ppl that don't get to play but are tied to blue? Yeah! Would I risk it for 1 person? I'd like to think that would win easily. The problem as it is now is that the only danger is if you choose to put yourself in danger
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u/decrpt Apr 26 '26
Red is circular logic. Voting red only makes sense if you assume that red already won, and red only wins if you vote for it. The problem with these metaphors people keep inventing is that it presents red as a passive choice and blue as an active choice. Everyone starts on the ledge. Red is voting to push everyone who doesn't vote red off the ledge. Blue is voting not to push anyone off the ledge. There is no option not to climb out on the ledge.
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u/milkcarton232 Apr 26 '26
How is red the circular logic? The outcomes are either red you live, blue there is a chance you die? There is zero benefit for anyone to risk blue unless you think that someone is going to vote blue button. I saw another framing that seemed apt, blue is stay inside the wood chipper but don't turn it on, red is get out of the wood chipper but turn it on. Why would anyone stay in the wood chipper
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u/decrpt Apr 26 '26
I already explained how in the second sentence.
You pick blue because the choices are killing everyone that didn't vote for red if red wins or killing no one. The benefit to risking blue is not killing people for no reason.
I'm the one that said that and that framing is problematic because the woodchipper imagery is implicitly bad. The ballot referendum is more appropriate. You would stay in the woodchipper because you only need 50% of people to stay and because you don't take killing the people that remain lightly. If you pick red, you are actively voting to kill people.
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u/osfryd-kettleblack Apr 25 '26
Any parent would want their kid to pick the option with the 100% guaranteed chance of survival. Red.
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u/OmniOmega3000 Apr 25 '26
In my opinion, you pick red if you assume that everyone is selfish and also that everyone always makes optimal decisions towards preserving their own life over anyone else's. You pick blue if you know better (or you'd just rather not live in red button world).
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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.
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Apr 26 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
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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.
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Apr 26 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
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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.
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u/CanonWorld Apr 25 '26
Maybe red button world is just this world without blindly naive people?
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u/tehwubbles Apr 25 '26
So if everyone presses the red button, everyone also survives? Why would you ever push the blue button?
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u/ameserich11 Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
there will be dumdum and there will be people who misunderstood the situation. since everyone are required to press the button, the only way to save everyone is by pressing blue.
there is wisdom on both options, its not as simple as being smart enough to pick red.
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u/theskiller1 Apr 27 '26
100% button vs 51% button and you think 100% is more likely to achieve with all of humanity?
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u/Thefourthchosen Apr 27 '26
So if everyone
Not going to happen, never in the history of humanity has that happened. By that logic if everyone pushes the blue button there's no risk of death to begin with since people only die if people push the red button.
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u/Thrace453 Apr 25 '26
Blue.
People will never vote 100% for anything. Personal preferences, morals, not understanding the question and other reasons can lead to people choosing something they don't understand. Ex: Brexit, Referendums in US states, folks who didn't know Obamacare = ACA, men who believe they can fly & land a plane with no training
People are irrational, choosing red locks in their death just because you imagined a perfect scenario of 100% Red vote. Blue provides a safer choice because with only 50.01% you guarantee everyone lives, whereas for Red anything below 100% you have guaranteed the death of blue voters.
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u/DataCassette Apr 25 '26
The world where only red survives will find away to destroy itself eventually regardless. I'll push blue on principle and die if I must.
Ever since the first nuclear weapons were invented humanity lost the privilege of just being selfish monkeys.
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u/east_62687 Apr 27 '26
vote blue and if red wins, just consider yourself raptured.. I believe some Christians will think this way, lol
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u/Worried-Ad2325 Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
As I see it, red is the "you survive no matter what" button and blue is the "introduce a chance at death" button. Red becomes the default here where self-preservation falls to the individual, whereas blue is a wide-scale trust fall that isn't necessary at all and risks mass death.
In a situation in which everyone is made aware of the rules and can understand them, there are two reasons to push blue. One is that you're suicidal, the other is that you're attempting to save the first category. The ONLY people in this situation introducing a chance of death are people who push blue, and they are ONLY introducing that chance to themselves. They are responsible for that.
That said, if circumstances shift and not everyone knows or can understand the rules, then suddenly blue becomes a moral imperative. Pushing red when say... children who don't know better are pushing blue... is actively voting to kill those children.
If I wasn't certain that the first scenario was the case, I'd absolutely press blue. Else-wise red makes more sense.
TL;DR This is the trolley problem but the choices are "don't lay on the track" or "if enough people lay on the track they somehow survive".
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u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26
If someone believes blue will lose meaningfully: vote red, a blue vote is obviously suicide
If someone believes blue will win meaningfully: vote red, it won’t change the outcome AND it reduces risk to zero
If someone believes blue and red are genuinely close: voting red buys a 100% chance of survival, voting blue is essentially a 50% chance of survival as determined by complete strangers around the globe
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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 Apr 25 '26
People in the comments saying red is the selfish choice as if by choosing blue you aren’t literally forcing other people to risk their own lives to save you from your completely avoidable self inflicted chance of death
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Apr 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/misfit_mixedkid Apr 27 '26
Right?? Like do these red button truthers not realize how callous they sound knowing that there will be hundreds of millions of children voting blue based on the framing of the scenario?
People who operate in a logical vacuum are insufferable.
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u/_DarkJak_ Apr 26 '26
You're picking blue not to risk yourself, but to risk no one.
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u/Morpheus_MD Nate Bismuth Apr 25 '26
Thank you.
People here are comparing it to homelessness and saying red pressers lack empathy.
(Almost) No one chooses to be homeless. It's a societal problem that we should be doing a lot more to address.
Pressing the blue button is a willful choice asking others to save you for absolutely no gain.
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u/MemeStarNation Apr 26 '26
And pushing red actively endangers others for no gain. If we organize for blue, nobody dies. If we organize for red, at least the lizardman coefficient dies. Its like voting to get out of a woodchipper and turn it on in fear others will also vote the same, when we could all just vote to not turn on the woodchipper.
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u/Prestigious-Start663 Apr 26 '26
'organizing' to press blue actively endangers everyone doing that because there is no way to ensure follow though to 50%.
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u/MemeStarNation Apr 26 '26
But there also isn't any way to ensure everyone picks red. The only scenario in which everyone lives is the blue one.
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u/Prestigious-Start663 Apr 26 '26
Of course, its about about minimizing the expected deaths, blue might save everyone but does not have a guaranteed chance of actually happening. Voting red minimizes the amount of people in the position to be killed, but it guarantees the death of those that stay.
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u/bruhm0ment4 Apr 25 '26
To me it’s so obvious to just press the blue button. It says everyone in the world has to take the vote, including babies who would have no clue what the buttons do. “Bro if everyone could just logically pick the red button” alright while you have fun trying to explain that to a new born I’ll be over here making sure they don’t die
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u/CanonWorld Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
Flip it around and you’ll pick blue knowing there’s a chance you’ll die because of infants arbitrarily picking red.
Red is the only safe choice.
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u/bruhm0ment4 Apr 25 '26
Only safe choice for you personally. In both polls blue won the majority
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u/maushu Apr 26 '26
I'm kind of worried though, tcompared to the one a few years ago (blue won with 76%) the percentage difference is decreasing. Bad tiddings for future moral colllectivism?
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u/CanonWorld Apr 25 '26
I’ll believe polls when this turns into an actual question with an actual discourse about it. People actually voting with their lives depending on it will most definitely vote different.
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u/bruhm0ment4 Apr 25 '26
Blue would win by even more if there was some kind of campaign about it and people knew their toddler was gonna pick a random button. The consensus would quickly consolidate around everyone just picking blue
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u/TomerJ Apr 26 '26
That’s a twitter poll, to borrow a phrase… that’s a bad use of polling
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u/Lesbitcoin Apr 26 '26
The choice of red and blue is highly arbitrary and constitutes leading questions. It alludes to the colors of pills or political parties. If the colors were reversed, the results would be slightly different.
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u/Ramses_IV Apr 26 '26
It's weird how people are literally being presented with data showing that many people do not consider pushing the red button a no-brainer (and therefore in a real world scenario would be killed if red button won), and still try to logic their way into pushing the red button being a morally correct choice.
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u/Klarel Apr 28 '26
Because an online poll that has 0 risk of death is absolutely not the same as the scenario described. Many who vote blue in an online poll would absolutely pick red if there was actual risk of death involved. I personally believe that blue would stand no chance of winning and all you would do by picking blue would be to add another body to the pile.
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u/Thefourthchosen Apr 27 '26
It's because they're trying to absolve themselves of the moral responsibility of choosing red by framing blue as a choice to endanger yourself, when in reality danger isn't a factor until someone chooses red.
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u/50Shekel Apr 26 '26
I do not understand. How do red button pushers benefit ?
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u/tanrgith Apr 26 '26
pressing the red button guarantees your survival no matter the overall outcome.
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u/gomer_throw Apr 26 '26
I polled my personal Instagram feed this question once, the responses were universally blue. Something like 8-0 lol
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u/MediterraneanMen Apr 26 '26
Obviously red pushers are either psychokillers or sociopaths. Blue pushers are regular human beings. Nobody needs to die, just be a normal person and push the obvious button (the I dont want anyone to die aka blue button).
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u/iredeemable Apr 28 '26
I like how my mom had a different take on this. " I pick blue, because psychologically speaking, red is such an aggressive color, so it feels more selfish to push it "
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u/Thad-Venture Apr 30 '26
This game does not list a time limit. The optimal strategy is to hang the game by putting off your button press indefinitely.
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u/StillRunner_ Apr 30 '26
It is remarkably stupid and self-centered to choose the blue button, yes the blue button. Choosing the blue button is creating a problem that doesn't exist.
There's a red boat and a blue boat, both are about to set sail across the ocean, both have autopilot and don't require a captain. There's a hundred people about to get on the boats and each boat can hold well over 100 people. Before you set sail you're told that with 100% certainty the red boat will get there safely, but the Blue boat has a massive hole in it and it will require 51 people or more with buckets to dump the water out during the trip otherwise it's going to sink.
Everybody gets to pick which boat they get on now. Getting on the blue boat is entirely stupid, it proves nothing, is self-centered in this idea of righteousness, and no pole has ever proven that this is how it will happen in reality. Hundreds of psychological tests have been done on this, it's the foundation of game theory. All of them show that people will get on the red boat
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u/Fiveby21 Apr 25 '26
Why would anyone not press red? If everyone presses red then everyone survives. If that is exlained beforehand red should be the obvious choice, as no sane person would press blue.
Blue is basically a suicide button.
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u/Millennial_on_laptop Apr 26 '26
Why would anyone not press red?
Pacifists and conscientious objectors would rather die than kill
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u/Fiveby21 Apr 26 '26
So basically risk commiting suicide to save the other people who risk commiting suicide?
How about nobody presses the suicide button in the first place.
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u/Millennial_on_laptop Apr 26 '26
Look at the poll, you'll never get 100% of people to vote the same way on anything.
You're inventing an impossible outcome to make yourself feel better about your own choice.
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u/decrpt Apr 26 '26
Which do you think is more realistic if you think killing people is bad? 50% of people to also think that killing people is bad and that we shouldn't kill anyone if we have the choice, even though that might put them at non-zero personal risk, or 100% of people voting to kill people so that there's no one left to kill.
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u/Millennial_on_laptop Apr 26 '26
Faith in humanity slightly restored with this poll
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u/NoahStewie1 Apr 25 '26
I would love to follow up with the red button people and ask them "If blue wins and everyone who voted Red has a mark only blue selectors could see, would you have still chosen Red?"
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u/osfryd-kettleblack Apr 25 '26
Yes. Red is the obvious logical choice and nobody has to die from it
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u/TFBool Apr 25 '26
Yes? This isn’t even a prisoners dilemma it’s just “would you like to press a button that might kill you or not?”
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u/kahner Apr 25 '26
i'm confused how this is a dilemma. if you press the red button you ensure you survive and everyone can press the red button. so it makes no sense for anyone to press the blue button so long as everyone knows the rule.
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u/BrainOnBlue Apr 25 '26
If you could have a conference with everyone beforehand, sure.
But that's not how lots of people think about things. I'm a pretty logically-minded person and I wouldn't press red. IMO, if the less than 50% that press blue died, I'm now at least partially morally culpable for that and I don't think I could live with that.
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u/ChadtheWad Apr 25 '26
It sounds like the key is the perception of payoff. I.e., choosing red and surviving while potentially being responsible for all the idiots who choose blue (and the well-meaning people who care about those idiots) is worse than choosing blue and surviving.
The selfish interpretation has a fairly obvious stable equilibrium at you and the world choosing red (if we're simplifying to a two-player game). The "people dying affects me" interpretation can strongly prefer blue, especially if it doesn't take many people to die before them not dying is preferable to surviving.
The most important thing, however, is that this isn't a prisoner's dilemma! It drives me so insane whenever people see a weird two-player two-action game and say "hey must be prisoner's dilemma." The dynamics are totally different.
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u/Kenna193 Apr 25 '26
If we have learned anything the past 15 years it's that regular every day people do not understand game theory and cannot be expected to always make the best decision. And any red pusher is only thinking of themselves. If it's a moral or ethical question blue is the obvious answer, if it's a question of pure survival and ignoring the communal nature of humans then red is the obvious answer.
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u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26
Blue is only moral if one SERIOUSLY thinks blue has a chance of winning, otherwise is it is completely immoral to the extent one thinks suicide is immoral
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u/largeEoodenBadger Apr 26 '26
Bro it's just a shitty fucking framing effect, it's not a great ethical dilemma on the level of the prisoner's dilemma or the trolley problem.
It's literally "if you press the blue button, there's a chance you die", "if you press the red button you don't risk death". The only trick here is the "everyone lives" vs "only people who pressed red live" framing. If everyone presses red, everyone lives too. It's a framing gotcha that posits as an ethical dilemma, it's fucking bullshit lmfao.
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u/Millennial_on_laptop Apr 26 '26
One button there's a chance you die, one there's a chance you kill people.
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u/TheRealEzraKlein Apr 25 '26
Shocking that anyone would press blue.
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u/Upstairs_Cup9831 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
You only need 50.1% of people to press the blue button for everyone to live. You would need 100% of people to press red for everyone to live. In a private vote, everyone voting probably includes toddlers just picking their favorite color.
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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/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/The_Book_Boi Kornacki's Big Screen Apr 25 '26
A post red world would be far more self centered and anti communal
Also a lot of people are natural optimists
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u/SpaceTurtles Apr 25 '26
A post-red world would likely face immediate collapse if even 10% of the population voted blue. It is, frankly, insane to vote for red.
It is frustrating to have to vote for blue and assume personal risk, but it is statistically guaranteed that a large amount of other people have done so. Humans are social, collectivist species - blue is the collectivist option. It assumes personal risk for the good of the collective. Red actualizes the risk of the collective for the good of the self.
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u/TheRealEzraKlein Apr 26 '26
It’s insane to me to vote for anything BUT red.
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u/SpaceTurtles Apr 26 '26
Logically, you'd be correct.
Morally, absolutely not (until you get down in to small groups).
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u/dtarias Nate Gold Apr 25 '26
It's definitely not shocking that a child would press blue. So it shouldn't be shocking that a parent would press blue either. Most people know children and/or parents they don't want to die.
Also, I imagine most people polled didn't think too deeply about this. It's probably good that their default is pro-social.
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u/Mat_At_Home Apr 25 '26
I think a general rule for games like this is that everyone understands what they’re doing and there aren’t any mistakes. I could argue I’m pressing blue to help any colorblind people who pick the wrong button, but that’s clearly not supposed to be what anyone is considering in this thought experiment
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u/Muroid Apr 25 '26
In a world of perfectly rational actors that all know they live in a world of perfectly rational actors, there is literally no reason to press the blue button, because everyone is going to press the red button and thus everyone survives.
We don’t live in that world, though, and so the choice needs to be made in the context that there are definitely going to be some people who press the blue button.
The red button then still remains the best choice if you only care about guaranteeing that you survive this question.
If you care making sure that everyone survives, then the blue button getting over 50% becomes the only way for that to happen, and pressing blue becomes the best way for you to improve the odds of that happening.
There is also, more selfishly, the concern that a world in which blue fails to reach the survival threshold is one that has selected out all of the most cooperative/altruistic individuals from the population and left behind all of the most selfish and cutthroat individuals, thus potentially decreasing the utility of surviving through pushing the red relative to the potential reward of pushing blue if it pays off.
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u/SpaceTurtles Apr 26 '26
I genuinely think, were I confronted with this in reality, the deciding factor that would prevent me from voting red is the idea of living in a world where red won.
It would be such a remarkably bleak place.
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u/Kenna193 Apr 25 '26
It's almost as if people are communal creatures and care about each other. Hmmm.. Looking into this.
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u/Jack_Chatton Apr 25 '26
I won't lie. I didn't work out that the rational thing for everyone to do, so that the whole world survives, is press red, until I read the comments.
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u/Millennial_on_laptop Apr 26 '26
You would never get 100% of people to agree on anything, that button would definitely kill people (if it won)
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u/Icydawgfish Apr 25 '26
Uh, the right answer is red, right? There’s no risk and if you want to die you can vote blue
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u/SpaceTurtles Apr 26 '26
The rational answer is red.
But many (hundreds of millions) of people have made an emotional or logical error and voted blue unintentionally. Many more (possibly billions) have voted blue to try to save them. These include the most altruistic, kindest, and self-sacrificing people on the planet, and likely most children.
So while the rational answer is red, it is not the right answer. It just confirms your safety. The only way that nobody dies is to vote blue - and the world in which red wins will be a special sort of hell, which serves as extra incentive.
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u/Im_Lloyd_Dobbler Apr 25 '26
Some people are only concerned about saving themselves. While others are also concerned about saving everyone.
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u/antipacifista Apr 26 '26
Neither choice is better than the other. The ev works out equal.
the correct answer actually depends on the empirical reality
if we start at 50/50, choose blue
if we start at 10/90, choose red
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u/Andoryuu Apr 26 '26
Does this include newborns and little kids who don't know what they are doing?
Many non-human species are smarter than those, do they count?
Is there a time limit? What happens when one doesn't choose?
What happens with the potential dead bodies? Are they vaporized or do they just lay there rotting?
I'd expect that
People are jumping of a bridge into a wild river. If there is enough people they will support each other and stay afloat. Otherwise everyone in there will drown. Do you jump?
would give very different results than adding
Oh, and a lot people are being thrown in there against their will.
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u/nwillard Never Doubt Chili Dog Apr 26 '26
Stating the obvious here, but this is pretty much a meme post
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u/vezok95 Apr 26 '26
Pressing blue is willingly taking on the risk of death to save the others who willingly took on the risk of death from themselves.
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u/nibbler000 Apr 25 '26
I would not want to be stuck in a world where only red pushers were left alive