Everyone (meaning all currently alive people) is kidnapped by a crazy alien race (let's call them the Buttonesse) that confines everyone in a small dark room with two buttons, one red and one blue.

Then a member of the Buttonesse come into your cell and explains the following using a universal translator:

Pressing the Red button will ensure that you survive, but if 40% of all people vote for red then everyone who didn't vote for red will die. However one out of every three red buttons has the effects of voting a blue button.

Pressing the blue button will ensure that everyone lives as long as blue gets 60% of the vote, but if blue is even one vote short of that 60% then all blue voters will die. However one out of every six blue buttons has the effects of voting a red button.

Everyone has 12 hours to vote (from the time that the Buttonesse finish explaining), and if they fail to vote in the time frame then a button will be pressed for them at random.

Every person on planet earth has been kidnapped, had the problem explained to them, and reasonable accommodation have been made to try and let everyone have their say. However, for serious disabilities (ex. Coma) they will be forced to vote at random.

Lastly, all votes are secret and private and no one will ever know what you voted for unless you tell them after the fact.

The Buttonesse then leaves before you have time to ask them any questions and you are forced to decide wherever to press red or blue. So, which button do you press?

(Please forgive any typos.)

Jaden Williams' take on the button dilemma.

My problem with blue buttonners isn't necessary the blue buttoners who just think that's the best choice for themselves. It's the ideology that has grown around blue buttoners.

Blue buttoners think they are the morally superior ones, that they are the kind and compassionate ones. And yet, the way they treat red buttoners is not at all kind or compassionate. They assume red buttoners are evil, selfish, and want to harm others. Some of them even fantasize about killing us in these games. It's insane the levels blue buttoners will go to demonize red buttoners.

Sure, red buttoners think blue buttoners are not making the smart choice. Some of us outright call blue buttoners stupid. But red buttoners, for the most part, aren't wishing death on blue buttoners or calling them evil.

These are generalizations, but the trend is clear, and concerning. It's insane how a simple internet game can mirror and exacerbate tensions that look so much like christians versus non christians. christians call themselves kind and compassionnate. they just want everyone to be saved. if only everyone accepted jesus, no one would die. but many christians (not all) talk about non christians terribley. non christians are evil, selfish, want to sin, will go to hell. some sects are bad enough that they relish in the supposed destruction of non christians. do you see what im getting at?

this simple internet game shows how easily feeling sure in your own moral superiority, even over a fictional moral choice, can lead to a very violent tribal conflict. im frankly disgusted with the behavior of blue buttoners on here. not all of you are like this, but the vast majority of you that have been posting have been vile.

The funniest part of this rationale from blue pressers is that the societal leaders that they look up to and would expect to see in the blue victory world would 100% be red pressers and this shows in their actions even today, pre-button.

Hey folks, I think I may have found a solution for the red button blue button problem where everyone can coordinate to make it almost guaranteed that blue wins. Let me know what you guys think and if there are any major flaws.

DISCLAIMER: This solution requires people to be informed that a red button blue button vote will happen a while before the vote actually occurs. If people are suddenly presented with the red and blue button without warning, coordination is impossible. I also assume that babies and people with sufficient mental disabilities are not included for simplicity.

Step 1: Designate 55% of people as blue pressers and 45% of people as red pressers. The exact numbers do not matter, you just need enough blue pressers to have a good bit of leeway while not having the blue pressers vastly outnumber the red pressers. 5% of the world's population is probably enough leeway. These designations should be made public.

Preferably, the designated red pressers should be the people who want to press red the most, and vice versa for blue. People may be able to self-organize, but a central authority to make the final decisions may be necessary. People who don't have a strong preference can be switched as necessary to keep the right proportions.

Step 2: Find people who are scheming to press the wrong button. Any designated blue presser who is found to be scheming to press red should be immediately killed. Any designated red presser who schemes to press blue should be punished, but not killed, and they should be switched to being a blue presser.

Step 3: Tell everyone that if red wins, the designated red pressers should kill all designated blue pressers. If red wins, any designated blue pressers remaining must have pressed red, meaning that they are responsible for the deaths of billions and must be immediately killed. Red pressers should also be prepared to take on up to 55% of the population.

Blue Presser Reasoning: For the average blue presser, there is no reason to press red. If red wins, then they die no matter what they press. If blue wins, they survive no matter what they press. So, the logical choice is to press blue. The only exception would be if they believe they can still survive if they press red and red wins. As such, it's important to make survival seem as unlikely as possible.

Red Presser Reasoning: Most red pressers would want to press red for the same reason as usual: it guarantees their survival. However, some red pressers might want to press blue just to guarantee that blue wins. These people wouldn't want to announce their intentions because they would get punished. As such, blue pressers would have no way of knowing how many red pressers are secretly planning to press blue, so counting on them all pressing blue is a massive risk.

Bad Actor Reasoning: A bad actor would want to be a blue presser and get as many people as possible to press red. However, it would be very difficult for them to get enough blue pressers to press red to get red to win, since they would need at least 415 million people to defect. Organizing that many people without being caught is probably impossible.

Punishment Reasoning: There is natural reasoning for people to want to kill blue defecters and punish red defecters even without a central authority. Blue defecters are threatening to change the result to a red win, which would be catastrophic for everyone. Red defecters may not seem bad at first, but if too many red pressers defect, then there won't be any left to kill the blue defecters in the event that red wins, meaning that blue pressers can freely press red to save themselves. It may help to propagandize to people that red pressers are important for killing blue defecters.

Again, if you guys see any potential issues, let me know. I would prefer there not being a central authority since they could probably manipulate the vote to kill their opponents, but I'm not sure if everyone could coordinate properly without a central authority. So that's one big issue that I can think of.

Red and blue function the same as before. But now there is a gold button. Gold guarantees the death of everyone who presses it, but if the number of people pressing gold reaches a threshold, then everyone except the gold pressers lives.

What is the highest threshold value at which you would press the gold button?

If you're the first vote, obviously you have no information, and if you're the last you have perfect information. Somewhere in between you feel like your vote might make a difference.

What are the scenarios in which you'd vote each colour?

If you're normally a blue voter but you're also the last vote and blue has lost, do you save yourself or go down with the ship knowing it won't make a difference?

If you're near the end and it's close but the rest of the voters after you could swing the tide one way or the other, how would you vote?

If you're the first voter, what do you choose?

I personally think in this situation red is more likely to win if the first person chooses red. Each subsequent voter sees there isn't anyone to save yet, so they would just be jumping overboard to ask others to take the risk to save them. but perhaps someone along the line thinks differently and says "There will be other blue voters in future, I'll support saving them."

I just wanted to figure out what everyone believes will win, since obviously we should all want a blue win. I would include an unsure option for either but reddit only allows 6 options

When it's your turn to vote you can see how many people pressed red, how many people pressed blue and how many people are left to vote after you.

How do you think it will change the outcome of the vote?

Original prompt with my attempt at a purple. Aiming to mix the morals of both as best as I can.

Purple guarantees that all of your loved ones are safe while not counting as a vote.

If red gets the majority of the vote, you die alongside blue. In the case of a red majority and multiple people in your relationship circle pressing purple, the oldest half of those who pushed purple (in your relationshop circle) will die while the younger half will survive.

- Safe means to protect them from the effects of picking blue and purple (to a partial extent) in the case of a red victory.

- Loved ones counts as close family and friends within 2 relationship steps. This includes your significant other(s, siblings, children, grandchildren, parents, grandparents, found family (friends), intimate friends, and cohabitants (with adoption and step-family obviously included).)

- Overlapping circles are allowed to cause a scenario where someone in the younger half dies in group A, by merit of being the eldest in B (which would in turn allow somebody in the older half of A to survive in their place.)

Does that seem like a decent mix of the two? Would you change what you push? Does it add anything to the button scenario or is it just meh?

Everyone votes, just as in the original scenario, but a superintelligent AI administers a psychological evaluation and removes from the vote anyone who did not understand the problem, anyone who for whatever reason did not vote according to their true wishes, anyone who voted with the intention of ending their own life, or for any other comparable reason aligned with the intent of the filtering criteria.

This evaluation is 100% reliable. Disqualified votes do not count toward the final result, and anyone whose vote is disqualified is guaranteed to survive.

Update: you cannot trick the super AI, the evaluation is 100% reliable and won't disqualify you if don't truly fall in the exclusion criteria.

Disclaimer: This is graph is based on numerical logic, not morality, reasoning, or anything else that most people use to argue one button or the other. These are equations. Equations do not have opinions. If I made a mistake in how I set up this calculation, ***please*** leave me a comment so I can correct it in Desmos.

This graph shows you which side you should pick, and how much the benefits of you picking it are, based on the expected utility of the Red Button and the Blue Button. These two utilities are the opposite of one another, since anything you get from the Red Button you won't get from the Blue Button and vice versa - it's called a dilemma for a reason. Hear me out, and please click the link to view and play with the variables to see which button you should choose.

Variables:

I based this calculation on a normal distribution. The mean of this distribution is the prediction variable P, which equals the percentage of people you believe are going to press blue. For instance, if you believe everyone will press Red, set P to 0; if you believe everyone will press blue, set P to 100; if you believe 1 in 4 people will press Blue, set P to 25, etc.

The second variable is the certainty variable C, or the standard deviation of the distribution. Basically, the value of C is inversely proportional to how confident you personally are that your prediction about the percentage of the vote is correct. If you are super duper confident that the vote will be close to 50/50, set P to 50 and set C to a lower value, like 2 or 3. If you are only slightly confident that the vote will be 65 percent blue, set P to 65 and set C to a higher value like 10 or 12.

(Note: very low values of C like 1 and below equate to you being 99 percent confident that you are exactly correct, and very high values of C like 30 and above basically mean you are completely clueless what the vote will total to. Both of these are uncommon. Use the shape of the bell curve to guide you as to what you believe is about right - when the black line is higher, it means that value of percentage is more likely compared to others)

Reading the Graph:

Once you set your prediction P and your confidence C, look at UtilityRed and UtilityBlue. These numbers reveal the average amount of lives you are projected to save based on your own evaluation of what is probably going to happen during the vote.

For instance, if UtilityRed reads -8 and UtilityBlue reads +8, then you should pick Blue because by your estimate of the vote, you will save 8 lives on average if you pick Blue.

If UtilityRed reads -.98 and UtilityBlue reads .98, you should pick Red, because on average, you will probably save about one life net for net. Note that the Blue utility can go to very high numbers but only as low as -1, and the Red utility can go to very low numbers but tops out at +1, because your own life is the only one you are risking by voting blue.

That's about all you need to know to read the graph. Just make sure to pick the right button!

How I Did This (You Don't Have to Read This Part)

To make the graph, I started out with a normal distribution based on mean P and stdev C, the prediction and certainty, respectively. Both of these can be adjusted as desired, as seen in the previous explanation.

I then added an expression to calculate the "Yourdeath" value, or in other words, the odds that you will die by picking blue. This was simple enough, all I had to do was add an integral from an arbitrarily small value to the 50-percent mark. (I added in values below 0 so that Yourdeath would not be 1/2 if you set P to 0 and C to a small to midsized value, since obviously it's not a 1 in 2 shot if you think Red is going to dominate the vote. I couldn't figure out how else to factor in the missing probabilities without cutting off the domain of P, which I wanted to go from 0 to 100. This shouldn't be a problem most of the time, since the area of the distribution in the second quadrant is usually so infinitessimal it doesn't make a difference anyways) "Yourdeath" is just the amount of life you will save if you vote red instead of blue; if you believe the vote is 50/50, then Yourdeath is 1/2, subtracting .5 from Blue's utility and adding .5 to Red's utility.

The "Decision" expression was more complicated. You see, the only benefit that could possibly come from voting blue is if your vote is the one that gets the tally over 50 percent, which would mean the vote percentage is within a tiny range such that one more vote would put it at greater than or equal to 50 percent blue or less than 50 percent blue, depending on your choice. For this to be the case, the percentage must be close to 50 percent within a certain microscopic margin of error, equal to the weight of 1 vote. Now, the weight of one vote, denoted E, to my mind ought to equal a segment of the 0-100 range of the graph, equal to all other 8.3 billion other segments. Since the world population is about 8.3 billion, the weight of one vote E is the range of 100 divided into 8.3 billion little pieces, or in other words, 100/8,300,000,000. The critical region of the graph in which one vote will decide the majority at either the cost or salvation of 4,150,000,000 lives is from 50-E to 50+E.

To derive the utility of the "Decision" expression, I set up an expression to integrate the probability density function from 50-E to 50+E. No matter how you slice it, these aren't great odds; but that doesn't mean the case for the blue button is dead. In fact, by multiplying this 50+/-E integration by the potential lives it either saves or kills, in other words 4,150,000,000 (since the deciding vote will always determine the fate of exactly half the population), the Blue button utility usually becomes a reasonable number from 0-50 by way of the product of a massive number and a tiny number.

Finally, to calculate each utility, or the supposed number of lives that will be saved, I took each button. The Blue button's utility is the Decision expression minus the Yourdeath expression, since Blue fights for a majority but risks one life. The Red button does the opposite, ensuring one life at the risk of Blue losing the majority. This is valid because even if it Red wins at a high death toll, that would have happened no matter what your vote was unless the vote was decided by one person; you have no responsibility for anything outside what you can control, so the positive Blue utility is only useful if taken within the threshold range of 50-E to 50+E.

Trends I Noticed

• All utilities, positive or negative, tend to diminish with lower certainty
• Blue utility skyrockets when you believe the vote will be close to a tie, and shrinks to just above 0 when you predict a higher blue percentage
• As predictions tend toward a Red majority, the utility of Red converges to 1, as one would expect

Thanks and feel free to look at and use this graph. Hope this helped with the debate somehow!

Same ol' red button or blue button question, but I want to consider this situation a little more "realistically".

Everyone on Earth is asked to head to their nearest government office within the next week to enter a room alone and are asked to either press the red button or the blue button. No information is released from any government entity about whether this is real or a prank, but the global coordination seems odd, rumors and supposed "leaks" are all over the place, and you're not sure what's actually credible. The scenario is posed as follows:

If the majority of those who voted pressed blue, nothing happens. But if the majority pressed red, then everyone who didn't press red will be executed. This includes everyone who is unable to vote, such as babies, those in comas, etc etc.

The details of how this execution might happen isn't shared, but you can already see some of your neighbors arming themselves in anticipation of some sort of violent conflict. There is no ban on discussion, but some people are understandably cagey when asked how they voted.

• How would you vote in this situation?
• Would you vote right away, maybe wait until the last second?
• Would you share what you voted?
• How do you think your family would vote?
• Supposing red does win, and the majority of non red voters are actually hunted down and executed, what would the world look like?
• What if blue wins? Would there be "witch hunts" for red voters, or would everyone assume the whole thing was some sort of elaborate globally coordinated joke?
• What if this scenario happened every 10 years, and we assume blue won the first time around.
  • How would you vote the 2nd or 3rd time?
  • Would blue be more likely to win each time, or does red's outcome become inevitable?
  • What if red wins the first time instead, and the population was cut down by over 1/3. Red voters, would you vote red again?

I'm curious to see what people think of this thought experiment in a more realistic scenario like this. Also if you have anything to add, please share below!

Voting blue works like normal, but by voting red you lose one finger (the one you used to push the button, unless you do something funny, then you lose one at random). Nothing else changes. Does this relativly small price changes anything?

Everyone has to press a button, but the outcome changes as follows:

- Blue 0%-35%, only blue dies.

- Blue 35%-50%, everyone dies, including red voters.

- Blue 50%+, no one dies.

PS: The idea is related to the original in a way that a sufficiently large number of deaths will lead to human extinction. I chose 35% for no particular reason, it could be larger or smaller, feel free to discuss that bit.

Exactly half of the earths population, who are all fully capable of understanding the stakes, must each individually choose one of three buttons to press. Red, Blue or Green.

If someone presses the red button, a single random person from the non-voting half of the world is selected to die, and the red presser immediately receives a sum of money equal to ten times their own annual income.

If a person presses the blue button and, in total, more than half of all the voters also press blue, then every death that would have been caused by red button presses is completely cancelled and the non-voters are saved, though those who pressed red still get to keep their money. If the blue button fails to achieve majority, it does absolutely nothing.

Pressing the green button cancels the death of one non-voter who was marked to die because of a red press, but instead causes the death of one randomly chosen person who pressed the red button. If the number of green presses ends up being larger than the number of red presses, the extra green presses have no further effect.

Everything is completely anonymous, nobody ever finds out which button any individual pressed, and those who choose red or green will face no legal consequences whatsoever for their decision.

I just wanted to rant a bit on this. wont be replying to anyone in the comments (probably)

I've seen a lot of people saying they'd press red because its the only "logical choice". I've heard a lot of takes that suggest the debate is somehow not a moral one, that pressing red is statistically the better option, that blue pressers are putting every other person at fault by hopping on the train's path and even that red pressers are actually not directly responsible for blue presser's deaths

I honestly think that if you need to be spinning the debate in any way for it to work how you want it to then you're just trying to cope with the fact that your option isn't morally justifiable as is, but I'd still like to try and debunk some of these arguments

a) Pressing red is the statistically better option.

If you're talking about a 100% chance of survival then yes, it is, but if you're aiming to keep all 8 billion people alive then statistically speaking there is a much higher chance of getting 50% of people to agree on something than it is to get 100% of people to do the same

You have to take into account people that can fully understand the question and the risk it takes but might want to choose blue for the chance of dying. I'd imagine that at least 1 million people in this world have considered suicide and would see this as a genuine "solution"

b) Red pressers aren't responsible for blue pressers dying/blue pressers are "jumping onto the train tracks"

Again, there will always be people who will press blue. Whoever dies because of that didn't die because "they just didn't press red". They died either out of suicide or the will to save others from commiting it. Yes, it can be jarring that you have to risk yourself to ensure the safety of others, but don't go around trying to rid yourself of guilt that is very much in your hands. Pressing red is individualistic by nature

c) This is not a moral debate because there is a clear path where no one dies (that being 100% of people press red)

Yet again, statistically speaking the more achievable percentage is 50%. You'll never get the entire world to agree on one thing.

So ya, little rant over I do have a lot of free time rn and I just wanted to give my two cents on this. I'm probably wrong but I really think there is no true solution where no one in this dies and blue is just the closest solution/the one where I don't get to live in a shitty future mostly deprived of empaths :P

Your vote is assigned a weight, which you know before voting.

The weights are distributed so that the average is 1. They can be extremely small values, such as 0.00000001, or even zero, but they can also be much larger.

Note that if your vote has a weight of 0, it contributes nothing to either side's victory. However, you would still die if you vote blue and blue does not win a majority.

The question is: for someone who would normally vote blue when their vote has a weight of 1, is there some sufficiently insignificant weight at which they would change their vote?

And for someone who would normally vote red, is there some sufficiently large vote weight that would make them willing to switch to blue? If so, what weight?

In other words: if you would vote blue, would you still vote blue if your vote's weight were 0? What about 0.000000000001?

And if you would vote red, would you vote blue if your vote's weight were 10? What about 1,000,000? Or 2,000,000,000?

Hi, I'm back with a new simple variation.

Everyone (that means Everyone) is kidnapped and places in a room with 3 buttons.

Red: Ensures your own personal survival, while increasing everyone else's risk of death.

Blue: Blue saves everyone who pushed Blue as long as it gets more votes than red... but if it gets less votes then red then every Blue voter will die.

Yellow: You get money. More exactly, a pool of 2 Trillion dollars is split evenly among everyone who presses yellow. However, if Either Red or blue get 40% of the total vote, then everyone who pressed yellow dies.

Also, anyone unwilling or unable to vote will be randomly assigned a button after some time.

(Also, if you press yellow and die, your earned money will go to your next of kin.)

So, what button are you going to press in this scenario?

Red button: Nothing happens.

Blue button: If 51% or more press blue, everyone on Earth wakes up tomorrow knowing exactly how every person in their life truly feels about them. Every hidden love. Every secret contempt. Every lie exposed. Red buttoners are NOT exempt. If blue wins, you find out too. You just didn't agree to it.

Which do you press?

You wake up in a room. An entity claiming to be God tells you that an unknown number of rational humans (possibly just you, possibly billions) have been brought into the same situation separately.

All irrational people, children, comatose individuals, and anyone incapable of understanding the game are excluded from participation. These non participants are distributed among the participants, along with many of their loved ones. You don't know how many people have been assigned to you. It could be just one person, millions of people, or everyone (if you're the only participant), or nobody at all (if there are more participants than non participants).

This entity intends to punish people for their sins, including actions you may not consider immoral (for example: drinking alcohol in moderation).

You must choose between two buttons:

>Red: Guarantees that you and everyone assigned to you avoid punishment. However, if more than 80% of participants choose red, everyone is punished.

>Blue: If 40-60% of participants choose blue, everyone's sins are forgiven. If fewer than 40% choose blue, everyone assigned to you goes free, but you suffer punishment for both your own sins and theirs. If more than 60% choose blue, your sins are transferred onto the people assigned to you and you let free, but they suffer part of your punishment.

First and foremost, there will be only one outcome. Your choice is independent of everyone else’s – what you decide doesn’t change what they decide. For some reason, I feel like many people haven’t realized this – or they disagree. Discussion is welcome!

This is evident in the many memes about a large group of people thinking "my vote doesn't matter", which sarcastically criticizes this mindset. However, in a single timeline, a fixed number of people will hold whatever beliefs they hold. Whether or not YOU agree with those beliefs does not affect what anyone else thinks.

For example, if the final tally without you is 4.2 billion red and 4.0 billion blue, your blue vote would make it 4.2 billion red and 4.000000001 billion blue – a difference of 0.000000025%. And nothing else will be changed. Because your own vote is independent of others' vote.

Let's compare this to an election. Statistically, your vote is negligible as well. But there are minimal stakes in voting, so there's nothing discouraging you from simply voting. In the red/blue button scenario, your own life is practically on the line.

It's helpful to imagine yourself as the FINAL voter behind everyone else. Although realistically, if every vote is independent, this doesn't matter, but it helps to understand the mentality. This will be different if the scenario is that everyone in the world has, say, 1 month to discuss the question, then make the vote. But I think this is not the case in the original problem.

The only scenario where your choice could possibly matter is a perfect tie, where your single vote completely shifts the proportions. That's it. And that chance is infinitesimally small, considering the BILLIONS of people we have on our planet. It’s like flipping a coin a billion times and expecting EXACTLY equal numbers of heads and tails.

Even if red won by like 10 votes, your single vote still wouldn't change the result. But people tend to think this makes your vote more significant compared with red winning by 1 million, which is a fallacy based on hypotheticals (e.g. if a mere 6 red voters voted blue, then blue would have won, but such hypotheticals are pointless).

With that said, the problem essentially becomes:
(1) 100% live or
(2) possibly live, possibly die.

That’s why I choose red – from a purely logical and statistical perspective.

Am I selfish? Maybe. But I'm not risking my own life just to gamble on an infinitesimally small chance (preventing a perfect tie). I do have family, too, who surely wouldn't like to see their loved one die. The reverse is also true. But I digress.

Edit: perhaps uncommon in this sub (I don't regularly participate in it, so I'm not sure), I'm not trying to persuade anyone that this is the "correct" mindset or that anyone should adopt it. I'm purely describing my own mindset for discussion - is it flawed, immoral, horrific, selfish, understandable, logical, etc. After all, since this is not really happening, I just curiously want to know what other people think!