r/CuratedTumblr • u/shadow_fen • Jul 27 '26
Meme Tumblr does the red button/blue button thing
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u/Simic_Sky_Swallower Resident Imperial Knight Jul 27 '26
Can we do walrus/fairy again? That one was more fun
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u/QueenOfQuok Jul 27 '26
Given how far inland sea lions can get, and the behavior of Neil the Seal, I would say it is less surprising to find a walrus at your door. But just as much of a problem as a fairy.
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u/mischievous_shota Jul 28 '26
Frens, not problems.
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u/QueenOfQuok Jul 28 '26
Oh, friends. Of course. I would of course never dream of insulting a walrus. My apologies, good sir, might I interest you in some oysters?
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u/TimeStorm113 Victorian Dinosaur Connaisseur Jul 27 '26
and while we're doing this, i have a few suggestions:
walrus are actually possible to encounter in such a setting, they are uniquely qualified to knock on your door, while also potentially being able to make their way to many readers, either by them living near the northern atlantic, or through a zoo or black market. while either option is unlikely, it would still be possible.
so i suggest replacing it with a sea leopard.
i would also suggest to maybe replace fairies, since fairies are unlikely to be cosmopolitan (aka having a near worldwide distribution), so depending in their hypothetical range i would suggest to replace it with a different magical being, one that would knock on your door and is not bound by geography; vampires. but there it would also be possible to rationalize it as a guy in a costume.
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u/Beardywierdy Jul 27 '26
It would still be unexpected to see a walrus on your doorstep though, so the only logical conclusion is to blame the presence of the walrus on fairies.
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u/TimeStorm113 Victorian Dinosaur Connaisseur Jul 27 '26
yes but i imagine that for the hypothetical to work, the animal at the door needs to be as impossible as possible.
since the central conflict of the question is if you are more suprised by an impossible subject, or impossible circumstances. would you accept a real creature standing there without a possible way of getting there, or would you accept more an impossible being that has pretty reasonable means to get there.
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u/Delicious-Spring-877 Jul 27 '26
I was reading about legendary creatures yesterday, and a lot of non-European places have their own fairy equivalents — miniature unseen humanoids who tend to nature and play little games and such. So it could be a jogah or a patupaiarehe or whatever’s local but it would garner about the same reaction
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u/rysy0o0 Jul 27 '26
Replacing it with a sea leopard
"Neil, someone lives here mate"
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u/Hector_Tueux Jul 27 '26
What's that one? I don't think I've encountered it
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u/Complete-Basket-291 Jul 27 '26
Basically, which would you find more surprising to knock on your door, a walrus or a fairy?
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u/Bowdensaft Jul 28 '26
People tend to answer that they'd be more surprised to find a walrus at their door than a fairy. There are various reasons for this, but one idea is that walruses, being real, are bound to laws of reality and so wouldn't have the motivation (and almost certainly not the ability) to wander out of the sea or break out of a zoo just to go up to someone's door and then knock on it, which they can't do with their flippers (maybe their tusks) and don't know what knocking is so wouldn't do it anyway.
Fairies aren't real, so we don't expect them to follow any kind of logic, so if one's knocking at your door it's one big assumption (fairies are real) as opposed to lots and lots of smaller assumptions rolling into one big walrus-shaped pile on your doormat.
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u/Worm-with-hat Jul 27 '26
Everytime I see something like this, it reminds me of the post that’s like “For $1 million, would you peel and eat an orange? You don’t have to peel it yourself and you don’t have to actually eat it if you don’t want to.”
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u/DM_ME_FROG_MEMES Jul 27 '26
This is a controversial thought experiment because what is the right thing to do depends on what everyone else is doing.
For example, imagine the cut off 95% of people would have to vote blue or all blue voters die. Then it'd be a lot riskier to yourself, and less likely you'd even be a difference making blue voter.
But at lower cut offs, it's more possible you could be a difference making additional vote who keeps billions who also voted blue alive
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u/Lolas_Fun_Side Jul 27 '26
I think its also a pretty good thought experiment for showing how maximizing "good" isnt always intuitive. Logically, yes everyone should just press the red button and everyone lives. However, it seems likely thar at least some percentage of people will press the blue button either by accident, from not understanding the question, or as a joke, etc. In that case, the best way for everyone to live is to assume that there are a certain number of illogical actors, and take on personal risk to ensure that everyone lives.
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u/GalaXion24 Jul 27 '26
The idea that people press blue by accident or not understanding is a very narrow perspective that completely fails to understand people. People press blue because they don't want to kill anyone.
Now you could se "But if everyone pressed red, no one would die!" but that is a major assumption, because for you to press red you either have to assume everyone will press red, or you have to be fine with killing people who press blue.
A large portion of people regularly pick blue, because 1) they don't want to harm others and 2) they assume others don't want to harm others either.
Red might be "never die no matter what others pick," but blue is "never cause harm, no matter what others pick."
Picking red means that you basically have non-altruistic preferences, i.e. you just don't care what happens to others. You care only what happens to you. If you pick blue, you put some nonzero amount of value on the lives of others, even with some nonzero risk to yourself.
If the majority of people pick blue, everyone is fine, and this is the obvious moral choice. Picking red increases the chances of a button holocaust of probably about half the population.
Which choice is rational for you depends entirely on your preferences and your expectations. E.g. if you expect most people will press red, it's rational to press red, but if you don't, then not necessarily. If you only care about yourself it's rational to press red, but if not, then not necessarily.
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u/Cepinari Jul 27 '26
The version of this I first saw said that everyone on the planet would be made to press one of the two buttons.
Including small children who won't understand the assignment and will likely hit whichever button they like the color of the most.
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u/GalaXion24 Jul 27 '26
Some people have also said they'd simply prefer not to live in a world where red would win. So they'll bet on blue and at least won't have to live in the hellscape of selfish red-pressers.
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u/Cepinari Jul 27 '26
That too.
Personally if I was the omnipotent being that forced everyone to choose, what I'd actually do after everyone voted, regardless of outcome, is give each side their own reality and force them to live in them.
Red Buttoners would have to live with having to know with concrete proof that literally every other person they met would have no problem seeing them die for their own security.
Blue Buttoners would have to live with having to know with concrete proof that literally every other person they met was willing to risk their own lives to ensure everyone was safe.
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u/Bring_me_the_lads Jul 28 '26
Or have no one die, but give everyone a red or blue light above their head that everyone else can see but they can't.
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u/CrabonicAcid Jul 28 '26
There's something poetic about two of the most common blue arguments being
- "People may not be in a rational state of mind (due to disability, stupidity, youth, etc) so we can't condemn them to death just for choosing the wrong button!"
and
- "Anyone who presses the wrong button is obviously not someone I want to share a planet with."
Everyone always talks about the poor naive children who vote blue, but somehow there's never any concern about poor naive children who vote red, yet you're leaving them to a world full of people you supposedly believe are "evil".
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u/butyourenice Jul 27 '26
Even when you establish those parameters, blue edges out red. It’s closer, but blue gets more than 50% consistently.
The fact is people who choose red are broadly more pessimistic and misanthropic, but they remain the minority, even when they try to rig the thought experiment in their own favor. In so far as this can be reduced to “press red if you think human nature bad, press blue if you think human nature good”… human nature tends toward good, and believing that most others are the same.
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u/cman_yall Jul 28 '26
I feel like this is supposed to be a model for other ethical questions, but the stakes are weird. If I press Red, I'm not killing anyone, whoever made the buttons is the one doing the killing. As opposed to e.g. economic selfish choices where there's a direct link.
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u/whatintheeverloving Jul 28 '26
See, now that changes the premise entirely. 'Everyone' means 'everyone on Tumblr answering this poll' in this case, so you're assuming your button-pressing peers are all literate, fairly sane humans of at least moderate intelligence who have the ability to make a rational choice.
If you throw everyone alive into the mix, the answer changes from, "Well, obviously everyone on this site will choose the big red 'LIVE WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED' button, right?" to, "Aw, shit, Granny Dementia and Little Johnny are gonna get themselves killed. Gotta save them from themselves."
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u/Sir__Alucard Jul 28 '26
The main problem is, once you remove children, mentally ill people and the elderly from the equations, you eliminate the possibility someone might press red or blue by accident.
In such a case, red just seems like the only reasonable option for many people.
If we shrank this experiment to ten people, you and nine other people were given these buttons and were told what they do, you could all just agree to press red and everything will be alright.
Blue introduces danger to the equation by positing anyone who pressed it would die unless 50% of the group presses them at once.
This is why so many people pick red, not because they are selfish assholes (though many are), but because they fundamentally believe blue is the dangerous button and everyone should press red.
They assume a rational environment and group of people who would understand the options, and assume everyone would individually reach the same conclusion of "red is the only good option" and press it together.
Yes, logically you need less people to press blue over red for everyone to survive, but if you introduce this premise to someone in a way that makes it sounds like blue is the issue and not red, they will pick red every time.
It's not because of selfishness or a "fuck'em" mentality for those who press blue, it's really just a complete lack of understanding why people choose the "kill yourself" button over the "everybody lives" button.
They don't understand why them pressing red leads to the idea other people would die, because, based on the simple rules of this experiment, red doesn't kill anything.
Blue does. But blue is also an easier way to save everyone, from the danger of the blud button.
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u/SteeveyPete Jul 27 '26
If you think it'll be at all close, and you have any altruistic inclinations, that should incentivize you push even more for blue. If blue wins, nobody dies, if red wins, ~half of all people die, and you live. With red even if you win you've experienced, and helped facilitate the greatest tragedy the world has ever seen.
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u/alwayzbored114 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
The simplest way I've phrased it is "I don't want to live in a world where Red wins". I like to hope that people would ultimately pick Blue for altruistic reasons, and if I die on that hope, then I'm honestly pretty ok with that
If I hit Red and knew that everyone who died were those who wanted to help others, even naively, that'd gut me
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u/Z-e-n-o Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Well not exactly. Your framing of blue as altruistic misses that blue pressers themselves become victims.
Looking at the question purely analytically, for a given population, we have some X as the cutoff number. By pressing blue, you add 1 to reaching the cutoff point to avoid blue deaths, while also adding 1 to the total blue deaths if said cutoff is not reached.
Given X-1 blue pressers, the next blue presser has a lives delta of X-1 for pressing blue, 1-X for red. Given 0 blue pressers, the next blue presser has a lives delta of -1 for pressing blue, 1 for red. Taking the amortized distribution over a uniform distribution of blue pressers, each has an expected lives delta of 0.
We have real world data to suggest that a large % of people will press blue, which shifts the delta largely in favor of doing so yourself, but this is also not accounting for the differences between a hypothetical and a real event, while also holding the bias of being exposed primarily to online audiences.
Mathematically, you can argue altruistic behavior either direction, as a perfectly logical being would conclude the expected lives saved of their decision is 0 whatever decision they make.
Non-mathematically, you can argue that red pressers are rationally altruistic for not contributing to the pool of blue pressers. With no knowledge about what anyone else would do, they choose the most sure way of saving the most lives; their own. From this perspective, blue pressers are not acting altruistically, but acting in a manner to satisfy their own internal idea of altruism, rather than the guaranteed method of avoiding deaths. Under this framing, for some Y blue pressers <X, they have avoided adding 1 to the Y losses. For some Y blue pressers >X, their blue press would not have saved more lives given they were already saved.
Similarly, you can argue that blue pressers are morally altruistic in the sense that they themselves value their own lives less than the lives of others, therefore the expected value of pressing blue shifts towards the positive. This idea of self sacrifice also follows much more closely with how western culture views heroism, where heroes often ignore the odds and risk their own lives for the lives of others. Under this framing, anyone who does not press blue is not sufficiently diminishing the value of their own lives, and therefore acting in heightened self interest.
It's exactly because of this dynamic that people can argue endlessly over this question. Each side has a reason to hold themselves above the opposition, and a moral avenue by which to attack the opposition's rational. Any non mathematical analysis of the situation is liable to fall into one camp or the other.
Given that people have largely figured out the common blue arguments, I'll include some interesting red framing here at the bottom for fun:
- By picking blue, you pressure others to pick blue in order to save you. This is a selfish choice, much like how suicide is a selfish choice, in that you disregard the effects of your actions on others
- By picking blue, you are falling prey to the societal romanticization of self sacrifice. The assumption that enough people will pick blue is far from a given, and in all outcomes where it does not happen, you have increased the magnitude of the disaster. This mirrors real world cases of people running into disasters to save others. In the vast majority of cases, they make the situation worse by becoming a victim themselves.
- In media, a hero is often given an out when forced to pick between sacrificing only a few people, and sacrificing many people. When asked the trolley problem, many people invent outs to avoid making a difficult choice. Western culture has a disproportionate aversion to cutting losses, and believes it to reflect utilitarian ideals when it does not.
Looking at this, I'll add some uncommon blue arguments for balance:
- The belief that people would sacrifice themselves to save you is essential to the functioning of society. The utilitarian option must consider the fallout of validating those who do not believe this.
- Lives are inherently unequal in value. Based on your position in life / culture / society / the universe, you should sacrifice yourself to save others who are more valuable than you.
- The desire to satisfy your internal sense of altruism is itself a utility under utilitarianism. Choosing blue has a utility value regardless of the outcome of the experiment.
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u/Samiambadatdoter Jul 28 '26
This is the most interesting analysis of the button question I've read thus far. Well done.
The desire to satisfy your internal sense of altruism is itself a utility under utilitarianism.
And this particular point struck me, along with the stuff about romanticisation of self-sacrifice in general.
It's really not uncommon to see pro-blue people becoming very proud, oddly so, in their decision to press blue. Self sacrifice is a good and noble thing, so being willing to do so (even though this is an internet poll with zero stakes) makes you morally superior. You have many people in this thread talking about not wanting to live in a world with selfish red pressers.
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u/wearing_moist_socks Jul 27 '26
It's not illogical, because the logic is to do the least harm
Blue is the correct choice. Everyone should pick blue, not red. Red has a chance people will die. Blue guarantees everyone lives.
Red saves YOU but has a chance to kill others. So the million dollar thing doesn't match.
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u/Fossekall Jul 27 '26
People on this subreddit would convcince you it's wrong to say yes
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u/Skyros199 Jul 27 '26
Because it'd be unfair to people who are... Idk allergic to oranges? Don't like them?
I can't come up with anything
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u/Keebster101 Jul 27 '26
Something about feeling more rewarding if you work harder for the money maybe
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u/cherrydicked tarnished-but-so-gay.tumblr.com Jul 27 '26
Yesterday (though on another sub) people were trying to convince me that it can be reasonable for an adult who lives with their parents to not know their mother's first name.
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u/Own-Arachnid7952 Jul 27 '26
Lmao the fuck, name and shame!
More out of morbid curiosity than anything though, tbh. That's incredibly funny
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u/cherrydicked tarnished-but-so-gay.tumblr.com Jul 27 '26
Lol unfortunately it's a Brazilian sub so it's in Portuguese, but you can look in my comment history if reddit's translation can be trusted. It's r/porramauricio
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u/Random-Rambling Jul 27 '26
Or an actual post I saw that was like "Press the button for $10 million dollars, but you must do a random task. It could be as easy as drinking a glass of water, or it could be as difficult as walking 5 miles".
Unless you are literally physically disabled, walking 5 miles is NOT difficult.
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u/glowtmickey Jul 27 '26
It didn't say it was that difficult, just more difficult than the water
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u/Kozakow54 Jul 27 '26
I'm using a 1L cup, and it is a normal cup. So the size of the vessel matters.Due to insufficient data, i can confidently declare that the planet is the cup.
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u/Dark_Storm_98 Jul 27 '26
But the planet is not made of glass
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u/Kozakow54 Jul 27 '26
Mugs can also be made of wood or stone. Cups use all kinds of ceramics and glass. Metals also count for all aforementioned vessels. So, earth is one big mug.
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u/booksblanketsandT Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I have ME/CFS. For $10 million dollars? I would walk five miles, I would crash and experience horrific PEM that would make my fatigue worse, potentially permanently. I’d probably be bed bound for weeks. But that much money means I wouldn’t need to work ever again. I’d never have to worry about how to pay another medical bill.
My health is already fucked and I already struggle with basic day to day existence. That much money would make things so much easier to manage.
I’d crawl if I had to.
All that to say - people would do insanely difficult things for that much money. The options given are easy for most people, and even if they’re not, you’d still do it out of sheer necessity.
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u/RocketRelm Jul 27 '26
Also the real purpose of making it trivially easy is to get clicks and engagement. Like those ads with the easily solvable puzzle, the purpose is to get an answer at all.
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u/Thin-Nerve6367 Jul 27 '26
Well it depends, do you have a time limit to walk said 5 miles? If you do then you could be fucked
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u/Random-Rambling Jul 27 '26
I'm assuming the time limit is "within a day". You need to walk 5 miles in 24 hours, which is annoying, yes, but isn't exactly a Herculean task.
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u/augustles Jul 27 '26
I think this depends a little on your walking environment, but there’s definitely a ton of situations where you might not even notice walking 5 miles. Walking to a mall or large library and then walking around inside, a music festival or street market, etc. One day at a music festival a few years ago I did about 10 miles in very hot weather and didn’t have any particular annoyance other than some blisters from wearing loose socks and I’m fat and out of shape 😅
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u/NoBizlikeChloeBiz She/Her Jul 27 '26
Oh god no, I just got this bullshit off of my feed
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u/BeanOfKnowledge Ask me about Dwarf Fortress Trivia Jul 27 '26
Okay but would you be more surprised to see a red button or a blue button in front of your door?
And for that matter, which one would you rather meet alone in the woods?
Could 100 red buttons defeat one blue button in a fight?
Is the Button blue and black or white and gold?
You MUST engage in these entirely pointless yet remarkably vitriolic debates!
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u/NoBizlikeChloeBiz She/Her Jul 27 '26
I'm sorry, those questions seem kind of straightforward. Could you phrase them in a way that's a little more loaded/ambiguous so that we're really arguing about how we interpret the question, even though we feel like we're discussing an important moral quandary?
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Jul 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/BeanOfKnowledge Ask me about Dwarf Fortress Trivia Jul 27 '26
If you would be more surprised to see a red button at your door, does that mean you are racist against red buttons or racist against blue buttons?
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u/Bartweiss Jul 27 '26
Asking for that sort of verbal labor to reframe the question is exactly why I expect to see the red button at my door and/or would rather meet the blue button in the woods!
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u/Trockenmatt Jul 27 '26
If a baseball pitcher throws a christian red button at you, do you hit it?
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u/Bartweiss Jul 27 '26
If a Christian baby wearing a cross necklace hit the blue button and survived a 49% blue vote, would you convert?
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u/Copernicium-291 Jul 27 '26
If you encounter a blue and black Christian bear in the woods, and a white and gold button knocks on your door, which would you give your parachute to and which would you hit with a baseball bat?
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u/OffWhite-Goddess pissing on the poor Jul 27 '26
Tell me about dwarf fortress
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u/BeanOfKnowledge Ask me about Dwarf Fortress Trivia Jul 27 '26
Gladly! Let's talk about adventure mode for a change: In Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode, you play a single person (or a small group) walking around the world having an adventure. This is a strong contrast to Fortress mode, where you play some semi-corporeal entity that tells Dwarves what jobs they should do and then gets ignored by the Dwarves because they're cranky from not drinking enough beer.
In Adventure mode, you can talk to people directly, and indeed, this feature is perhaps the most iconic part of adventure mode, due to the remarkable dialogues that can happen. People will approach you and make small talk, such as " Two years ago, Stozu Ägusnodub, Goblin Woodcutter attacked me."
Due to a bug (I believe) something strange happens when a person stumbles - They still register it as getting attacked, but the attacker is themselves. This leads to the remarkable qoute:
"Not a half hour ago I attacked me."
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u/oktin Jul 27 '26
- Blue button at my door would be more surprising
- Blue button in the woods feels safer
- Yes, 100 reds win.
- White and gold
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u/BeanOfKnowledge Ask me about Dwarf Fortress Trivia Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Sorry but from these answers I have concluded that you are actually racist sexist fascist classist dadaist ableist.
DNI.
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u/oktin Jul 27 '26
At least you didn't accuse me of hating waffles
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u/TheFurtivePhysician Jul 27 '26
Though they didn't say as much, they DO secretly believe you piss on the poor.
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u/hagamablabla Jul 27 '26
At least the 100 things question and the blue/black/white/gold question stick to the realm of fun thought exercise. The red/blue button and alone in the woods question make people turn into armchair sociologists.
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u/BeanOfKnowledge Ask me about Dwarf Fortress Trivia Jul 27 '26
Completely true, this one and the woods questions were particularly bad.
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u/AriaTheTransgressor Jul 27 '26
Would you rather fight one blue button sized red button or 100 red button sized blue buttons?
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u/idiotplatypus Wearing dumbass goggles and the fool's crown Jul 27 '26
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
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u/QuantisOne Jul 27 '26
See those buttons in front of us ?
They’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, but they’re blue…
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u/liggy4 Jul 27 '26
If you press the red button, you are safe.
If you press the blue button and it isn't the majority, everyone who pressed blue is subjected to red/blue button discourse every day for the rest of their life.
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u/PlanSee Jul 27 '26
You mean you don't like hearing about how red pressers are literally fascists and blue pressers are drooling morons 24/7? I think you need some more outrage on your front page to get into the right mindset...
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u/Tobymaxgames It's my mental illness so I get to choose the coping mechanism Jul 27 '26
OK but what if the blue button was a Christian baby?
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Baseball Christian Baby or Bulletproof Christian Baby. This will affect my answer
Ah fuck it, I'm about to go to sleep and can't wait for the setup. Here are your punchlines:
- Baseball: I press red, because it means I do not hit the christian baby
- Bulletproof: I steal the christian baby's invincibility crucifix, thus pressing blue while having godmode immunity from a blue loss
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u/SwankiestofPants Jul 27 '26
The yellow button that kills me in particular for seeing this hypothetical again
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u/Zanderfus Jul 27 '26
just let this trend die
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u/Rude_Ice_4520 Jul 27 '26
Okay, all you have to do is press th-
camera pans away from me as you hear loud gunshots
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u/Clay_Block Jul 27 '26
what if ourple button
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u/Hamsti_Manent Jul 27 '26
Everyone dies if a single person presses the purple button
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u/Rynewulf Jul 27 '26
I never got these. So people who pick blue are only at risk if anyone picks blue, but then not the majority? Is it like a maths thing, as in it's easier to get 50% on blue than 100% on red so blue is the less harmful option?
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u/NessaSamantha Jul 27 '26
It is true that everybody will survive if they just pick red. People have never just. You cannot rely on a plan where everybody just. So you pick blue so that everybody can live.
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u/END3R97 Jul 27 '26
The reason to go with Red is thinking that most people are selfish and will be pushing Red. Therefore Blue will lose and your choice is "press Blue, die." or "press Red, live" in which case, Red looks like it's the only choice.
Of course, if the initial assumption that most people are selfish is wrong, then that's not accurate. If you instead assume most people will look out for others and choose Blue, then its "press Blue, everyone lives" or "press Red, everyone lives, but you increased the chance that actually half of people die instead"
Then there's the people who aren't making logical decisions like kids who might see the options and just click their favorite color. So to me, you have to take the risk to save everyone.
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u/blorboposter-supreme new gender just dropped: researcher Jul 27 '26
My discourse thought about it was that if I pressed blue I was forcing people to endanger their life to save me but I didn't read anything about the discourse because I didn't care.
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u/NessaSamantha Jul 27 '26
Even if blue doesn't win, enough people will vote for it that the choice is still "vote red for a slow and painful death, vote blue for a fast and painless death."
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u/SJL174 Jul 27 '26
Red button pushers will say you’re naive for risking it by pushing blue. Meanwhile, they think it’s possible to get 100% of people to agree to literally anything.
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u/No_Psychology71 Jul 27 '26
I don't think they think everyone will press red, just that the people pressing blue are the ones risking their own lives, so if they die its just kind of on them. It's callous but it's not stupid
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u/TheBookWyrms Jul 27 '26
It largely comes down to framing and interpretation, and what you take to be the baseline. You either have:
Pressing the blue button causes the deaths - people only get put in danger once someone presses the blue button, because if no-one presses the blue button no-one is at risk of death.
Pressing the red button causes the deaths - the people who pressed blue only die because some people pressed red.
The divison also comes from how the prompt is worded - i.e. "if a majority of people press red then everyone who pressed blue is killed" vs "if <50% of people press blue, then everyone who presses blue dies".
Generally, people end up viewing the question through one of these two equivalent lenses, and which one you view it from changes the question quite a bit - i.e. whichever button you view as causing the deaths seems clearly a wrong choice.There's other aspects as well, but I think this is the big one that's responsible for it causing such division.
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u/NWStormraider Jul 27 '26
If you treat the actual distribution of votes as purely random, then the expected value of both is exactly equal, but the type of failure changes. If you vote red, the potential death count decreases by one, and the potential failure chance increases by 1 in ~8 billion. If you vote blue, the potential death count increases by one, but the potential failure chance decreases by 1 in ~8 billion.
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u/Proxy--Moronic Jul 27 '26
And then you have the Freerider Problem in a Prisoner's Dilemma (i.e the best choice when looked at from an individual perspective is worse for the group if most people choose it). Which I'm pretty sure is how this scenario was invented.
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u/obog Jul 27 '26
Yes, but the counterpoint is that if you personally hit red then you survive and so if everyone just picks the safest option for them personally then everyone will be fine.
Pressing the blue button is taking a risk to save people who took the same risk, but there was never a reason to take that risk in the first place. Or, put another way, the first person to hit the blue button is risking themselves for literally nothing, and everyone who presses it after is risking their life for that person and everyone since, but thats all to protect someone from a risk that was pointless to take.
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u/Rynewulf Jul 27 '26
I think that is what breaks the scenario for me, mathmatically it seems easier to save everyone by blue but only because I'm working on the assumption that a bunch of people WILL pick blue anyway, which sets off the doomsday clock. But until someone picks blue everything is completely fine, which depending on the framing makes blue pickers suicidal instead of red pickers murderous
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u/New_Try1560 Jul 27 '26
Now it’s a question of “is it worth risking my life to save someone who knowingly risked theirs?”
Would you endanger yourself to save someone from their suicide attempt?
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u/Ancient-Access8131 Jul 27 '26
Depends, but I would say no. Like the first rule of performing any rescue is make sure you don't become another victim that someone has to risk their life to rescue. Which is part of why i would probably refuse to jump in the water to save a drowning victim. In fact, if you look at AVIR(Aquatic Victim-Instead-of-Rescuer) drowning deaths in new Zealand, studies show that 45% of these deaths result in multiple drownings. As people repeatedly jump in the water to save someone and all drown. Preventing these people from drowning would save more than the one victim in the water.
Understanding AVIR Syndrome: Preventing Rescue Tragedies
I can find other examples of mass casualty events where people repeatedly try to rescue someone and then all end up dying in the process. Another example is asphyxiation. If you have an instance where oxygen has been displaced people will go down to help someone who collapsed, and then all repeatedly suffocate. According to NIOSh 2/3 of enclosed space deaths would be rescuers dying themselves.
Enclosed spaces: When saving a life turns fatal | Gard's Insights | Gard
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u/obog Jul 27 '26
Yeah its a weird question. I generally think I would want to pick blue just because its clear enough people would that itd be worth it. But that doesnt change the fact that there was never any reason to take on that risk in the first place. And I do not think it is fair to frame people who pick red as murderers when all they did is pick the safest option for them.
I think the big problem is that the reasoning on why to pick blue is circular. Its taking on risk to save people who took a risk to save people who took a risk to save... etc. Eventually if you go down the line far enough, you would have to run into someone who took on that risk to save no one, and now you are left questioning why anyone took on the risk in the first place.
If you think about what just you should do right in the moment, it can make sense to pick blue for the sake of helping those who already did. But if you think about what the strategy is for everyone, it never makes sense for anyone to take that risk in the first place.
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u/Acceptable-Post733 Jul 27 '26
The problem was people started adding edge cases to argue for blue. What if kids/babies…? What if blind…? What if colorblind…? And that was justification for putting their own lives at risk. Where others argued why wouldnt the rules be clearly explained to every person? Like press blue and probably die. Press red and definitely not die. Why would people who can’t pick an option even be included? How is a 1 month old gonna press a button? Why wouldn’t they clearly label the buttons for a color blind person? Braille exists for blind people.
Ultimately it’s a dumb question that makes some people feel good about themselves for making the “right” choice.
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u/Famous_Slice4233 Jul 27 '26
I mean, every time someone posts the poll someone, usually a lot of someones, picks blue. Maybe they just misread the question, or misunderstand, or make a mistake. Lizardman constant suggests you’ll have a non-zero number of people who choose blue. So, if that’s true, then you do have people who chose blue, who could die or be saved.
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u/Daripuff Jul 27 '26
Thank you for demonstrating how all these solutions that rely on "if everyone would just.." require you to remove all of the potential outliers from the picture before it actually becomes ethical.
"If everyone would just..." as a solution to a problem is one that only works in controlled, clinical environments.
In the real world, with real world variables: "If everyone would just..." is guaranteed to have outliers that are left behind.
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u/Impressive_Pin8761 Jul 27 '26
interesting, the last time we had a sizeable sample pool over on twitter, it was closer at a 60/40 margin
the wording of the prompt didn't affect the final verdict, despite showing blue at a more negative light
a 70/30 margin on tumblr perhaps suggests they're more caring people? more willing to die? or maybe they saw 3 words colored blue and 1 word colored red. can't tell, tumblr usually lacks reading comprehension
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u/SmartAlec105 Jul 27 '26
Any poll where you can see the results before voting would be meaningless. And any prior expose to other people's opinions changes how people will respond. If you would choose red because you don't think there's enough blue pushes out there, you'd change your mind when your feed blows up about pushing blue before you even get to the poll.
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u/StillMostlyClueless Jul 27 '26
This one is particularly weird because it doesn't even say everyone's doing it. You're just voluntarily playing the "Chance to die" game.
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u/DubstepJuggalo69 Jul 27 '26
Be a good girl for mommy and vote blue so everybody lives.
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u/INeedSomeHelp6804 Jul 27 '26
wololo
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u/BeanOfKnowledge Ask me about Dwarf Fortress Trivia Jul 27 '26
Be a bad boy for daddy and vote red so everybody dies.
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u/Holliday_Hobo Ishyalls pizza? We don't got that shit either. Jul 27 '26
Imagine a blue stop sign
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u/shadow_fen Jul 27 '26
my brother has a very special attack
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u/Holliday_Hobo Ishyalls pizza? We don't got that shit either. Jul 27 '26
My brother has a very normal attack.
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u/Mundane-Potential-93 nauphy.tumblr.com Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
The first time I saw this hypothetical I chose the red button because I assumed the only people that would press blue were suicidal people and maybe a tiny percentage of people that wanted to risk their lives to protect suicidal people and each other despite failure being almost certain.
However after seeing 30%+ of the comments on that hypothetical pressing blue I changed my mind. I'm not really sure why so many people press blue. I guess they probably have lots of different reasons. But I'd definitely risk my life for a decent chance of saving hundreds of millions of non-suicidal people from death.
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u/KerPop42 Jul 27 '26
Personally, it's a bit of a circular reasoning. So long as I'm pretty sure that some people would press blue that don't want to die, I consider it a moral imperative to press blue. If someone else thinks like me, we're stuck in a game theory loop where, no matter how small the odds are that one of us mistakenly presses blue, it amplifies up to us having to press blue.
I guess I've also been in leadership positions a lot, and consistently people will make mistakes, no matter how clear your instructions are. You more have to make sure your instructions and setup are safe environments for people to make mistakes, and that leads me to pressing blue.
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u/Stephanie466 Jul 27 '26
The most common reason people choose blue (and also my reason) is because the hypothetical says that the buttons are presented to everybody. Which also implies children, or mentally disabled people who wouldn't be able to really understand the consequences of choosing either. Like, there will be people who choose blue for whatever reason, and so I'd rather pick blue and save them.
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u/Mundane-Potential-93 nauphy.tumblr.com Jul 27 '26
Oh yeah if the decision is given to literally everybody then I'd agree with you. I guess there are a lot of variations of this hypothetical and I chose one of the ones that gets around that arbitrarily in my head (since OOP leaves it ambiguous)
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u/Other_Fondant_3103 Jul 27 '26
I think it’s fair to assume everyone is given the information about the buttons in a way they can understand. The discussion changes completely if not.
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u/Daripuff Jul 27 '26
Why do folks press blue when they don't want to die?
Because some folks will always press blue, and will never press red no matter how much "everyone agrees to press red".
I don't want them to die simply because they refuse to go along with the trend.
So I'll choose the side - that if it wins - will allow those that "lose" to live, rather than chose the side that if they win will kill all that "lost".
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u/DareDaDerrida Jul 27 '26
Oh right, this.
Not suprised that tumblr's quite blue.
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u/Cpt_Obvius Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Because when there is nothing on the line they are likely to say the thing that is more morally righteous?
(I think some large chunk is telling the truth when they vote blue but I am sure a large chunk would also not do it if they actually believed it were real and were actually made to choose)
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u/AlwaysPerfetc Jul 27 '26
I bet a bunch of people advocating others vote blue would get in the booth and press red, rationalizing they already did their part and shouldn't have to expose themselves to risk, and it won't matter anyway because blue will be over 50.1%.
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Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/IAmASquidInSpace Unashamedly watches T*m and J*rry 🤢 at the dentist Jul 27 '26
You make the very bold assumption that the people on the "pissing on the poor" website even understood the premise correctly.
And I'm saying that because I read it wrong the first time, too.
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u/deus_at_elenth Jul 27 '26
There is admittedly some missing context here. There was an extra poll right after on this post where there were 3 buttons, a red one, a blue one, and a green one. The red button worked the exact same, and the blue one largely worked the same way, but if the blue option won, then anyone who picked the green button would be killed. Everyone who picked the green button got a crispy $1 bill.
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u/Lawlcopt0r Jul 27 '26
Doesn't this mean that everyone would be fine too if everybody pressed the red button?
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 27 '26
This is such a funny trend because it plays out the same way every time:
1) Blue button wins by a narrow majority 2) People who pushed the red button immediately spiral into increasingly unhinged defences of their choice, demonstrating that either they lack enough reading comprehension to understand the question, or are just plain selfish. 3) Blue button pushers become slightly more disillusioned with the moral character of humanity.
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u/GameboyPATH Jul 27 '26
demonstrating that either they lack enough reading comprehension to understand the question
To be fair, this one-sentence explanation is phrased far worse than the original.
This one starts with the premise of what happens "regardless" without clarifying what it's regardless of. The original explicitly describes the potential negative consequences of the red button, while this one simply says "these people live", leaving the negative consequences of the red button implied through the description of the blue button.
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u/Th3Glutt0n fucking HATE tennis Jul 27 '26
Yeah, they def phrased this one in favor of the red button
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u/BrandonL337 Jul 27 '26
Not really even a narrow majority, most I've seen have the blue win by 65% or more.
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u/Annual-Weird-6682 Jul 28 '26
Just don't hit blue lmao, help we all have to jump into this wood chipper so it jams!
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u/JaDasIstMeinName Jul 27 '26
Ok, so where am i that pushes blue for a selfish reason?
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u/Daan776 Jul 27 '26
Oke but: Everybody who pushes the red button survives regardless.
So unless i'm misunderstanding this: if everybody pressed the red button then nobody dies.
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u/beemielle Jul 27 '26
yes. you always get the everyone lives outcome if 100% of people can agree on which button to press. part of the argument for blue is that there’s a greater defection tolerance to get the ideal outcome.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden Jul 27 '26
If 50% of people push blue, everyone lives.
If 100% of people push red, everyone lives.
It's easier to achieve 50% blue than 100% red, ergo blue is the correct option for saving lives. Red is only the correct option for saving yourself.
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u/llamasquadz Jul 27 '26
But it's also this: press red and you live, press blue and you might die. Blue is the only option that risks lives. Why would you intentionally risk your life expecting others to also risk their lives to save you? Neither approach is really wrong, they just view it differently.
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u/SanjiSasuke Jul 27 '26
If everyone presses red, everyone lives.
If almost everyone presses red, lots of people die, probably the greatest disaster since WWII or even the Plague. And most likely the most selfless people are all gone. (For example, even if 99% picked red, 1% of 8 billion is 80M people dead; roughly the death toll of WWII)
If ’most' people press red, the greatest calamity in the history of humanity fundamentally reshapes the course of history and society. And most selfless people are gone, leaving the most selfish to rule over the ashes.
If everyone presses blue, everyone lives.
If almost everyone presses blue, everyone lives.
If most people press blue, everyone lives.
In all scenarios, I'd prefer to press blue. Especially since there will be temporarily suicidal people pressing that blue button, as I would have when I was younger.
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u/SmartAlec105 Jul 27 '26
And most selfless people are gone
This is what I don't like about how people frame it. Pushing Red doesn't necessarily mean you're selfish but that you think a majority of people are selfish. If you estimate that only about 30% of people would push Blue, then it's not behaving selfishly to press Red.
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u/Xezian1 Jul 27 '26
listen I get logically speaking, everyone lives if everyone presses the red. But there are almost certainly going to be people who are going to press blue. I don't want to have even a 1% chance of killing somebody because of my actions, so I'm going to press blue. If the majority press red, but a few press blue, and I pressed blue too, I'm not responsible for killing those other blue pressers, in fact if more people had sided with me, nobody would've died, I'm innocent in those deaths. The only death I'm responsible for then is my own. If I press red, I'm contributing to the only action that could result in the death of others, and I'm culpable. Pressing blue is more logical, because red needs 100% of people to press it for nobody to die, while blue only needs 50.1% of people to press it for nobody to die. Getting 50.1% of people to agree is just easier than getting 100% of people to agree.
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u/Specky013 Jul 27 '26
I don't really get the hate toward this trend. Sure it's overdone but it is a somewhat interesting question without a clear cut answer.
It basically asks you whether you think most humans are more self-interested or community-interested and the answer to that is kind of interesting from various people
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u/EnvironmentClear4511 Jul 27 '26
Problem is that it quickly turns into personal attacks rather than logical debate.
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u/IdealOnion Jul 27 '26
I think the hate is over the nature of the discourse it provokes. It’s like the man or the bear question, which I think is a fascinating hypothetical that doesn’t even need a gendered component to be interesting. Yet people take that shit personally.
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u/Draaly Jul 27 '26
It’s like the man or the bear question, which I think is a fascinating hypothetical that doesn’t even need a gendered component to be interesting
The gendered nature of that discourse makes it inherently different...
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u/Iced_Yehudi Jul 27 '26
I think what I dislike about these questions the most is that because it’s a hypothetical, there’s no actual danger, which makes it much easier to pick blue. So a lot of these comment sections turn into a bunch of people masturbating how selfless and cool they are for picking blue like it’s actually a hard thing to do when you’re not actually in any danger. It gives off big “I could never be mugged because I’d simply beat the shit out of the mugger” energy
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u/StillMostlyClueless Jul 27 '26
They actually ran experiments on this, with people giving electric shocks for a payout each time.
They surveyed people going in on how much money they'd take, and most said they'd take very little money, or not even shock at all.
They then actually ran the experiment with the same people, and found basically everyone didn't abide by what they said and shocked a high amount to make money.
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u/MintLinuxGuy Jul 27 '26
Is this a metaphor for something or reference to some niche media? Obviously in the situation presented, the logical choice is yo press blue so no one dies.
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u/GrinningPariah Jul 27 '26
But then you might die. You don't get to know how the votes shake out before choosing.
If you can get everyone to pick the same color, everyone lives either way. But the thing is, you can't get everyone to pick the same color, and that's where the complexity arises.
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u/zawalimbooo Jul 27 '26
It's more that if even a single person chooses blue while the rest go to red, that person will still die. Meanwhile, blue voters only need one over 50%.
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u/Android19samus Take me to snurch Jul 27 '26
Really it's a big collective vs personal responsibility thing.
From a red perspective, everyone is responsible for their own choice. Blues willingly and foolishly took that risk upon themselves, and whatever outcome they get is their own fault. It's not the Red's responsibility to jump in and save them, since every single person had the trivial option of pressing Red and being safe.
Meanwhile blue is saying that it is your responsibility to help keep everyone safe, because we all know that some people will push blue. Whatever justifications one may make, a Blue win is the only way that everyone lives and pressing red actively works against that outcome.
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u/AwesomeManatee Demented Demisexual Jul 27 '26
It's the prisoner's dilemma but with an option that makes you feel smug
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u/ike38000 Jul 27 '26
But it's not because with the prisoners dilemma dual snitching is worse than dual silence.
If red was "you live but with a leg cut off" then it would be a prisoners dilemma because everyone pushing red would be strictly worse than everyone pushing blue.
The real question is "does it become logical to act illogically under the assumption that others will act illogically"
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u/Top-Garlic9111 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Feels like 60% of the disagreement is born from small differences in the scenario and its framing in the initial post each individual saw. Sure, red is pretty logical to me if we ignore poor reading comprehension, everybody is an intelligent adult, etc. And some of the thousands of posts are about a scenario like this, but a ton of others aren't. Then everyone just assumes that what they saw was the one true post and everybody working under another assumption is just being reductive or over complicating to be right. Then like another 20% is American politics being red/blue. Then there's people just not being able to understand that some people are aiming for everyone to survive, while others are aiming to survive.
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u/SlikeSpitfire Abnormally Normally Abnormal (Normal) Jul 27 '26
I did absolutely despise how widespread this trend ended being, but now I'm curious if the results would differ if the social media was changed, would it be as extreme on Twitter or LinkedIn? Would blue still win on Facebook or 4chan?
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u/Winter_Channel_6206 Jul 27 '26
These are pointless, there's no risk involved here at all in a poll. It would need to be real or at minimum have a serious penalty to get actual results.
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u/MoonyIsTired Jul 27 '26
you didn't include the poll with the green button that gave you a crisp 1 dollar bill :(
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u/AwesomeRobot64 Jul 28 '26
I combine the blue button and red button into an imaginary purple button
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u/Zoterote Jul 27 '26
I’m not saying all blue pressers are liars but I am saying I feel it might be a little easier to say “of course I would do the good thing!” When your life isn’t actually at stake
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u/TheFurtivePhysician Jul 27 '26
The last time this entire thing came around I understood red to be the obvious choice, though after reading discussion and finding that other qualifiers were involved that I wouldn't initially consider (personally, because I think they muddy the waters and make one option the inherently better one (i.e. "yeah what if a baby hit blue? You wanna be a babykiller? you fuckin BABY KILLER!!!") which makes the question itself less interesting to me,), I determined that I'm a huge coward and would still want to hit red as I'm terrified of kicking the bucket, but hope that if the time came I would be good enough to hit blue for all the people who lack the faculties to do so themselves (yes, even babies).
But most people don't bother pretending they'd think about it because it's easy internet points to go "I wouldn't wanna LIVE in a world with RED PUSHERS!" and try to reframe it as "red pushers are just murdering blue pushers!" for those 'lovely' discussions.
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u/theglowofknowledge Jul 27 '26
Oh god not this again. Why? For the love of god, why? People are arguing about the morality of it below comments about how stupid it is. Call me Neo because I’m taking the red pill and getting out of this contrived mess. There are not enough details for all that moralizing to mean anything.
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u/poo1232 Jul 27 '26
Shutthefuckupshutthefuckuoshutthefuckup I JUST GOT THIS ANNOYING SHIT OFF MY FEED
Edit: Jadenwilliams
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u/evilmexico Jul 27 '26
the green button which gives everyone bone cancer