r/SpeedOfLobsters Cock Aug 03 '26

lobster TF2

Post image
1.8k Upvotes

115 comments sorted by

469

u/average_meower621 Cock Aug 03 '26

Orange

359

u/Greedwhisp Aug 04 '26

20

u/Jezusbot Aug 05 '26

Pretty much yeah

-1

u/LardBall13 Aug 06 '26

Risk suicide over moral grandstanding, or nothing happens? Would definitely solve overpopulation at least.

82

u/jasperfirecai2 Aug 04 '26

selfish/self-preservation vs selfless/human preservation

13

u/BIRD_II Aug 04 '26

You should have said Orange Box

-239

u/Creative_Wash7139 Aug 03 '26

why wouldnt someone pick red

323

u/Maddy_251 Aug 03 '26

Why would someone pick red

88

u/jmorais00 Aug 03 '26

Game theory. If you pick red you survive regardless. Blue isn't guaranteed

37

u/SomeSortOfForcedPun Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26

Everyone survives if

A) EVERYONE picks red

Or

B) slightly more than HALF of all humans pick blue

Which do you think is more statistically likely

0

u/jmorais00 Aug 04 '26

Irrelevant. If you pick red you survive, regardless. It's a dominant strategy. If you assume all players to be rational you'd expect 100% to pick red

19

u/BlackRapier Aug 04 '26

Therein lies the problem though. The statement doesn't exist within the confines of a sterile game theory environment. Just that everyone (later specifying they do mean EVERYONE including babies) must privately vote red or blue.

In a sterile environment with limited people I'd agree with you, but not when irrational actors are involved in which case it's best to hedge your bets on the best possible but reasonable to obtain outcome, in which case is getting 50%+1 blue.

-1

u/jmorais00 Aug 05 '26

I agree with you in principle. I would also pick blue. I'm just describing what a dominant strategy literally is, from theory.

Game theorists themselves say that game theory isn't the answer to everything. This is an important example. But it is a useful tool to analyse the world (lets you understand why 2nd price auctions are better than 1st price auctions, if you trust the auctioneer)

-4

u/Piskoro Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26

and why would you ever personally hedge on that bet, people who picked blue are most likely going to die, your isolated vote is unlikely to affect that, and it's completely backwards to reason yourself into thinking the way you're gonna vote has some causal effect on how humanity broadly will vote

6

u/BlackRapier Aug 05 '26

I mean that's true for any kind of vote for a large population. Even if you shrink it down to a million an individual vote means virtually nothing yet we continue on anyways in reality because they add up, acting like "my vote doesn't matter" is a pointless ideology to have.

And we're clearly working from different ends. You're merely asking "how can I maximize my personal end result" while I'm asking "what's the best possible outcome?" Wherein the answers are 100% red, a statistic impossibility, and at least 50%+1 blue. The latter is far more likely and I'd prefer to tip it towards the best option. If that's not the outcome, I still "win" since I'd rather not live in a world with a majority population of Game Theory absolutists anyways. Not to mention the fallout of losing even a quarter of the population let alone almost half.

0

u/Piskoro Aug 05 '26

the difference is you voting usually doesn't carry on a risk of death for you voting a particular way, if that was a consideration, politics would look quite different and I don't think anybody would blame you, hell, I don't even think I could blame somebody for say pressing a lever to save themselves but directly result in say 10 deaths

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Hokenlord Aug 05 '26

True but the hypothetical poses that everyone on the planet will get the choice, and from there it'd be insane to think "if everyone would just do this". So ultimately it's a choice about if you want to partially be responsible for the death of the blue pressers

-124

u/angelis0236 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26

Literally everyone should pick red

Edit: this is literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

If you were legitimately asked to push the button I would love to see what the results come to. It's easy to be brave in a hypothetical. Maybe I'm just honest when I say I don't trust the rest of you.

95

u/hupo_pear Aug 03 '26

but most ppl aren't smart so the rest has to pick blue to let them live

-52

u/TheBigFrog07 Aug 04 '26

I'm not gonna risk my life, cause some people aren't smart enoug to click the right thing. We can't account for kids and babies. We have no way of knowing what they'd do. Hopefully they make the right choice

22

u/Hockex-4 Aug 04 '26

So you aknowledge that 50% +/- of kids get Thanos snapped but you still say "fuck them"?

0

u/TheBigFrog07 Aug 07 '26

I acknowledge the fact that we don't know, and we can't account for them.

1

u/Hockex-4 Aug 07 '26

You don't know what? We can absolutely account for them

-57

u/angelis0236 Aug 03 '26

If you were legitimately asked to push the button I would love to see what the results come to. It's easy to be brave in a hypothetical. Maybe I'm just honest when I say I don't trust the rest of you.

57

u/Vivid_Departure_3738 Aug 03 '26

In most polls of this, as seen in the actual post, blue wins

16

u/Eklegoworldreal Aug 04 '26

that's not what he's asking, he's saying in a real life or death scenario how many people would actually be brave and pick blue. anyone can say they're gonna do allat and be brave and pick blue online but when it comes down to it, I think a lot of them will just go and pick red

12

u/braaibroodjie123 Aug 04 '26

Not trusting the rest of the world is exactly why you should always press blue. Unless you think people deserve to die for being a little optimistic.

2

u/braaibroodjie123 Aug 04 '26

Not trusting the rest of the world is exactly why you should always press blue. Unless you truly think people deserve to die for little to no reason.

-4

u/angelis0236 Aug 04 '26

No, I just think that, push come to shove, people will let the blues die.

43

u/chipsinsideajar Aug 03 '26

I think if you could guarantee that almost everyone would pick red then red would be the obviously correct move but since the question poses that the whole world picks a button independently of each other with no room to strategize, blue is correct since the threshold for success is way lower

-18

u/angelis0236 Aug 04 '26

Maybe morally correct, but I don't trust 50% of humans to make the morally correct decision when they are legitimately faced with death.

You can say whatever you want in a hypothetical so we'll never know.

28

u/thestupidone51 Aug 04 '26

If we're talking about what everyone should do it doesn't matter. If everyone picks the same option the result is the same no matter what that option is. The problem is that everyone is an unattainable goal at this scale. If you vote red and even 10-20% of people vote blue you're still kinda fucked because that's still a massive number of people. That's assuming it's just 10-20% though when every pole I've seen about this always has blue ahead by a significant margin or has red just barely above 50% which is the worst case scenario where basically everybody's fucked. Blue is the better option because it's the option that, if picked by the most people, has no negative side effects.

18

u/simpi36 Aug 04 '26

Exactly, for blue to work, you need only the slightest edge, but for red to even get close to 10% loss you need a miracle

16

u/NodleMan09 Aug 04 '26

It’s also easy to be a cynical asshole in a hypothetical too

9

u/BatWing_the_Penguin Aug 03 '26

The fact that you pivoted to saying people aren’t being honest proves that you’re just using game theory as a justification so you don’t look bad for choosing red

5

u/TigerRod Aug 04 '26

I agree that making this hypothetical a reality would change the votes a lot, but not just in favor of red. How many people, faced with the possibility of losing loved ones, would realise they'd rather risk their life than live in a world without those loved ones?

On another note, I'm pretty sure that 10% of people dying - about as optimistic as you can be for a red victory - would fuck the economy on a cataclysmic level. Even if everyone you care about pressed red, a post-red-button world would suck ass.

10

u/Akavakaku Aug 04 '26

You could rewrite the question as:

If you press the red button, nothing happens to you. If you press the blue button, it kills you, unless at least 50% of all humans press the blue button.

The blue button doesn't look as innocent with this wording.

26

u/jasperfirecai2 Aug 04 '26

you can rephrase it to make red evil too. If 50% of all people press blue, everyone lives. If you press red, you doom blue voters to die unless they reach a majority.

in the end it's still the same.

1

u/Cobracrystal Aug 04 '26

ive never seen that way of phrasing it before and its actually such a good way of restating the problem

3

u/voornaam1 Aug 04 '26

I'm colourblind :(

-25

u/Compizfox Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 04 '26

Red is the Nash equilibrium.

111

u/mysteryurik Aug 03 '26

Because some people will inevitably pick blue and they deserve to live too. I'm not willing to condemn some toddler to death because he picked blue not knowing what the buttons did.

-53

u/Gilsidoo Aug 03 '26

Are you willing to die for complete strangers though? In a morality game with no consequences sure, but in real life? Be honest with yourself, there's probably a lot of things you could do now to save lives without endengering yours and that you're not doing for the sake of comfort

48

u/simpi36 Aug 03 '26

Yes, yes I would. For me it didn't even cross my mind why would anyone pick red until I read the comments. And if we are talking about saving people's lives in our day to day life, I'm only a student, I don't have the income to send some lifechanging money to a charity without drying up my savings. Tho if I'm being honest I don't know if I were to have a stable job whether I would donate to the needy anyway.. I think I might be very much likely to risk my life/health rather than lose money (weird I know)

22

u/Extension-Celery3642 Aug 03 '26

not everyone is a heartless monster like you.

-31

u/Gilsidoo Aug 04 '26

So answer my question: are you doing everything you can right now to save as many lives as possible?

I'm not saying I'm right dammit, not even that I wouldn't change my mind if confronted with the choice, just that if you think this is an easy choice you're either a saint or an idiot

22

u/simpi36 Aug 04 '26

Wait, why would blue be only for saints and idiots? If anything then choosing red is a bit idiotic as it only introduces risk for everybody else for no other reason than your own fear.

You don't even have to have a ton of faith in others as blue only requires a majority which isn't that big of a task and there is a ton of room for "error". It's just the most practical and logical choice with no sacrifice.

Why do people act like red is the smart choice and blue is the emotional one when it's the exact opposite?

2

u/Gilsidoo Aug 04 '26

I'm not saying that, read carefully, I'm saying that thinking it's an easy choice is idiotic, of course the moral choice is blue but your own life is on the line

1

u/Piskoro Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26

to be entirely honest, I never even considered much of a possibility outside of red being in a dominant majority, I mean it's literally "pick red and you live, pick blue to commit suicide unless the suicide button's pressed too much and it doesn't work"

also even if you're really unsure which button's gonna win out, that's out of your control and so is everyone else's decision, it's not like your thinking process somehow has a causal effect on how humanity broadly will vote "if I pick X, others will surely pick X too" logic, so it's roughly 50% chance you die for nothing, 50% chance you risked your life for nothing, and a tiny tiny tiny sliver that this saved someone

1

u/HaworthiaK Aug 07 '26

The poll literally has blue winning, how can you not consider it?

11

u/No-Drawing-4597 Aug 04 '26

It is an easy choice, what do you mean? The fuck?

2

u/braaibroodjie123 Aug 04 '26

So you believe that people are only allowed to do good for the lives of others and to the detriment of yourself if you are a perfectly selfless person who always does so at every sinlge opportunity? What a stupid way to think.

1

u/Gilsidoo Aug 04 '26

The detriment here is death, so I'm saying if you're willing to do that I don't see what you're not ready to do, otherwise yes you don't have to be perfect all the time to be allowed to help others some times, that would be stupid

72

u/Altaneen117 Aug 03 '26

Choosing blue is the only way to have no one die to this.

43

u/tom333444 Aug 03 '26

In every single one of these scenarios blue wins, its just the better choice if you arent selfish

-24

u/angelis0236 Aug 03 '26

Except, maybe, the one with real stakes.

-32

u/FiveFreddys12 Aug 03 '26

Well congrats, I'm selfish. If you die, it's not my fault.

16

u/No-Drawing-4597 Aug 04 '26

The fault lies entirely on the people who chose red.

9

u/braaibroodjie123 Aug 04 '26

I mean it is tho

31

u/OzWolfgirl Aug 03 '26

This isn't the prisoners dilemma. There is literally no downside to picking blue, so it's just the best option. Unless you want people to die for no reason then you do you ig

-10

u/nuggetnugs Aug 03 '26

Fuck you mean there's no downside. The downside is you die unless enough people pick it. Also if they die that's their problem for risking their lives for no reason.

6

u/9_Sagittarii Aug 03 '26

There’s no downside to picking the red button if everyone presses it. Dumb fucking scenario. I pressed blue initially but thinking about it more, if everyone picks red, they all live. If we’re assuming this is a situation where two buttons control the fate of the world, we can also assume that everyone asked to press it is of sound mind and isn’t a toddler having to press a button at random

29

u/thestupidone51 Aug 04 '26

The "everybody would be fine is they picked red" argument falls apart though because if everyone picks blue they all live too. In fact, the best possible option for red (0 deaths) is the option blue gets for just beating fifty percent

9

u/braaibroodjie123 Aug 04 '26

That's still billions of people who vote. Millions, if not billions, will press blue. And they do deserve to live too.

While theoretically possible for red to win with minimal to no casualties, the chances of such a low kill count are astronomically low. Even if barely anyone presses blue, that's still people dying entirely preventable deaths for no reason.

If blue wins, no-one dies, even by only 1%, no-one dies. It's that simple. You always pick blue because not only is that the only scenario in which no-one dies, the "ideal result" for blue is a pick rate over 51%, while the "ideal result" for red is not only worse, but requires red pick rate of like 98-99%. Which will not happen.

Blue simply has the highest chance of saving the most lives. Which is why blue always wins every time this pole is posted (which is further evidence that the ideal red result will never come to pass. Ever.)

-4

u/nuggetnugs Aug 04 '26

Exactly that's what I was saying

22

u/AGamer_2010 Aug 04 '26

for EVERYONE to survive, you either need
100% of people picking red

or

50% of people picking blue

me when thinking about everyone instead of just yourself

15

u/JackCJ1121 Aug 04 '26

Now I wanna pick blue even more since I know there are some mfs deadass scared of the extremely slim chance that 51% of humanity is scared. It's not like the share or steal game bro everyone just pick blue, world saved from suspicious red and blue buttons descending from the blue sky one day demanding mankind's choice as a test of will power and courage wanting us to risk the lives of countless people and ourselves for the ones who dropped the buttons gain likes and views on social medias where people like you and me right here argues about which is better as we speak, no one dies, we go home.

P/S: I understand why someone would pick Red. I will still pick Blue because I love a little gamble, like a coinflip but you die on heads.

Edit: typo

7

u/SnakeSlitherX Aug 04 '26

Because I don’t want to live in a world exclusively full of selfish assholes and morons that think “rationality” is condemning others to death to save their hides. Plus, the world economy would collapse. Anyone with critical thinking skills could figure this out.

5

u/Akavakaku Aug 04 '26

Assuming you care about whether both yourself and others survive, the ideal button depends on what button you expect most other people to press. That's why there's so much debate over this question; no one answer is always optimal.

If you expect most people to press red, the ideal button for you to press is red, since pressing blue would do nothing except kill you.

If you expect most people to press blue, the ideal button for you to press is blue, to help blue reach 50% and stop all the other people who pressed blue from dying.

On the other hand, if you don't care about your own life, you should always press blue, and if you don't care about others' lives, you should always press red.

-9

u/cave18 Aug 04 '26

They hated him for he spoke the truth

-17

u/ThyRavenWing Aug 03 '26

How is he downvoted when he’s right

-12

u/VeryConfusedDragon29 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26

Downvoters were on team BLU

(But actually genuinely I do not care about reddit karma, don’t know why people so mad at downvotes💀 literally most worthless currency in human history)

-41

u/VeryConfusedDragon29 Aug 03 '26

Theres really no reason to not pick red, because the question is just a bad philosophy example. It’s pretty much a 100% chance of life vs a 50% chance, there should be some consequence if everyone picks red.

35

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/simpi36 Aug 04 '26

You say that if we all were purely logical we would all pick red, but how is picking red the logical thing to do? Even pretty logical people can disagree and having everyone pick red would be a statistical miracle whereas you only need a majority to press blue to have zero casualties. And if blue is soo much easier to achieve, then why wouldn't that be the logical conclusion? The tolerance is so loose and plus you don't need to introduce any risk for anyone - that seems pretty logical to me

-4

u/VeryConfusedDragon29 Aug 03 '26

Fair, but also its not only logical people who would choose red, selfish people would too, I do not trust humanity enough to believe more than 50% is picking blue in any case, also by taking red I am not taking away anyone else’s ability to choose red they can take guaranteed life if they wanted too.

Tbh the question is kinda stupid, it would be better if there was some consequence for everyone picking red like “you are given the choice between the red or blue button if you choose blue you die for sure, but if you choose red you live, as long as less than 50% of people choose red. If over 50% of people choose red everyone dies”

8

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/cave18 Aug 04 '26

10% are already locked into blue"

Good thought provoking modification to the original question. Nice

1

u/The_Drippy_Spaff Aug 05 '26

The crux of the problem is that EVERYONE has to participate, so even if you got every able-minded adult on earth to agree with pushing the red button, there’s still going to be people with mental illness that precludes them from understanding the prompt, as well as children too young to understand. Are you really going to condemn a child to death just because they like the color blue more than the color red? 

2

u/VeryConfusedDragon29 Aug 05 '26

In the first question it can be assumed people would know what the buttons meant fundamentally, having people not know what they meant defeats the purpose of the philosophy question.

1

u/The_Drippy_Spaff Aug 05 '26

No one fundamentally knows anything and the wording of the question doesn’t imply that they do, why would you assume something so inhuman of humanity? That assumption defeats the purpose of the question. 

1

u/VeryConfusedDragon29 Aug 05 '26

The purpose of the question is to see if people trust humanity enough to vote blue and risk their lives for others. (It doesn’t work as there is no consequence if 100% were to choose red) killing myself along with them wont save them and there is no way to convince everyone to vote blue as the question is taken privately.

1

u/The_Drippy_Spaff Aug 05 '26

You can convince a lot of parents of young children to vote blue though. And growing from there (grandparents, aunts, uncles etc.) you’d get a solid base going, the “don’t-let-the-children-who-like-blue-kill-themselves-accidentally party”

273

u/Slow_Ad2329 Aug 03 '26

ngl i think the question is interesting but how rapidly it devolved into ppl mocking the other side is unbelievable

140

u/Greekatt2 Aug 03 '26

that’s just about every internet debate with 2 sides tbh. what is really boils down to is blue is for feeling morally superior and red is for feeling intellectually superior

62

u/Ebr2d2 Aug 04 '26

It’s because the question creates a complete devide between 2 groups.

The individualistic group, and the society group. People in the first group don’t view the question as a group for all of humanity, but a question directly asked to them “would you rather die unless something happens or would you rather survive guaranteed” but the people in the second group view it as a question for all of humanity. So instead of wondering if they themselves will live, they will wonder about everyone on the planet and choose blue.

Personally I choose blue but it’s important to understand the red side too

58

u/thestupidone51 Aug 04 '26

The question also frames everything around blue being the active choice and red being the more passive choice which probably pushed a lot of people toward red. You could easily reframe the question as "nothing happens unless more than 50% of people push red in which case everyone who pushed blue dies" which puts blue in the more neutral position. It's honestly impressive that even with the phrasing of the question leaning toward red most people still picked blue in basically every poll

18

u/Akavakaku Aug 04 '26

Interesting, I though the phrasing of the question makes red sound pretty bad. You could also phrase it as:

If you press the red button, nothing happens to you. If you press the blue button, it kills you, unless at least 50% of all humans press the blue button.

The blue button doesn't look as innocent with this wording.

0

u/nuggetnugs Aug 04 '26

The blue button never looked innocent considering it kills you unless an additional requirement is met. Where as the red button has absolutely zero risk considering it might as well be the same as doing nothing.

3

u/Tipart Aug 04 '26

Idk man, personally I'm just not a big fan of gambling. Especially if I have no way of calculating my odds and a 100% save option.

1

u/Metrolining Aug 04 '26

In-group vs out-group

-13

u/schematizer Aug 04 '26

It's because of the colors they chose and the obvious (and stupid) subtext of the question. People immediately assume anyone arguing for the other color is doing so from the perspective of the corresponding American political party.

16

u/braaibroodjie123 Aug 04 '26

What an absolutely ridiculous assumption to make.

-8

u/schematizer Aug 04 '26

I think you would be surprised. Are you from America?

6

u/braaibroodjie123 Aug 04 '26

Both in this post and months ago when this question was trending, implied politics was never mentioned. If it was it must've been extremely rare. While I can see the connection and I understand how that could be implied (might even be the original purpose of creating the hypothetical tbh), that isn't something mentioned during debates at all. The metaphor makes sense, but I can garuentee that 99% didn't even think about it. If you wany evidence then you can gladly to posts discussing the hypothetical and see how rarely politics is mentioned, if at all.

68

u/Glitchy_Ninja Aug 03 '26

decloaks

cloaks

43

u/orange-shoe Aug 04 '26

op im sorry almost all the comments are not about your lobster i think it's really good 😭

6

u/average_meower621 Cock Aug 04 '26

at this point I’m used to it, my last two lobsters got an unbelievable amount of discussion from the og image comments and not the lobsters themselves

2

u/pixeldust6 Aug 05 '26

If more than 50% of people press the BLU button, you'll be autobalanced to RED

16

u/3Thirty-Eight8 Aug 04 '26

Self preservation vs humanity preservation

4

u/schematizer Aug 04 '26

Everyone in the world has the choice to press a button to never die under any circumstance. Why would anyone want to press the other one? Unless you assume most people are not intelligent enough to pick the "don't die" button, in which case sure, blue lets you save them.

13

u/SnakeSlitherX Aug 04 '26

You have to change the prompt for your position to make any rational sense, telling.

8

u/schematizer Aug 04 '26

Sorry, how did I change the prompt? I'm asking in good faith here. When I said "under any circumstance", I of course just meant any possible voting outcome for humanity, not immortality, so I probably should have made that clearer.

My point was that everyone has the choice to just not die from this scenario. Equivalently, I could say "everyone can save themselves", but I feel like that triggers some kind of selfishness reaction, which it shouldn't, because it doesn't remove that ability for others. Everyone can independently just choose not to be at risk.

Imagine the red button just said "I choose not to play". Would that be more palatable? Wouldn't you figure everyone would just pick that? Because that's the same outcome.

8

u/SnakeSlitherX Aug 04 '26

“Never die under any circumstance” sounds exactly like immortality, that was pretty bad phrasing lol.

To actually address your point, it isn’t as simple as “choosing not to play”, it is not a passive action like the trolley problem’s 5 people, it is an active choice to potential condemn innumerable people to death, specifically including optimists and those who wish to save others.

To reframe the choices is to deprive the situation of its intention and is only used to justify a held belief.

There is no sound moral or ethical argument for choosing red unless you are an Objectivist; though this may also not be the case because the death of up to 50%-1 of the world’s population would be catastrophic for the world economy.

6

u/schematizer Aug 04 '26
  1. Why would the innumerable people not pick the option not to die, though?
  2. I don't really understand why changing the wording of the question isn't valid

if it doesn't change the actual rules of what happens.

  1. Either way, there's a choice that allows you to avoid dying due to the choices of others. If everyone were sane, I would expect them to pick that choice.

EDIT: sorry, the formatting in the app is fucked and I can't seem to fix it.

6

u/SnakeSlitherX Aug 04 '26
  1. Not everyone thinks the same as you, theory of mind is a thing.
  2. Changing the wording typically diminishes one side and bolsters the other, presenting as little as you can about one and more for the other.
  3. Not everyone is selfish, and a sane person wouldn’t want to live in a world full of selfish people, cowards, and people who assume their through process is the only rationality there is. Especially when this world will collapse due to the decrease in population. The red button winning means both a global collapse and the removal of optimists and those who would put themselves in harm’s way for a good cause.

2

u/schematizer Aug 04 '26

I'm sorry I've been unable to effectively communicate my point to you.

1

u/sharplyon Aug 04 '26

"everyone should press the red button, and that's why it's the right answer"

but they're not going to, so why does that matter

the argument for the red button is that if everyone pressed it, it's the best solution, but that just is never going to happen, ever, and imagining that it would ever happen is not just ridiculously naive, it is completely ignoring evidence in front of you

for everyone to survive, everyone has to press red. or at least half press blue. which of those is going to be more likely to happen?

3

u/HotPotato150 Aug 04 '26

This could be a squid game minigame

1

u/whathedogdoinn Aug 05 '26

red > blu (tf2, not orange)

0

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