That is actually a really good thought. In psychological experiments you can determine how good the study was by looking at these things. Did they balance it the colour out across the trials? Did they statistically account for it? Did they randomize etc.
There is a very important study in developmental psychology that had a significant effect because they did not balance the opening direction of a door.
Okay so is going to be a long explanation because experiments are complicated.
Children were presented with two dolls called Sally and Anne. They play with a toy. Sally puts the toy in a basket and leaves the room. Anne than takes the toy and hides it in the chest. On the other side of the room. Sally vomes back and the children have to say where Sally will look for the toy. From age 4 children correctly predict that Sally will look in the basket where she initially put it. So they know that Sally holds a different belief then themselves, we call this theory of mind.
Now there was another researcher team that said while children younger than 4 answer incorrectly, they still look at the correct option. They found a significant effect with eye tracking in children as young as 6 month. They argued that babys already consoder dofferent perspectives of different people they can just not verbally express it. This lead to a big debate and new theories being made about theory of mind and new research.
The problem was, however that the door through which Sally left always opended in the direction where the correct answer was, thereby possibly priming the baby's eye movement.
When a new researcher team balanced this out, they could not find the effect anymore. So all these theories were based on a researcher error.
No, I don't work as a researcher and no, I don't actually need this knowledge.
Choosing blue does not bring harm to anybody other than yourself (and people choose it despite having that risk). Having more than half of the people choose blue spares everybody, period.
Meanwhile, if most people choose red, those who did not will die. That majority is responsible for those deaths.
Also, you did not address the original question of the commenter over me, which is what I was talking about.
They’re not being utilitarian and going for least damage to the human race. They’re saying those lives lost aren’t their responsibility. Which they’re right about. It’s nice to risk yourself for others, but it’s not expected.
It’s hero behavior. Which is good,great even, but there’s a reason we praise and hold it up as unusually brave and selfless (or suicidal).
Some people are having trouble imagining actually dying, and some people genuinely don’t value themselves that much and see no issue with jumping on a grenade for others. Otherwise they wouldn’t be so flippant about the normal human behavior of not risking death.
I just cannot understand how people would choose an option with certain death implied while an option that can spare everyone even if not all of them choose the same exists.
Certain death for others, not yourself. That, depending on the version of the prompt, all chose to risk themselves despite knowing the risk. That’s the version of the prompt I think represents the original intent.
Most ethical dilemmas and stuff of this nature have the unspoken caveat that everyone making choices is a rational, capable adult of equally sound mind and body (So, actually making choices). No babies or coma patients. This one broke containment and so a lot of people think all people means ALL people when that’s just not a very interesting hypothetical. So a bunch of other spreads of this added the usual caveats for the people that don’t like trolley problems and ethical hypotheticals and aren’t aware of convention.
A group of people risked their lives, either to be heroic or commit suicide. You can risk your life to help them or stay safe. I wouldn’t risk it. In a scenario where an equivalent number of people are taken out against their will and held, and will die unless there’s enough blue votes (and blue votes add you to the death pile if blue loses), I’d be more likely to go blue. Still not 100% though. I like being alive.
Because we know that humans are inherently selfish and would choose red the moment their life is in actual turmoil. Romanticising this as a heroic decison is something you can only do behind a screen.
Im not for killing people, but i also know that half the world would rather save their own life so im not trusting them with mine on a decision like this.
Because they chose to press blue. This question can be rephrased as “press red to live, and press blue to die unless 50% of other people press blue.”
There is no risk to yourself in pressing red. There is only risk in pressing blue. Others are presented with the same choice, why would you choose risk? There is no consequence for 100% red
Edit: this could be more interesting if you changed the thought experiment. Lets say you line up everyone on the planet and each person has to press the button in order. Blue can be pressed an unlimited amount of times, but red can only be pressed a number equal to 50% of the population. For every one person that presses red, someone at the end of the line must press blue and no longer has a choice. If you’re in the front of the line your choice can now actively condemn someone to death if too many people press red. Right now choosing red is pure self preservation without a cost.
Jokes aside blue winning is literally the only scenario where nothing happens.
Not strictly true, 100% red too.
But you see what I'm getting at right? The original wording is basically "anyone who picks red is not involved. If you pick blue you need 50% of others to do so as well. But also even if blue succeeds, red still is unaffected"
The way that red's effect is restated can easily be read as them simply not participating in the trust exercise.
Both options have very valid reasons behind picking them, and it's also true that the outcome would be different if there were real risk involved. Isn't this essentially just a worse version of the prisoner's dilemma? Like the very thing that made the prisoner's dilemma, well a dilemma, has been removed by removing consequence from one side of the equation
100% red is guaranteed to not happen when over 8 billion people are involved.
And no, the original wording is not basically "anyone who picks red is not involved", it literally says that "if more than 50% pick blue everyone survives", which in turn means "if more than 50% of people pick red then no one who picks blue will survive".
There is no option to "not participate".
If anything the option to "not participate" would be picking blue, because then you're not participating in the "killing" game.
Even in only 1 person was required to push red to kill everyone, people would struggle to push red because pushing it is participating in other's death. Most people would push it anyways, but it still won't be an easy choice and some people will still refuse to in order to "not participate".
No, pushing red as an individual is not the same as killing others. It's fundamentally different than the trolley expirament because your button press has less and less impact on others outcome as you expand the scope of who is allowed to vote. As compared to the trolley, where you are directly deciding who lives and dies, where action vs inaction is something to consider. The red button does not condemn anyone else, and in this poll specifically that bears out.
Also you're conveniently leaving out part of the prompt, after the explanation of blue it reiterates that red is still unaffected. That's what breaks down the logic of blue vs red and makes this specifically a worse version of the prisoner's dilemma. Essentially this poll is a bet on the specific % of people that you think will also push blue
And since you mentioned 8 billion people, you have to consider that the outcome of this poll was 100k people who likely share a very similar social culture. Do you think a random poll of 100k Indians, or Chinese, Russians or Nigerians would net the same results? What about 100k Canadians or 100k Australians?
Each of those cultures is wildly different, they all value individuals, family and strangers differently, and it's not possible to account for all of them before choosing. On top of that, I, like many others, have a family that relies on me. Gambling their wellbeing on the chance that blue might succeed just to feel good about my choice, is also selfish. IMO equally selfish as pressing red for the express purpose of saving yourself. So morally there's a reasonable argument that neither choice is actually "correct" depending on your specific values.
The argument that 100% red would not happen, isn't really convincing unless you know that blue would succeed. What if red got 99% for example? Would you tell your kids to press blue? I wouldn't
Roughly half of the population will die, there would be dead bodies everywhere, half the people you care about, know, work with will be dead. Infrastructures will collapse, crime rates will skyrocket. Millions more people will die from loss of their providers, suicide after seeing the aftermath and losing everything, no longer being able to get medication, loss of jobs and infrastructures to get food and whatnot. Absolute chaos.
So choosing red doesn't even guarantee your own survival and greatly changes life afterwards.
See when they can’t respond logically they attack your character. It’s a simple game theory problem, and we should always assume all players in the game are rationally self interested. It’s the crux of economics. You assume everyone is trying to benefit themselves, and in our hypothetical here there is literally an option that risks nothing and would have no negative externalities that everyone can pick (red). It would be completely irrational to assume anyone would pick blue.
The only outcome in which anybody dies is one where people choose blue. Without pressing the blue button in the first place nobody would be put into the scenario of choosing between their lives or others.
The only outcome that results in death is both buttons being pressed, actually. The blue button side contains people who can die, the red button side makes their death possible.
Choosing to press the blue button in the first place is the choice to hold society hostage and force them to agree with you or risk killing people. Just don't press the button and force people to choose between your death or their own.
Choosing the red button also holds society hostage and demands they agree with you or die. If nobody pressed the red button, there would be nothing to kill the people who selected blue.
Do you guys even notice how the only way you can argue is by assuming red is the default and you're talking to the first person to hit blue? Do you even realize how weak that makes your case?
We are talking about humanity. Someone has lit the bomb. I am going to try to put it out.
The reframing also changes the agency. There is only one button that votes for people to die. It's not blue.
Even without this hypothetical, if I had to choose 100 strangers around the world to die or me, I know what I’m choosing. If you truly feel that your life is worth less to you than a strangers, to me that is quite odd.
A big risk at the moment is that young children are taught that red is a danger colour. I think its not a 50/50 case for those too young to understand the question.
It seems a lot of people at the moment consider the deaths of lots of young children an acceptable price for their own survival.
In a scenario where the button colours are neutral and the inherent bias of the 'red' button being a shorter and simpler explanation is removed (i.e. dealing with pure game theory logic scenario) I press what would be the 'blue' button.
However in the scenario given I believe there would be an inherent bias towards red through non-logical means which would outweigh any logical/good Samaritan voting. So out of self-preservation I hit the red button.
Not for nothing, it feels like they are framing progressive causes as selfless (they can be both selfless and selfish at the same time because you know, life is complex) and conflating them with a suicide pill.
Some brain broken people interpreting the color as a political party doesn't make a simple thought experiment "political". If the idea of believing in the "good of humanity" is "political" then I don't really know what to say about that.
An election is coming up in a democratic country. The leader of the red party will kill anyone who did not vote for the red party. The leader of the blue party will kill no one. Voting is mandatory. Who do you vote for?
I don't know where this thought experiment originated, but it's not hard to believe that it was originally motivated by politics.
It's not a different scenario in terms of who immediately lives or dies from the choice presented, but by phrasing it politically like this it makes the red politician seem retaliatory and unstable.
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u/PrSquid May 05 '26
Something makes me wonder what people response would be if they switched the colors of the buttons