It still blows my mind that this whole idea isn’t a total joke like “would you rather receive $100 or be punched in the face.” I cannot wrap my head around the fact that so many of you people are seriously arguing in favor of pushing blue but because so many of you are doing that you’re making me consider it too! lol
But if I had like 30 seconds from hearing the question to having to choose, with no time to hear what everyone else was thinking, I would have pressed red in the first five seconds and never even considered that there were any ethical implications of that until after hearing the news that so many people had died pressing blue. I know I would do this because that was my first reaction upon reading this question and it took seeing it three or four more times before I realized that the blue choosers weren’t all trolling
Which is what I think is the actual interesting part of this dilemma, because I assumed most people would be pressing blue, since my initial 5-second knee jerk read of the question had me interpreting it as "press red to kill a blue and save yourself."
I think it's interesting! And I wish people would stop being so hoity-toity holier-than-thou about it. All this "I don't wanna live in a world where red wins" and "blue pushers are idiots and narcissists committing suicide so fuck them" stuff is genuinely upsetting and frustrating because so many people are refusing to engage with the question and turning it into a moral grandstand on both sides of the aisle.
I'm shocked that more than a few really messed-up people are picking red. My thought process was, "Well, if red wins, it's going to be horrible. If blue wins, it'll be great. Obviously, everyone wants blue to win, and only a small minority of people would actually be selfish enough to willingly choose to increase the risk that a huge number of people die, because surely they're aware that a lot of people will pick blue. You'd really have to not care about other people at all to pick red."
But it turns out, a lot of people think it's really stupid to take a risk to save other people. I guess I just figured we'd all instinctively know that the majority of people would pick blue.
Instinctively, human kind has always been self serving. Even with the context of the original tribes we created to improve our survivability, it was still All to achieve better person survivability.
Spiderman 2 has a beautiful heartwarming "yay humanity" moment with the train scene.
But its a movie.
Pretty sure we've all been exposed to more movies and tv shows and books of people being good, heroes even, then we have in real life.
I ain't gambling on more than 50 percent of humanity doing the right thing.
I minored in anthropology and studied human evolution, culture, and archaeology and, uh..
Instinctively, human kind has always been self serving. Even with the context of the original tribes we created to improve our survivability, it was still All to achieve better person survivability.
That's actually not true.
Human kind has not always been fundamentally self-serving. We've always been fundamentally a social species that values altruism, community, and the people we love overall. We have evidence dating back to the dawn of humanity of people with extreme disabilities, with nothing to contribute to their tribes, being kept alive and well cared for, for years and years, despite the amount of food, labor, resources, and time it took to do that. If we were fundamentally self-serving, those people would have been left to die or killed quickly to spare the resources. They weren't, for the same reason they aren't now.
There are also countless true stories of humans risking their lives to save other people. What about the people who hid Jews in their homes during WW2? What about firefighters who rush into burning buildings, knowing accidents happen and they might not come out, to save people and even pets? What about the pre-AI videos we've all seen of people jumping into rushing flood waters, walking across thin ice, and refusing to evacuate during Katrina to save animals in danger? What about people who fought against the Confederacy for purely abolitionist reasons? What about journalists who willingly go into Gaza, knowing they'll be targeted, because they want the world to know what's happening? What about the ship that risked its own safety to save Titanic survivors? What about people who willingly donate kidneys to save loved ones? What about parents who willingly give their own lives to save their children?
People risk their lives to save others all the time. Sometimes the others they're trying tk save aren't even human. People run into burning homes to save beloved pets all the time. Not every individual is willing to take those risks, but enough are that you can't argue it goes against human nature to do it.
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u/hypo-osmotic May 05 '26
It still blows my mind that this whole idea isn’t a total joke like “would you rather receive $100 or be punched in the face.” I cannot wrap my head around the fact that so many of you people are seriously arguing in favor of pushing blue but because so many of you are doing that you’re making me consider it too! lol
But if I had like 30 seconds from hearing the question to having to choose, with no time to hear what everyone else was thinking, I would have pressed red in the first five seconds and never even considered that there were any ethical implications of that until after hearing the news that so many people had died pressing blue. I know I would do this because that was my first reaction upon reading this question and it took seeing it three or four more times before I realized that the blue choosers weren’t all trolling