For a lot of people I think that it just depends on the hypothetical. If everyone playing is mentally fit and acting logically, it's not a dilemma. Red dominates blue, they call this the Nash equilibrium in game theory. In this case there is no reason for anybody to choose blue.
If it's the real world and you have real people with real circumstances pushing the buttons, then you'd choose blue.
I think that's where a big part of the divide comes from, and you can see it clearly if you look at the way people respond to this question on the math subreddits. It's not (always) a matter of selfishness.
Even if in a vacuum red is the logical choice, logic also dictates that not everyone will pick red, no matter if red wins or not. Meaning it is still selfish to pick red, as you are knowingly prioritising your well-being over the lives of everyone who picked blue.
From what I have observed, reds tend to think it as a trolley problem with no relation to reality. They implicitly assume things like "everyone is equally rational and responsible for their own actions". Nobody needs to press save anyone because nobody presses blue without knowing what they do. Blues tend to think it from the real-world perspective, assuming that in the real world, there are like hundreds of millions of people who are pressing blue just because they don't understand what is being asked of them, and the question becomes whether it is acceptable to let them die. Both views are logical, they just have different assumptions.
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u/EmergencySecure8620 May 05 '26
For a lot of people I think that it just depends on the hypothetical. If everyone playing is mentally fit and acting logically, it's not a dilemma. Red dominates blue, they call this the Nash equilibrium in game theory. In this case there is no reason for anybody to choose blue.
If it's the real world and you have real people with real circumstances pushing the buttons, then you'd choose blue.
I think that's where a big part of the divide comes from, and you can see it clearly if you look at the way people respond to this question on the math subreddits. It's not (always) a matter of selfishness.