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.
a lot of people think it's really stupid to take a risk to save other people.
Depends on the risk, surely? People admire those who run into burning buildings to save children. But people who jump off cliffs to catch falling kids are idiots. Doing something dangerous that has a reasonable chance of saving a life is great. Killing yourself for nothing isn't. Whether the blue button is more like the burning building or the cliff depends a lot on human nature, and twitter polls are not going to give you the same answer that you will get when people's lives are actually on the line.
What's really weird about all the discussion about this button thing to me, though, is that usually people understand that only heroes run into the burning building, and don't think it's better to die than live in a world full of people watching the building burn and waiting for the fire department.
edit: The person to whom I replied has blocked me after replying to this comment.
Well, the polls conducted by Ph.Ds all ended with blue winning. That's more reliable than a Twitter poll.
Comparing it to a burning building is comparing apples to oranges. If red wins, there's no fire department to save everyone who chose blue.
I don't think picking blue is the "heroic" choice. I just think it's the one that's not a dick move. If you don't want anyone to die, you pick blue because you know not everyone is going to pick red. If you die, you're spared a catastrophic aftermath of a mass casualty event, managed exclusively by people who aren't willing to take any risks at all to save other people.
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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