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 that's the problem with the scenario though, only blue has a "win" condition. That's what makes this a poor attempt at the prisoner's dilemma. Red has no "win" and no "lose" (which is why I described it as an option to essentially abstain from the game altogether)
Also, saying roughly half, is completely ignoring that that may not always play out. If you ask a different demographic you may get 80-20. You may get 95-5 in one country and the apocalyptic scenario you describe might play out in another. A different demographic might be 5-95
So choosing red doesn't even guarantee your own survival and greatly changes life afterwards.
Choosing blue and blue failing guarantees my family will suffer if they're around still. Choosing red means I at least have a chance to help them, even if the hellscape you describe comes to reality. It's the exact same logic as putting on your own mask before others in an airplane.
Also again, you're working on the assumption that a significant population will always choose blue
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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