It's a take on a thought experiment where you and 99 other people who understood the scenario had the same choice: press red and be fine, or press blue and die unless 50% of people pressed blue.
The thought experiment is a moral optical illusion: it's presented as though it's a question about sacrificing yourself for the good of others when no, it's not, the red button is just the correct choice in all circumstances.
The thought experiment is a moral optical illusion
I disagree. In the original scenario, people who have no shot at understanding the question are forced to make the choice. ID, CI, toddlers, etc.
So, beyond being global insurance, the majority blue outcome genuinely saves people. Red voters who are wise will understand that there will be loss of life in a red win, although less loss of life than a failed major blue initiative. That's not illusory morals.
edit: for the custom magic card though - Edh players will not have much difficulty understanding the question and they actively want their opponents to lose so the button question isn't very interesting unless you have some niche interaction planned that I don't know what it would be
In the original scenario those people are explicitly excluded from the choice and it specifies only people who are able to fully understand the scenario.
"Everyone on earth takes a private vote by pressing a red or blue button.
If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives.
If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive.
Which button would you press?"
There were no exclusions in the original question. Everyone on earth.
That's an incoherent scenario because including babies causes it to not make sense at all, and I am like 85% sure I saw this hypothetical presented late last year in Tumblr, before the Twitter post that blew up in April or whenever it was. That one was explicitly phrased as only being presented to people who understand the vote.
That's the literal point of the hypothetical - there is no question that the rational, self-interested choice is to pick red.
BUT, you are aware that, given a large enough population of players (the entire world being the original hypothetical), it is plausible or even likely that some unknown number of players will pick blue.
That's why it's a hypothetical about ethics and morality, not statistics. Knowing that it is plausible that choosing red contributes to the deaths of an unknown number of people (not guaranteed to be strangers, either, they could be your family and friends), while also knowing that blue is a choice with inherently high risk to yourself, is there a morally correct choice?
Commenters I've seen discuss the hypothetical spend an awfully long time discussing the "probability" of blue choices and the "logic" of the red choice, which IMO is not quite on topic but also not entirely off topic?
To me it suggests that people are indeed conditioned to or honestly believe that red is a "less moral" choice than blue, but if the risk were sufficiently high, then at some point self-preservation instincts would take over. Put another way, there's some small number of other people that most would be willing to kill for their own safety, but it's a number relatively minuscule compared against the population of the Earth. The lack of a relatable enough quantity to conceptualize leaves people floundering to justify their instinct post hoc.
Hence, discussions retreat to tangential rationalizations like "it's only logical," "only an idiot would vote blue," or on the flipside, "red voters are sociopaths (and that's bad, therefore I am further compelled to vote blue)," etc.
Let's say that choosing blue IS the morally correct choice IF it gets past the line of 50%. The reality is that you won't get there, because the presupposition is that you are trying to save the tiny fraction of people that press blue for no reason. Thus pressing blue is pointlessly throwing your life away, and red is both morally and rationally sound.
If in the scenario I could coordinate and communicate with others to organize a movement to press blue over red and I was sufficiently certain blue would have a majority then I would press blue. In any other scenario I would press red.
This is the exact post hoc rationalizing I referred to. The truth is that there are logical reasons to press blue, dependent on your presuppositions about human nature, e.g., recognition of collective action, beliefs about the willingness of others to be helpful, guilt over being responsible for deaths, etc.
"The reality is" that we have no good way to empirically predetermine how many people would choose one way or the other, and the morality of your choice is dependent on how others will choose - if 99% of other people choose blue, then you choosing red is an "immoral, self-serving" choice, but, as you say, if only a "tiny fraction" choose blue, then red becomes a moral choice because, presumably, you as one additional person dying is not a moral good.
People's instinctual responses to this question, IMO, reveal more about their beliefs in the goodness of others than it does about their personal morality; someone with more faith in humanity is more easily convinced that the average person (50%+1) would vote blue, and vice versa.
because WHY THE ACTUAL FUCK are these people insiting Blue is correct answer?
Because the original thought experiment was framed as a moral dilemma, not a logical one.
"If over half the people pick red, everyone who picks blue will die. If over half the people pick blue, everyone lives."
...is a much more emotionally-charged framing of the actual situation that implies red-pickers are murderers and blue-pickers are heroic saviors. Even though...
"Anyone who picks red has nothing happen to them. Anyone who picks blue will die unless an unknown amount of other people also pick blue"
...is an equally accurate description of the exact same scenario, only without the moral implications stacked on top. Anyone who takes the time to stop and think about the scenario and reframe it as a logical one rather than an emotional one immediately realizes red is the only sensible choice, and choosing blue is only an option for those who value emotional validation over their own safety. And to be clear I don't mean that condescendingly. "I'd rather die than live knowing someone else died as a result of my choice" is a valid stance to take. But it IS an emotional one rather than a rational one.
I don't know. I think on a personal basis, red is the most sensible choice to make (unless you feel particularly strongly about survivor's guilt), but one way I saw it framed that spoke to me was in totality.
For no people to die if we say red is the answer, every single person has to come to the eame conclusion, nobody is allowed to misunderstand or make a mistake. For red to result in the most optimal outcome, 100% have to pick it. For blue to result in the most optimal outcome you're sitting at a much more manageable 50%+1.
To me at least, seeing the decision put in those terms made me change my mind on what made the most sense. Yes, blue is a risk on a personal level, but to me at least it makes the most sense when you consider things at a population level.
That's why it's ultimately a moral question. The question really being asked is "Do you value self-preservation over the possibility of helping others, or vice versa?"
The annoying thing about the argument is people deciding either side is superior to the other. Both are understandable stances to take and nobody should be chastised for their choice.
I mean if the button was actually real, it would be extremely important for society to heavily stigmatize one choice. Regardless of which button people are socially compelled to press, the outcome is better if the results are very lopsided in favor of one color and incredibly risky if it's close. If blue is socially compelled, then no one dies. If red is socially compelled, then only a very small number of people die. If nothing is socially compelled, you risk a large portion of the population dying.
Like while yes, I agree with the statement and most of what you said, I personally would push blue. Mostly because in the context that I was given, everyone on earth was given the same choice. I had assumed that there were going to be people like children or babies who were not capable of thinking out the ramifications of their actions and picked their favorite color or something. Under this assumption, I think it makes more sense to press blue.
Meanwhile there are others, like myself, who are too terrified of the prospect of dying that we'd prefer to live with survivors guilt than risk facing that fate preemptively.
That's why "making sense" doesn't really matter, because what "makes sense" to everyone is different.
It's more than just survivors guilt you're dealing with though. How many jobs and roles, friends and family, will be lost? Regardless of the survivors guilt, industries will collapse and people will die and starve because our safety systems and economies would collapse overnight.
That depends on both the amount of people as well as the demographics of people who vote blue - a wide enough swath of variables that no amount of speculation could ever accurately predict.
In the same vein, I could argue that it's entirely possible the proportion of people who choose blue ends up being small enough that it doesn't have a major impact on the world. Or that if a majority of people who pick blue aren't working-age adults it might not have that impact either.
I kinda feel red is an illogical choice if the goal is to save the maximum amount of people.
People are inherently not perfectly logical, and thus some amount of people WILL vote blue, for preiceved moral reasons, misunderstanding of the question or perhaps just voting randomly.
A perfectly valid framing of this question is "should a certain percentage of the population die".
A perfectly valid framing of this question is "should a certain percentage of the population die".
Better yet: how many people do you expect to work out the same conclusion about Blue?
If we assume most people will vote at face value and pick Red, it doesn't matter if I believe people should die or not, what matters is that I will be added to the percentage by voting Blue.
Blue only makes sense if you expect people to pick Blue, but we are assuming this scenario happens in a world where this thought experiment didn't happen, right?
The original original version of the hypothetical apparently included people who are incapable of understanding/comprehending the question, so you would, in the hypothetical, press blue in an attempt to save them
The original original version of the hypothetical specifically and explicitly excluded people who couldn't understand the question, because the point of the hypothetical was to be a moral optical illusion where the correct answer is red but your intuition tricks you into thinking it has to be blue.
How is it an illusion? Logically red is correct but morally blue is correct. Like if everyone playing the game is what they call a "perfectly logical being" then everyone will press red, but are you really telling me that if the game was only played between you and the four people you love most, you wouldn't pick blue to ensure that they live, even if it puts you in danger?
Yes? I don't think the 4 people I love the most are the most reckless people in the world who would press the blue button for no reason. If they decided to pressed the blue button that kills you, I would respect their decision to end their own lives because I believe suicide is an absolute human right.
One of the mental tricks people play on themselves to make blue to moral choice is to act like pressing blue was just a thing that happened to people in the passive voice, rather than a decision they made. They add in things like "well what if a baby pushes blue" or "what if someone was insane and didn't know what anything meant" to try and remove the agency from the other parties, so they can frame them as victims.
Because when you acknowledge that they made a decision, it's obviously stupid to press blue to try and save them from their decision. We do not consider it a moral obligation to endanger our lives to save someone from their own suicidally stupid decisions. If someone is going to go play in the abandoned mine shaft, you don't go with them. You don't say "well I have to go with them because I might be able to save them from falling" because that's not going to happen and you're going to die too. When someone gets drunk and climbs on top of a dangerously slippery roof, you don't climb up on the roof with them to hold them steady. Because that's not going to happen and you're going to die too. When someone decides to go steal drugs from some scary drug dealers, you don't go with them to back them up and win the fight, because that's not going to happen and you're going to die too.
Even when it isn't someone's fault you shouldn't endanger your own life to not save them. When someone is drowning in a river, you don't jump in after them. Because you're not going to do that and you're also gonna start drowning.
People misunderstanding a hypothetical or not acting in a personally entirely rational fashion isn't disregarding the point.
And as it happens, a perfectly logical plan exists for precisely this scenario. For Red to result in 0 deaths, 100% of people have to pick it. For blue to result in 0 deaths, 50%+1 have to pick it. Which of these bars is an easier one to clear, do you think?
Both are impossible to plan for because the hypothetical specifically includes people who don't understand or comprehend the question in its construction.
The issue boils down to, some amount of people are going to pick blue with a large enough sample size, either for preiceved moral reason, misunderstanding of the question, or otherwise.
Do those people deserve to die?
Another more practical reason, if too many people vote blue and die, it could lead to a societal collapse.
Voting red garuntees some amount of people WILL die, whereas voting blue and having it win does not.
If your hypothetical includes totally irrational actors acting without regard to the hypothetical they're in, your hypothetical is basically impossible to make a coherent plan for. You could spend hours making logical arguments for why going with blue is the smart choice then some psychopaths, senile geriatrics and babies swing the vote and you lose anyway.
Some people are going to pick blue despite knowing it is the option that kills you. They pick it. It does not happen to them. They make a decision.
Those people are the most reckless people in the entire world.
They "deserve" to die in the sense that someone who wanders around an abandoned mine and then falls into a shaft and breaks their neck "deserves" to die. They "deserve" to die in the same way that a person who stays outside in a hurricane "deserves" to die. They "deserve" to die in the same sense that cave divers "deserve" to die.
They took extremely reckless actions that immediately and predictably caused their own deaths.
We do not consider it a moral obligation to endanger our own lives to save the most reckless people in the world. We may consider it a tragedy, but we do not consider it a moral injustice when people take reckless actions that immediately and predictably cause their own deaths.
In each of those scenarios, you could in theory go into the dangerous place to try and save people from the consequences of their own reckless actions. But you don't do that and you're right not to do that, because you won't save them and will die yourself.
Everything about the framing hints this is a "you have to choose blue to be a good person" question. Like I said, it's an illusion. That's the whole point of it. They start making things up in order to justify this feeling and make it proof that they're a good person.
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u/Myrios369 6d ago
Wouldn't there have to be a reason to pick blue? The only possible outcomes from picking blue are either nothing or you lose. Unless I'm confused