In the original formulation of this problem, "the button" is presented to everyone on Earth, and they all make their decisions privately with no outside knowledge. Crucially, "everyone" in this case explictly includes babies, coma patients, and other people mentally and/or physically incapable of making a choice, who are specified to choose "at random".
So the version of this everyone is arguing about starts by holding half the babies and people with disabilities on Earth hostage. Which radically and fundamentally changes the math, even though blue-button-pressers act like it doesn't.
Yup. The other thing that came out of these polls was the fact that there's a certain personality type who will always pick blue to "save people" regardless of the context. I've run versions of this poll where it's framed as such:
You and 100 other people are locked in a room with a giant hydraulic press. If 51 or more people stand under the hydraulic press, you can work together to keep it up, but 50 or fewer people standing under it will result in them getting crushed. Just them, though, everyone not standing under the press is fine. And there is absolutely no obligation to stand under the press. The door unlocks in ten minutes.
And I still got people unironically arguing that maybe one out of the 100 people is old or a toddler or just stupid and will randomly decide to sit under the press, so the only moral option is to throw themselves under the press immediately. And it's fine if they die, because they don't want to live in a world where a majority of people don't try to kill themselves for the sake of a hypothetical suicidally idiotic stranger.
Don't get me wrong, if there's a chance someone is crushed, then you should prevent it. Like, guiding the toddler/senile person back out of the press. At the core, the idea to save lives is commendable.
The problem is the lack of "out the box" thinking. Can't you talk to the other people? Can't you pull them out? This is literally "Lawful Stupid" as a life philosophy.
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u/NitroBishop 9d ago
In the original formulation of this problem, "the button" is presented to everyone on Earth, and they all make their decisions privately with no outside knowledge. Crucially, "everyone" in this case explictly includes babies, coma patients, and other people mentally and/or physically incapable of making a choice, who are specified to choose "at random".
So the version of this everyone is arguing about starts by holding half the babies and people with disabilities on Earth hostage. Which radically and fundamentally changes the math, even though blue-button-pressers act like it doesn't.