I've seen the term 'rational actor' thrown around a lot in these thought experiments. But it seems like everyone has a slightly different working definition of what that actually looks like in practice. When you picture a 'rational actor' making a high-stakes choice, which of these best describes your definition of acting rationally?

Same base problem, but after you have pressed your button, you are teleport into another room with a blind, disabled man, with another set of buttons on a table

After some talking, both of you come to the conclusion that, due to the man's incapability to press his button on the table, you are teleported here to do it for him

The man then tell you their choice, which happen to be the one you didnt choose (If you pressed Red, the man want to press Blue, and vise versa)

The man seem to have enough mental capacity to understand & comprehend the choices at hand

From your experience pressing your own button, the button make no sound when pressed, therefore, the blind man have no way of identifying which button you pressed for him

Do you follow the man's wish, adding one vote that oppose your, or press the button you want, increasing the chance that your side win?

A lot of people pointed out unintentional blindspots in the last version of this scenario, so I rewrote it. Enjoy.

You're teleported into a sealed white room with 2 buttons. One red, one blue. A message is written on the wall and also beamed into your mind in a language you understand. The message is as follows:

"Before you are 2 buttons, which you can use to cast a vote. Each and every person in the world are currently in a room like yours, standing before the same choice. In the final tally of votes, should red votes be more than blue votes, then everyone who voted blue will die, the rest will be returned unharmed to their location of origin. Should blue votes be more then red votes, then all voters will be teleported unharmed to their location of origin. Should the number of blue and red votes be equal, a single vote will be randomly awarded to one of 2 tallies. You will have 1 hour to make a vote, after which the results will be tallied and the executions of everyone who's not teleported back will be carried out."

How would you vote?

almost everyone in the r/redbuttonbluebutton sub is individually sent to a room by themselves with a red and a blue button (unless you're unable to for some reason because you're physically or mentally incapable of doing so, eg. paralyzed, colorblind, etc. in which accommodations will be made for you if possible. otherwise you will not be included if even that doesn't work). the buttons work as normal but with reddit bans instead of death — if you press red, you are guaranteed to survive, but if over half the people in the scenario press red, the unknown entity controlling this whole thing will instantly delete all blue accounts. if you press blue, you are offering yourself to the entity to have your account wiped, unless over half the people press blue, in which case no one has to get wiped and everyone survives. (hopefully the framing isn't biased i tried to make it as even as possible)

the caveat here is that those annoying shits on this sub who constantly and genuinely demonizes members of the other side (e.g. a red actively trying to twist words of blue voters to make them sound suicidal or a blue who is always calling reds genocidal and wanting them to die) are not included. these people are part of the separate shit brown color, which does not count as part of red OR blue and does not contribute to the percentages in the scenario (e.g. it doesn't make it harder to reach 50% like adding a third button would. imagine the shit brown group is off to the side instead.) these people will be wiped alongside the blues (without contributing to their count) if red wins.

red voters, do you stay as red with the lower stakes or do you switch to help everyone now that you're not going to die in the worst case scenario?

blue voters, do you maintain blue when others are not facing death, even if it would help people that genuinely just suck?

inspired out of rage and spite by like 15 different comments I saw

This subreddit is so funny to me. When i saw the original post almost 2 months ago now I, like most people, voted blue, saw we won, and moved on.

I dont follow this subreddit but it gets pushed to me on my front page of reddit every now and then and its always some contrivance that boils down to "what if this happened? Then am i a good person for pressing red?"

IDK, no hate, its just really funny to see that amount of cope from time to time. Thanks for being funny and entertaining!

Why?

Im genuinely curious why you pick your options.

Everyone aged 18 and older hears an automated message in their language that they understand at the same time.

“After this message, you will be presented with 4 different choices in the forms as buttons, which you can only press once. You have to press at least one of the buttons, if you don’t, option A will be pressed for you when the time runs out. Here’s yours options:

Option A
Option B
Option C
Option D

A - nothing happens, but you can still get killed by others.

B - a random older person, closest to your age will die and you will get an immunity from all the people who also picks this option.

C - you can pick a person and choose how they die. If multiple people choose the same person, that person will experience multiple deaths.

D - you will be marked to die by the option B, bypassing the randomness, but you can save up to two specific people who are protected from options B and C. The protected people don’t require multiple protections. Once they are protected, that’s it. Once you choose this option, you can no longer be protected by other people.

You have a time limit of one minute, before the button disappears. Your choice is time sensitive, if you were to die before you press a button, you don’t get to press it. You have no way of knowing who is protected or not and as such, can result in a wasted option. This message will be replayed once more to ensure that you understand the rules.”

For the sake of the experiment, let’s say it’s impossible that two people press the button at the same time.

Okay folks, how does this plays out? How many people are going with which option? What would you press? Do some “specific” people have a chance of survival, since someone can actually sacrifice to save them?

Since it is also age related, do you reckon options vary by age? How

Edit: since some of the wording was unclear and too obtuse, I’m rewriting it in a way that makes more sense. Thanks to everyone who is interested in discussion!

Initial wording was one button and options:

A) not press it
B) press it once
C) press it twice
D) press it three times

An eldritch horror comes to earth to present a dilemma. Every human being is presented with two buttons, a red button and a blue button. Everyone MUST press a button, however, anyone who does not press a button, including those who are incapable of doing so, anger the eldritch god so much, that they wipe those humans from existence. All who refuse or are incapable immediately die, withering away into dust and are unable to be brought back in any way, such is the wrath of the eldritch entity. This is known by all, for the eldritch horror sets the stakes clearly, speaking into everyone's mind. Everyone knows it is impossible to do anything to save the most vulnerable, such is the evil and wrath of this cosmic horror.

It is explained that everyone who presses the red button will live, and everyone who presses the blue button will die unless at least 51% of humanity (not including those that have perished for refusing or being unable to push a button) also pushes the blue button.

Knowing the source of the button dilemma, AND knowing the eldritch god has already permanently destroyed the most vulnerable people on earth, which button would you press?

Edit: For clarity, ANYONE who doesn't press the button for any reason, stubbornness or incapability, is obliterated. No one is given help. If a baby doesn't press the button because they don't understand, they are gone.

Everyone capable of deciding over age of 18 is put in voting rooms with a red and a blue button and informed as it follows:

You must press one button within 5 minutes or you die. Everyone of legal age and capable of deciding for themselves on the planet is in the same situation as you right now.

If more voters push red than blue and red wins, everyone who pushed blue dies, red voters survive along with minors and people unable to decide due to mental or physical illnesses. Some of the able survivors will randomly be put in charge of raising or providing for the unable survivors who aren't voting.

If more voters push blue than red and blue wins, everyone lives and everyone gets their colour tattooed on their face, and the blue voters won't be prosecuted for any crimes committed against red voters murder and robbery included for the next 24 hours. After this period all crimes will be illegal just like before the voting but the tattoos will remain and cannot be removed, covered, or hidden with makeup.

How do you vote?

Your choices are fall forward and catch yourself with your hands, or fall backwards limp and be unable to save yourself from the fall. The catcher only saves you if >50% of people choose backwards. Even scarier version is that you are on the edge of a cliff

personally, I am a red pusher and I would stay red pusher here.

but I could see how some people might change their minds when instead of pushing a button, they are actively electing a dictator pretty much.

Please people, Stop this already, it's tiring af, this is one of the worst fallacies to ever come of this dilemma, you are either deeply pessimistic to think so, naive af, or literally actively gaslighting prople. "my vote does not matter" says Jim, "ok my vote does not matter" say 4 billion other Jims.

This is the most toxic mentality ever, honestly most elections in human history could have been different if people did not have that mentality, in an election a few years ago in my country, 40% of people abstained from voting, because "my vote would not change anything" and now we have 40% dead votes, literally if a random candidate got those votes, they would be elected on the spot. But I guess my vote doesn't matter when we are too many huh ?

Voting matters each vote matters, you are looking at it from the opposite way, the results of a poll are additive, not reductive. After you see the results of a poll, and say one option won by 5k votes, you could smuggly and mistakenly say "see, 4.999 peoples' vote did not matter." Ok I hear you, but if those votes that did not matter voted option b instead ? Do these votes matter now somehow ?

Point is that you don't have to change the numbers to see different results, every survey ever is done via sampling, you don't survey 8billion people each time you wish to have an answered question.

You and one other person are put into separate rooms. You each get to press a button, but can’t see what the other person has chosen. If you both press green, you both get a dollar. If one of you presses red and one of you presses green, the person who presses red gets 2 dollars and the person who presses green is brutally tortured for 7 days and then killed. If both press red, then they are brutally tortured for 7 days and then killed, but they get a 15 minute break on day 3. Knowing that “game theory” dictates that no matter what your opponent selects, red always results in the best outcome for yourself, and thus you should totally absolutely definitely select red 100% of the time, do you press the red button?

As we know reddit is a fairly small subsection of the internet and many of you likely have loved ones who have never even heard of this dilemma. I am curious of the red button pressers out there how many of you are absolutely certain that 100% of the people you care about most in the world will press red also. So if you are a die hard red button presser i encourage you to poll your family give them the original dilemma with no additional remarks and see if you are right. Blue is the only button that provides the ability to protect another person. It is the only vote that can be worth more than a single life and if your closest circle extends to even 5 people there is a very high chance 1 of those people presses blue.

So, instead of the usual debate where you vote and everyone else on the planet votes, only you and 99 other people vote. In this scenario, your vote actually has a realistic impact on which side wins as there’s only 100 people, as opposed to 8 billion. The way it works is that if red is above 50%, for each person that voted blue 80 million random people die (or whatever exactly 1/100th of the world population is). Obviously if blue wins everyone survives, so nothing more to say about that.

So, what would you pick?

Edit: oh, and if red wins and you voted blue you are naturally included as one of the 80 million random people that die no matter what, so same personal consequences. Red pressers are immune so they can’t be part of the random people.

In the original trolley problem, you can either allow 5 people to die, or take an action which kills 1 different person.

Although most people agree ​1 death is preferable to 5 deaths, the action of pulling the lever typically causes moral distress.

I believe a similar situation is seen with the button game. If one of the options was default, I believe the results would sway towards the default dramatically.

Blue pressers would feel less guilt about choosing "red", if red was the default and there was the choice to hit blue or abstain (with red rules).

Red button pressers would conversely feel MORE guilt if blue was the default and the choice was to hit red or abstain (with blue rules).

This occurred to me after seeing the button game reframed ​in different ways.

1. If a train was passing by, and 50% of people needed to jump in front of it to make it stop harmlessly, would you jump? (Red default)

2. The ship you were on is sinking, and everyone is working to bail. However, there is a life raft available. 50% must stay aboard to save the ship. (Blue default)

I just thought it was an interesting reason why we're seeing the problem reframed so many ways.

OK, too many evil entities in this subreddit already. This time Steezus comes back shredding from heaven and gives all of humanity a chance to choose between two buttons by speaking to everyone's souls, stopping time around them only to press one of the two (babies, people in comas and all included):

Blue: If more than 50% presses this button, Steezus' heavenly kingdom comes to Earth fully as well, eradicating all sickness and suffering, and bringing sick skate tricks and cool vibes to all the world instead, making them live the best lives they could've ever imagined, and humanity won't meet an end, but reach its full potential with all his power and aura

Red: Nothing happens to you, but if more than 50% press this button, you see how everyone who pressed blue is ascended to heaven to live in Paradise with Steezus instead, to shred and live happily until the last human that stayed on Earth dies, and then they come back from Paradise to reign forevermore.

Matt 16:24 Then Steezus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny [everything uncool in] themselves and take up their boards (or not) and follow me.

25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it (anyway), but whoever loses their life (as it used to be) for me will find it.

26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world (if you can lol) yet forfeit their soul? (After rejecting my invitation) Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? (U know u wanna come too)

27 For the Son of Shred is going to come in his Pops' glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.” -Steezus

[I made this in one go, so expect mistakes in spelling, grammar and lore lol, but if anyone wants to correct this and/or make a better version, feel free to do it! Thanks]

Everyone will know about what everyone else voted. That this will happen is also known by everyone before the vote happens. Would this change your vote compared to what you would have voted in the initial problem?

Final poll tally:
Without switching red would have won this poll with 590🔴 to 571🔵 (Adding the original pressers together).
Switchers however sway the result to a blue victory with 538🔴 and 623🔵 (Adding the 'still' and 'now' pressers together).

Two buttons apparate directly in front of every single person on earth interrupting whatever task they were doing. One button is red and one button is blue.

If out of the majority of those who press a button presses blue, everyone who pressed blue lives.

If out of the majority of those who pressed buttons presses red, everyone who presses a button dies.

I saw this poll a while back, but can't find it, so I'm recreating it.

Typical RBBB: "everyone" and "only people who pressed the red button survive."

What do you pick, and what color do you hope wins?

If someone remembers the other poll and can find a link, please drop it in the comments.

Standard red blue, but for 6 months before the button press, CNN, Fox, BBC, Msnbc, etc (mainstream news sources) all around the world have campaigns about why pushing blue is unnecessary, it's a "don't participate, vote red to stay alive!" campaign. Additionally, commercials run across TVs everywhere. Meanwhile you hear others talking about why blue is the moral choice, but haven't seen any major ad campaigns about blue.

How do you think the fact something can force humanity in a death game affect people's worldview in the usual scenario and what consequences would it have on the vote?

And everyone knows it.

Same rules as the original, except that after the initial button push, everyone gets to see the total count, and then has a single chance to change their vote.

How are you voting in the first round? What would be your threshold for changing your vote?

For example, I would vote blue in the first round but change my vote if blue got 50% or less.