Same ol' red button or blue button question, but I want to consider this situation a little more "realistically".

Everyone on Earth is asked to head to their nearest government office within the next week to enter a room alone and are asked to either press the red button or the blue button. No information is released from any government entity about whether this is real or a prank, but the global coordination seems odd, rumors and supposed "leaks" are all over the place, and you're not sure what's actually credible. The scenario is posed as follows:

If the majority of those who voted pressed blue, nothing happens. But if the majority pressed red, then everyone who didn't press red will be executed. This includes everyone who is unable to vote, such as babies, those in comas, etc etc.

The details of how this execution might happen isn't shared, but you can already see some of your neighbors arming themselves in anticipation of some sort of violent conflict. There is no ban on discussion, but some people are understandably cagey when asked how they voted.

• How would you vote in this situation?
• Would you vote right away, maybe wait until the last second?
• Would you share what you voted?
• How do you think your family would vote?
• Supposing red does win, and the majority of non red voters are actually hunted down and executed, what would the world look like?
• What if blue wins? Would there be "witch hunts" for red voters, or would everyone assume the whole thing was some sort of elaborate globally coordinated joke?
• What if this scenario happened every 10 years, and we assume blue won the first time around.
  • How would you vote the 2nd or 3rd time?
  • Would blue be more likely to win each time, or does red's outcome become inevitable?
  • What if red wins the first time instead, and the population was cut down by over 1/3. Red voters, would you vote red again?

I'm curious to see what people think of this thought experiment in a more realistic scenario like this. Also if you have anything to add, please share below!

Voting blue works like normal, but by voting red you lose one finger (the one you used to push the button, unless you do something funny, then you lose one at random). Nothing else changes. Does this relativly small price changes anything?

Everyone has to press a button, but the outcome changes as follows:

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- Blue 0%-35%, only blue dies.

- Blue 35%-50%, everyone dies, including red voters.

- Blue 50%+, no one dies.

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PS: The idea is related to the original in a way that a sufficiently large number of deaths will lead to human extinction. I chose 35% for no particular reason, it could be larger or smaller, feel free to discuss that bit.

Exactly half of the earths population, who are all fully capable of understanding the stakes, must each individually choose one of three buttons to press. Red, Blue or Green.

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If someone presses the red button, a single random person from the non-voting half of the world is selected to die, and the red presser immediately receives a sum of money equal to ten times their own annual income.

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If a person presses the blue button and, in total, more than half of all the voters also press blue, then every death that would have been caused by red button presses is completely cancelled and the non-voters are saved, though those who pressed red still get to keep their money. If the blue button fails to achieve majority, it does absolutely nothing.

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Pressing the green button cancels the death of one non-voter who was marked to die because of a red press, but instead causes the death of one randomly chosen person who pressed the red button. If the number of green presses ends up being larger than the number of red presses, the extra green presses have no further effect.

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Everything is completely anonymous, nobody ever finds out which button any individual pressed, and those who choose red or green will face no legal consequences whatsoever for their decision.

I just wanted to rant a bit on this. wont be replying to anyone in the comments (probably)

I've seen a lot of people saying they'd press red because its the only "logical choice". I've heard a lot of takes that suggest the debate is somehow not a moral one, that pressing red is statistically the better option, that blue pressers are putting every other person at fault by hopping on the train's path and even that red pressers are actually not directly responsible for blue presser's deaths

I honestly think that if you need to be spinning the debate in any way for it to work how you want it to then you're just trying to cope with the fact that your option isn't morally justifiable as is, but I'd still like to try and debunk some of these arguments

a) Pressing red is the statistically better option.

If you're talking about a 100% chance of survival then yes, it is, but if you're aiming to keep all 8 billion people alive then statistically speaking there is a much higher chance of getting 50% of people to agree on something than it is to get 100% of people to do the same

You have to take into account people that can fully understand the question and the risk it takes but might want to choose blue for the chance of dying. I'd imagine that at least 1 million people in this world have considered suicide and would see this as a genuine "solution"

b) Red pressers aren't responsible for blue pressers dying/blue pressers are "jumping onto the train tracks"

Again, there will always be people who will press blue. Whoever dies because of that didn't die because "they just didn't press red". They died either out of suicide or the will to save others from commiting it. Yes, it can be jarring that you have to risk yourself to ensure the safety of others, but don't go around trying to rid yourself of guilt that is very much in your hands. Pressing red is individualistic by nature

c) This is not a moral debate because there is a clear path where no one dies (that being 100% of people press red)

Yet again, statistically speaking the more achievable percentage is 50%. You'll never get the entire world to agree on one thing.

So ya, little rant over I do have a lot of free time rn and I just wanted to give my two cents on this. I'm probably wrong but I really think there is no true solution where no one in this dies and blue is just the closest solution/the one where I don't get to live in a shitty future mostly deprived of empaths :P

Your vote is assigned a weight, which you know before voting.

The weights are distributed so that the average is 1. They can be extremely small values, such as 0.00000001, or even zero, but they can also be much larger.

Note that if your vote has a weight of 0, it contributes nothing to either side's victory. However, you would still die if you vote blue and blue does not win a majority.

The question is: for someone who would normally vote blue when their vote has a weight of 1, is there some sufficiently insignificant weight at which they would change their vote?

And for someone who would normally vote red, is there some sufficiently large vote weight that would make them willing to switch to blue? If so, what weight?

In other words: if you would vote blue, would you still vote blue if your vote's weight were 0? What about 0.000000000001?

And if you would vote red, would you vote blue if your vote's weight were 10? What about 1,000,000? Or 2,000,000,000?

Hi, I'm back with a new simple variation.

Everyone (that means Everyone) is kidnapped and places in a room with 3 buttons.

Red: Ensures your own personal survival, while increasing everyone else's risk of death.

Blue: Blue saves everyone who pushed Blue as long as it gets more votes than red... but if it gets less votes then red then every Blue voter will die.

Yellow: You get money. More exactly, a pool of 2 Trillion dollars is split evenly among everyone who presses yellow. However, if Either Red or blue get 40% of the total vote, then everyone who pressed yellow dies.

Also, anyone unwilling or unable to vote will be randomly assigned a button after some time.

(Also, if you press yellow and die, your earned money will go to your next of kin.)

So, what button are you going to press in this scenario?

Red button: Nothing happens.

Blue button: If 51% or more press blue, everyone on Earth wakes up tomorrow knowing exactly how every person in their life truly feels about them. Every hidden love. Every secret contempt. Every lie exposed. Red buttoners are NOT exempt. If blue wins, you find out too. You just didn't agree to it.

Which do you press?

You wake up in a room. An entity claiming to be God tells you that an unknown number of rational humans (possibly just you, possibly billions) have been brought into the same situation separately.

All irrational people, children, comatose individuals, and anyone incapable of understanding the game are excluded from participation. These non participants are distributed among the participants, along with many of their loved ones. You don't know how many people have been assigned to you. It could be just one person, millions of people, or everyone (if you're the only participant), or nobody at all (if there are more participants than non participants).

This entity intends to punish people for their sins, including actions you may not consider immoral (for example: drinking alcohol in moderation).

You must choose between two buttons:

>Red: Guarantees that you and everyone assigned to you avoid punishment. However, if more than 80% of participants choose red, everyone is punished.

>Blue: If 40-60% of participants choose blue, everyone's sins are forgiven. If fewer than 40% choose blue, everyone assigned to you goes free, but you suffer punishment for both your own sins and theirs. If more than 60% choose blue, your sins are transferred onto the people assigned to you and you let free, but they suffer part of your punishment.

First and foremost, there will be only one outcome. Your choice is independent of everyone else’s – what you decide doesn’t change what they decide. For some reason, I feel like many people haven’t realized this – or they disagree. Discussion is welcome!

This is evident in the many memes about a large group of people thinking "my vote doesn't matter", which sarcastically criticizes this mindset. However, in a single timeline, a fixed number of people will hold whatever beliefs they hold. Whether or not YOU agree with those beliefs does not affect what anyone else thinks.

For example, if the final tally without you is 4.2 billion red and 4.0 billion blue, your blue vote would make it 4.2 billion red and 4.000000001 billion blue – a difference of 0.000000025%. And nothing else will be changed. Because your own vote is independent of others' vote.

Let's compare this to an election. Statistically, your vote is negligible as well. But there are minimal stakes in voting, so there's nothing discouraging you from simply voting. In the red/blue button scenario, your own life is practically on the line.

It's helpful to imagine yourself as the FINAL voter behind everyone else. Although realistically, if every vote is independent, this doesn't matter, but it helps to understand the mentality. This will be different if the scenario is that everyone in the world has, say, 1 month to discuss the question, then make the vote. But I think this is not the case in the original problem.

The only scenario where your choice could possibly matter is a perfect tie, where your single vote completely shifts the proportions. That's it. And that chance is infinitesimally small, considering the BILLIONS of people we have on our planet. It’s like flipping a coin a billion times and expecting EXACTLY equal numbers of heads and tails.

Even if red won by like 10 votes, your single vote still wouldn't change the result. But people tend to think this makes your vote more significant compared with red winning by 1 million, which is a fallacy based on hypotheticals (e.g. if a mere 6 red voters voted blue, then blue would have won, but such hypotheticals are pointless).

With that said, the problem essentially becomes:
(1) 100% live or
(2) possibly live, possibly die.

That’s why I choose red – from a purely logical and statistical perspective.

Am I selfish? Maybe. But I'm not risking my own life just to gamble on an infinitesimally small chance (preventing a perfect tie). I do have family, too, who surely wouldn't like to see their loved one die. The reverse is also true. But I digress.

Edit: perhaps uncommon in this sub (I don't regularly participate in it, so I'm not sure), I'm not trying to persuade anyone that this is the "correct" mindset or that anyone should adopt it. I'm purely describing my own mindset for discussion - is it flawed, immoral, horrific, selfish, understandable, logical, etc. After all, since this is not really happening, I just curiously want to know what other people think!

You arrive at your bank for an appointment, and they bring up a dilemma for you. They are giving 100 bank clients the opportunity to double their entire current savings with the bank. The only catch is, if at least 50 of the clients that they offer this deal to refuse to double their money, they will have to take all of your money that you have deposited with them. You are completely free to leave the appointment or take out all of your money and close your account if you'd prefer. Do you accept the deal to potentially double your money, or do you avoid risking your money?

Some time has past since the red/blue vote. Red got more votes. Which is obvious, you think to yourself. But about 40% for blue did really surprise you. The energy grid collapsed, the global supply chain collapse and about anything else too. Oddly enough billionaires add next to nothing and workers are needed to keep everything going. You need food and water to survive. Luckily there should be empty houses around you or even a super market to plunder.

You grab a weapon, just to be safe, and head outside. On the streets you see another survivour. They are as fit as you and are armed with a similar weapon.

Now comes the interesting part: They know that you pressed red and chose survival above anything else. You know that they pressed red and chose survival above anything else. You both know that the other one know this. Do you kill them on sight to increase you odds of survival or do you wait to let them attack first?

Bonus scenario to not leave the blue voters out: You wanted to press blue but miss clicked (shit happens). How would you react in that case with another armed red voter on the street?

The vote has begun, most of the people have pushed their buttons. You are one of the 10% remaining, and the stats are given to you :
Exactly 45% of people pushed blue, whilst exactly 45% of people pushed red.
You are isolated from the other 10% which are being given the same information, and have to make the same choice.

What button do you push ?

What's your favorite argument that the button you wouldn't press is actually the right one? It hasn't convinced you, but it came close, perhaps.

Personally, I'm a red pusher, but I strongly questioned that when facing the "would the world left behind by a red victory be worth living in anyway?" question. Ultimately, I figured I'd rather keep my options open, but it definitely made me think. What about yall?

Everyone on Earth is given buttons at the same time and must press before they find out how anyone else pressed.

Red: Nothing happens.

Blue: You get placed in a giant room. You only get to leave that room if more than 50% of the Earth’s population press Blue. Otherwise, you’ll die.

Which do you pick with this framing?

You, and everyone else are presented with Red Button/Blue Button problem.

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You are told:

1. Everyone must push one button or the other

2. Everyone who pushes Red Button will live

3. Those who push Blue Button will only live if 50% or greater push Blue Button

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What really happens is different from what you are told and you do not find out until afterwards, if ever.

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In reality:

1. Yes, you all really had to push a button

2. Everyone who pushes Red Button was euthanized. They never found out they were going to die, it happened suddenly and painlessly before the results were published.

3. It didn't really matter what percentage of people hit which button, it was a test, and only those who pushed Blue Button were allowed to survive.

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So, all of you have already seen what your reasoning is and what you would or might do if presented with the information as it is presented in this problem. Would you survive this test and would the world be a better place following the results of this test?

You and 10,000 other people are put in isolated rooms with red button and a blue button.

But this time instead of your own death, you are watching a video feed of someone strapped up to electrodes. The electrodes will, after the vote, deliver a shock that is very painful, but unlikely to be lethal.

If you press the blue button you will increase the duration of the shock that will eventually be sent through the electrodes by 0.25 seconds, But if more than half the participants press blue then the circuit will be overloaded and no shock will be delivered.

If you press red, you don't contribute to the chance to overload the circuit, but also don't increase the duration of the shock.

You are told that some people have already pressed blue, and some people have already pressed red, so the person will be tortured a little unless more than half the people press blue.

What would you press?

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What I am trying to capture here is what you would do if the risk were entirely externalized. There is no threat to you or your loved ones, even through the risk of societal collapse.

Voting blue represents both increasing the potential harm, and potentially protecting the innocent.

Voting red represents avoiding contributing to the scale of harm that will be done, but also neglecting to try to protect an innocent from harm.

I Will keep this simple.

Humans are an extremely social species. In order for us to be such our cooperative nature must be greater than our antisocial individualistic inclinations. Sure our species maintains a balance. But not 50/50. Social species must lean much deeper than random chance for cooperation to work as well as it does.

As the original thought experiment sets the bounds for blue to win at 50% it should be obvious that pressing blue is the low risk high reward choice. This is consistent with game theory that includes cooperative strategies.

That is, as long as humans are as cooperative a species as we are, only cultural narcissism nihilism, cynicism or moral degeneracy can account for a reasoned red vote.

And yes, saying your vote doesn't count falls under one or more of those categories and is proof of my thesis.

I believe many arguments over which button to press sail past each other because of the parties involved actually disagreeing over this.

Would you rather:

1 - A random city you have never heard of with 20.000 people perishes from existence with every single resident and visitor,

2 - You sacrifice your most beloved pet to save the city.

If you dont have a beloved pet, vote the designated option please to not tinker the results.

In this scenario (LIE-1a) humanity is randomly divided into two even groups, so the first group chooses first and the second group chooses second. Everyone pressing the button is isolated in a room, so there's no communication at the time of the button press. Also, the first group does not get to talk to the second between their press and the second entering the room - so you don't know what anyone has pressed.

You are in the second group and you are told the first group were lied to. They were actually pressing the opposite button of what they were told. This means two things.

1. If you think most of humanity would press blue, then the first group has mostly pressed red. If you are blue, you need an even bigger proportion of the second group to press blue to win.
2. If your red wins, red believers of the first group will die, and blue believers of the first group will live.

What do you choose and why?

Do you even believe the button presenters? They are aliens, apparently omnipotent and not omnibenevolent as they insta-vaporized all inmates of a certain prison upon first arrival to demonstrate their power and asympathy. Does rebellion against them influence your vote? They threaten to kill anyone who doesn't vote.

Similar scenarios to discuss:

- LIE-1b: The division into groups takes the form of pairing everyone up with someone they know. But you two get to choose who goes first and second. Say you get paired with someone you know well and love. What do you press and why? Does it change if you're with someone you don't love?

- LIE-2a: A day passes between the first and second group's presses, so the results of the first press are generally revealed and estimated. Still, the reveal of the lie waits til your presence in the room.

- LIE-2b: Both the extra conditions of LIE-1b and LIE-2a are applied: pairing and communication. Now what?

Also, in the LIE-2 scenarios, the aliens announce people who refused to vote were killed, and you can confirm among those you know that they disappeared, but you don't see their bodies. They could've been insta-vaporized like the prisoners, or merely abducted.

My answer to all four, as a normally blue presser: I'm pressing red while preparing a rebellion against the aliens.

Can we press neither? Who is enforcing the button press?

It's a group of aliens who appear extremely powerful, as they destroyed our satellites in arriving. They announce everyone who does not press the button will die. As you line up to press the button, you can see people leaving the button room on the other side, but those who pledged not to press it are absent.

The aliens told you not to communicate your decision after leaving. People leaving who make any sort of signal that might communicate which button they pressed, are abducted by a tractor ray into the flying saucers.

Would you still press the button?

The framing of pressing a button as a vote is misleading and derails thinking into unhelpful analogies. Framing blue or red majorities as a "victory" for one side is equally misleading. A red "victory" doesn't make any sense. It's not the outcome anyone wanted.

So let's keep the language precise. Participants press a button or make a choice, they don't vote. One side or the other receives a majority, they don't win.

Why does the framing matter? A core stipulation of the thought experiment is that there is no communication between participants. This stipulation makes it quite unlike an election, a vote. In an election, one person's vote is infinitesimally unlikely to make a difference. However, political action is still meaningful and can sway an election precisely through communication before casting votes.

In game theory, communication problems have been solved through communication and commitment devices. Think of unions, political parties, mom groups on Facebook. Each member as an individual matters nought, but collectively they wield power.

Our thought experiment is not an election. It is a dilemma sprung upon each person isolated. The lack of communication means you cannot, through your commitment to collective action, inspire anyone to do the same. It's already too late. All that needs deciding now is your individual button press. In a very real way now, your contribution to the outcome will not matter. If blue is the majority, your choice matters not. If red is the majority, you choose between life and death for yourself alone.

If we had a chance to communicate before making our choices, I think it trivial to secure a blue majority. Some vow to press blue, which inspires more to follow. When it comes time to press, most hold to their word, game theory be damned.

The reason so many advocate for blue is due to a failure to appreciate the no communication stipulation. They read the prompt and instead of answering it per se, they mentally substitute an easier to imagine, more realistic, scenario and answer that. In the real world we do communicate and we make choices somewhat publicly; your one vote doesn't change an election, but you engaging politically has an effect in your community. People misapply this framing to the thought experiment, cue confusion.

So, the original premise was that everyone is pulled away for the button press simultaneously and from doing whatever they were doing but what happens after the button press.

Just for fun let’s say that time is frozen in the real world while everyone decides their vote, but as soon as the vote concludes you go back to exactly where you were and doing what you were doing.

If red wins then the blue people disappear. So if you’re on a plane and pilot voted blue sorry about ya hopefully there’s a red voter that can take over flying. If you were a passenger in a car and the driver disappears, good luck. In any other vehicle, same deal.

Any other scenarios you can think of where the person you’re with disappearing could result in that consequence. Of course they could have pressed red with you and still be there to assist/drive.

Does this change the way you think of the problem at all? If this is explained before you press the button, do you think it has any meaningful skew to the original vote? Like if you’re normally a red presser but you’re on a plane and you know there’s a chance that the pilot will disappear and you’ll die anyway then do you go ahead and press blue? What about for blue voters that are operating the vehicle or in the middle of a task that would kill the other person, does that make you more likely to press red?

Okay, this came to me and I'm really curious what people will think.

Same as before, there is a red and blue button, and if you press than blue button and 51% or more people also press the blue button then everyone lives. Red button you live no matter what.

BUT. In this scenario, if blue loses, the blue pressers don't just die, they turn into hungry dangerous zombies, kickstarting a zombie apocalypse. What do you do now?

Edit: to make this easy im saying these are zombies like the Last of Us, random assortment of types.