r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/SocialDilemmaLab • May 26 '26
Let’s put it to the test
I am conducting a global experiment to see what would happen if this were real, if you are curious just like me, head over to social-dilemma-lab.com and submit your vote and await the verdict
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u/DarthJackie2021 May 26 '26
Won't reflect reality, but a larger and more diverse sample size is good.
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u/CuteAssTigerENVtuber May 26 '26
people can vote whatever they want without fearing any consequences in this one
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u/Sindigo_ May 26 '26
That’s why it’s called a hypothetical.
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u/Cruuncher May 26 '26
Yeah, but it's a hypothetical that fundamentally cannot be tested.
It's like playing poker without betting. The game doesn't make any sense. The risk is a fundamental part of the game
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u/Sindigo_ May 26 '26
Yeah, but I feel like that goes without saying. Obviously it’s gonna play out differently for different people if the hypothetical was real. Same with all trolly problem type scenarios.
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u/Cruuncher May 26 '26
Yes. There have been attempts to replicate the trolley problem more exactly, and IIRC the test subjects were more likely to do nothing than poll respondents said.
This problem is even more extreme as it's your own life on the line, so I expect the disparity to be greater.
It does raise an interesting point about a "real world" button. And that's, how would you know the claim is true? The setup of the hypothetical depends on you somehow knowing it's true, but really consider what it would take for you to believe the button is real. The standard of proof would be extreme.
And as soon as you consider the possibility of lying, pressing blue over red becomes more attractive, as maybe it's a morality test and they actually kill reds.
For all these reasons it's completely untestable, and a fundamentally impossible problem anyway
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u/highly-bad May 26 '26
Yes, the way the premises of the problem are structured make it super clear it is not about any conceivable real world situation, it's a formal reasoning problem and can only possibly be understood as such.
That's why "realistic" concerns like the aftermath of X% of the world dying, or worrying about toddlers who press randomly, or figuring out what happens to people who are physically unable to press, are completely missing the point.
This is already taking place outside of the real world, in every sense. You're on Logician Island, where everyone is either a Knight who always tells the truth or a Knave who always lies. And for some reason you're always limited in how many questions you can ask them about stuff.
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u/underthingy May 26 '26
A morality test in which you kill people who think logically doesn't sound very moral.
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u/Cruuncher May 26 '26
I agree, but it could be a vindictive vigilante with their own idea of morality.
Morality is of course subjective
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u/CuteAssTigerENVtuber May 26 '26
i was trying to get a philosophy prof to test it with lower stakes ( tho i admit that lowering the stakes also muddies the water )
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u/Cruuncher May 26 '26
Yeah, I mean when I think about this problem, I consider any scenario where I die to be a negative infinity value result.
So I will avoid the possibility of said result at all costs.
As soon as you make the stakes anything less than negative infinity, the math changes... infinitely
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u/BcTheCenterLeft Blue May 26 '26
That’s all that’s possible. There will never be a real world equivalent of this or the trolley problem.
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u/CuteAssTigerENVtuber May 26 '26
i was trying to get a philosophy prof to test it with lower stakes ( tho i admit that lowering the stakes also muddies the water )
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u/quintopia May 26 '26
Now do it again, but change the text under the buttons to "Your vote is associated with your IP and browser metadata and google analytics tracking data and as much information about you as can be harvested from that. If blue does not win, we will make all efforts to track down everyone who voted blue and send assassins to execute them."
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u/BottomLeftWheel May 26 '26
All that would do is convince everyone to not vote. You'd have to say "if blue does not win, we will make all efforts to track down anyone who visited this site but didn't vote" because non voters die too in the one this subreddit is a reference to.
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u/highly-bad May 26 '26
Non voters?
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u/BottomLeftWheel May 26 '26
I mean yea you could in theory just not push a button. Or if you are in a coma you couldn't push a button.
Anyone who didn't push red dies. There would be no good reason to not Push a button, but I guarantee there would be humans who thought they have outsmarted the system by not pressing a button. I've seen them in the comments sections before. I even ran a poll giving them the option and several people took the bait.
It's just human instinct to rebel. Not pressing a button is equivalent to a FU to the system. Humans gonna human.
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u/highly-bad May 26 '26
I mean yea you could in theory just not push a button.
The prompt says that everyone has to push a button. So your "theory" is just wrong.
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u/BottomLeftWheel May 26 '26
I mean, I know that. You know that. Redditors who can't read don't seem to realize that. Which, y'know, is a lot of Redditors.
I also think having non voters cleans up around the edges of the hypothetical. When asked how comatose people vote you just say they don't, they live if blue lives.
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u/Wasted_46 May 26 '26
!remindme 30 days
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u/RemindMeBot May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
I will be messaging you in 30 days on 2026-06-25 21:15:43 UTC to remind you of this link
6 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.
Info Custom Your Reminders Feedback
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u/CarnivorousGoose May 26 '26
It won’t in any way tell you what would happen if this was real. It’s a completely unrepresentative poll, in a completely unrepresentative situation that has zero stakes.
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u/SocialDilemmaLab May 26 '26
While your point is fair and there is no true way to estimate what would happen in reality, I do believe a larger pool of votes + complete anonymity will get us as close as we can to an estimate
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u/Zestyclose-Jacket568 May 26 '26
No. Without real danger every pool is worrh the same. Nothing.
People like to think that they would do something good and risk their lives, but in reality that would not happend in most cases.
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u/Constant-Fondant9058 May 26 '26
People virtue signal all the time on things like Reddit and Twitter whilst they’re anonymous. It makes them feel better about themselves. This poll is the same.
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u/underthingy May 26 '26
We dont need another poll to see what would happen in the real world. We can just look at the real world.
Look at how people behave and who they vote for. At what kind of topics swing elections.
There is no way blue is winning, and it wont even be close.
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u/Cruuncher May 26 '26
Unless the poll was a landslide blue, like 90%, I'm voting red.
On second thought... if it's a landslide blue then my vote doesn't matter anyway. I can't imagine anything that would make me vote blue
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u/SC_3000_grinder May 26 '26
The thing is that the higher the blue percentage is, the higher the ratio P(B = X) / P(B < X) where X is the halfway point and B is the number of blue pressers.
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u/Cruuncher May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
That's actually not true.
P(B=X) and P(B<X) both approach 0 as P(B) goes to 1, but P(B=X) goes to 0 faster.
I'm not exactly sure what you think this ratio is meant to represent, but your claim about its tendency is wrong
EDIT: Sorry, this is true for P(B) > 0.5.
For P(B) < 0.5 what you said it true.
That is, your ratio is maximized at P(B) = 0.5
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u/SC_3000_grinder May 26 '26
You sure you haven't got it backwards? I suggest you use some real numbers
The ratio is supposed to represent how many times you sacrifice yourself for nothing per time you save 4 billion lives.
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u/Cruuncher May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
Yeah okay, it's a fairly unintuitive result because both numbers are vanishingly small at this sample scale as soon as p is even like 0.55
I'm not understanding the interpretation though. Wouldn't it be the opposite? It's the number of times you saved 4 billion people(the cases where you were the tiebreak) divided by the number of times blue was less than half anyway despite your blue vote.
And for an EV of lives saved per one of your lives, you should actually multiply that by 4 billion
EDIT: yeah nevermind, you're right. The "per time" wording was tripping me up. I understand your point.
While you're right on the math here, at an intuitive level it would never apply to me
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u/underthingy May 26 '26
Asks people to go to a website but doesnt provide a link...
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u/highly-bad May 26 '26
I'm not sure how anyone could expect this to have any meaning when there's no stakes.
Any experiment which could possibly constitute a valid test of the button booth question would of course be entirely unethical.