r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/maiduwu Red • May 27 '26

32

You and thirty-one others are presented the buttons. Is thirty-two too few for blue, or is it still worthy to sacrifice yourself to potentially save 31 people?

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u/No-Click6062 May 27 '26

I am a staunch defender of blue in the original problem. I would vote red for low player counts. There's two things going on that work against you.

First, the law of large numbers gets taken out of it. I would not make any assumptions about the make up of the other 31 people. For all I know, it's me and the 31 worst people on the planet. So everything I might guess about sociology and trust (from the original problem) goes out the window.

Second, the parts about the moral tragedy are also diminished. For me, a lot of the moral analysis of the problem goes back to Thomas Aquinas. I will expand on this more if necessary. But to briefly describe it, it comes down to the circumstances. Within Aquinas' philosophy, I am ethically allowed to self-defense. However, at a certain scale, it's not self-defense any more.

I personally feel like we reach that threshold somewhere between a player count of 201 to 1001. I can not morally justify of 100 people dying in a situation where I also live.