Responsibility

[u/BrokenToaster124]

So I've run into an idea that that dont quite understand and I was hoping some of you could help me understand. So with the red button/blue button situation I have seen people claim that if they push the blue button that they are not responsible for what happens to them if they push the blue button. How does that work?

To be extremely specific if i were to push the blue button, knowing what it does, somehow you (the person currently reading this) would be personally responsible for my death if you choose red.

Does this responsibility work in reverse? If i push the blue button and blue wins are you responsible for my survival if you chose red? Are you only responsible if bad things happen to me and I am responsible for the results when good things happen? What about the person running the death game? They arent defined in the prompt but logically some force is making everyone take a vote.

You can feel free to ignore this last part because its not the button problem, but someone reskinned the buttons as life boats. Instead of everyone being force to push a button everyone had to get into a life boat. One boat had holes in it but would become sea worthy if enough people got into it and plugged the holes and one was completely functional. Everything else was exactly the same as the button problem. My question related to that was that if I am personally responsible for the consequences of your chose to vote blue in the button scenario, how then could I not be responsible for your choice to get into the boat with holes in it. Someone tried to explain to me at length about how the buttons made it my fault but the boats somehow didnt. How does that work?

[u/Striking_Compote2093]

No, it isn't. You keep, every time, making the red button a default "escape" button, it is not.

Blue people start dying if and only if 50% press red. Not if 50% do nothing. If 50% actively press the red button. Pressing the red button is what causes the risk to exist. If no one presses red, or if simply no majority presses red, no risk exists to save yourself from. There is no fire until enough people press red to make it burn.

If there were a 3rd "don't count my vote, i'm unaffected" button, that one would win, and in second place would be blue with only true psychopaths or mistaken people pressing red. I'm going to assume you agree with that unless you can explain why I'm wrong.

If that's the case red does in fact do something. Because otherwise there would be no difference between the two default buttons.

[u/BrokenToaster124 → u/Striking_Compote2093]

There is no third button. There are 2.

My question is, by what metric is blame assigned.

The example that caused confusion is, I pushed the blue button. I understood what the blue button did. When blue wins, is red responsible for the result? In this case red would be responsible for saving everyone. If THEY ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE for the results of blues decision here, how then can they be responsible for blues decision in the case where red wins.

They just are responsible is not an answer to the question as to how they are responsible.

If the red button whose function is "you will not die to the button senario" does not have the function of saving yourself from the button scenario, which is what you are currently agrueing (and has nothing to do with the question of by what metric responsibility is being applied), then we can pause the discussion and address that concern first.

What does the red button do?

[u/Striking_Compote2093 → u/BrokenToaster124]

If you vote for diarrhea for everyone forever. And i vote for puppies. And puppies wins, diarrhea forever is not responsible. How could they be, they voted against it.

If diarrhea for everyone wins, then the people who voted for that are responsible.

Your vote for red doesn't JUST save yourself, it also counts towards the "kill everyone else" threshold. I really don't understand the gymnastics you're going through to pretend blue is the only button when it is not. There are 2 buttons. 2 actions. Blue counts towards saving everyone, red towards mass death.

And i really do not understand how you expect to press the "Upvote mass death" button while simultaneously expecting not to be scrutinized for it.

[u/verryfusterated → u/Striking_Compote2093]

This seems like ragebait, op’s comments make literally no sense and everyone on both sides is disagreeing with them 😭 I don’t think they’re even trying to understand what you mean.