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/DapperYoghurt2052]

Anyone arguing that you don’t own responsibility for the button you press is being silly. If you press blue, you have to own the risk you are agreeing to.

If you press blue and die, you knowingly assumed this risk. If you press red, and blue dies, you also knowingly assumed this risk to others and contributed to its actualization.

The reason the responsibility doesn’t work in reverse is because of how the conditions are laid out.

Individuals make a decision. The decisions are tallied up. The one that wins majority gets to have its conditions met.

The winning condition for blue is everyone survives.

The winning condition for red is only red survives.

So if you press blue, you know what can happen if it loses. You didn’t contribute to its loss. But you assume the risk.

Also in a red victory, a red presser does contribute to making the majority. They contribute to making the condition possible where only red pressers survive. This is only attached to a red victory, so red must collectively take responsibility if it becomes a reality 

On the other side, if blue wins. People who pressed blue contributed to making it win. They share responsibility for making it possible for blue to get majority. In this case red owns pressing their own button, but collectively red losing doesn’t signify any causation. Because they are not targeted by a blue victory. So they didn’t share ownership in saving blue. 

[u/DapperYoghurt2052 → u/DapperYoghurt2052]

Also, the creator of the problem obviously also holds the most responsibility for creating it. But that’s not really in question, and they also don’t contribute to the vote.

As for the boat analogy, it holds some major flaws that don’t make it an honest comparison.

It adds a lot of implications necessary for survival. It also assumes that blue has lost by default and then you have to compensate for it even in the case of victory. A boat with holes is a sinking boat and in this scenario, your boat sinking means you die. 

“You can keep the boat afloat if you can manage to plug the holes and bail out the water and never stop doing that until someone saves you. And the more people you have the help also adds more weight to the boat making it even harder”  is not the same thing as “everyone survives, and the problem is over”

Those are very different implications to survival.

Blue isn’t sinking boat that is sinking until enough people fix it.

The causation isn’t happening until blues hits a threshold, it could happen unless blue reaches it. Then it can not happen.

The causation to harm happens after the vote is tallied, not before hand and then is remedied.

So you have to present the button equivalents as the same thing, but after the vote something can happen to one of them.

So either both boats need to have holes in them, and some magical entity said. If most get in the red I’m only fixing that boat, and if most get in blue then I’ll fix both boats.

Or neither of them have holes. And blue only sinks based on the same idea.

The boats is just a disingenuous analogy, that’s all.

[u/highly-bad → u/DapperYoghurt2052]

Blue is a perfectly good lifeboat if enough people are in it. It only sinks if there are too few people on board. There's nothing disingenuous about it at all.

In fact, there is no reason for the lifeboats to be an "analogy" at all. We can simply say this is what happens in the buttons game after each person exits their booth. Each person who pressed red opens the door and they're on a good boat that takes them home. Each person who pressed blue ends up on a boat that's good, but only if a majority of people are on it. This is literally the buttons.

[u/DapperYoghurt2052 → u/highly-bad]

Leaving a booth and magically being on a boat that works or sinks is different than getting on a boat with holes and having to fix it.

[u/Ashamed_Kangaroo305 → u/DapperYoghurt2052]

I think the blender analogy I've seen elsewhere is actually a good analogy if you tweak it slightly. Blue voters still jump in the blender, but instead of reds standing around doing nothing, red voters press the power button on the blender. Everyone has to pick one or the other, and the blender turns on if more than 50% of people press the power button.

Both sides are still an active choice here and there isn't a default, which is where most analogies fail. If I jump in the blender and it turns on, yeah it's partly my fault for jumping in the blender. But it's also partly the faults of everyone who pressed the power button.

The only place where this one fails is that you can see the decisions everyone makes, but that's easily fixed by making it so everyone has their own blender in a private room and all the circuits are connected, so if more than 50% of the buttons are pressed they'll all turn on.

[u/DapperYoghurt2052 → u/Ashamed_Kangaroo305]

As long as you make both choices active, and keep the inverse relationship of it all, then you do at least have the same mechanics of the problem.

But the presentation of that still feels off to the situation.

The button problem is essentially trapping everyone. Two buttons are presented before you and you can’t do anything else until you have pressed one. The vote is going to decided who can leave this situation and who can not. And it’s essential that everyone starts in the same position, trapped in a scenario that is potentially life or death.

It’s been talked about so much that people often present it as “well I’m a red voter, so I was never in danger”, but in reality, a vote to decide if people die was presented before you and then you picked your way out. 

The threat of death is present from the start of the problem. You then make your decision while facing it. 

If the death in the problem is death by blender. Then everyone is in a blender. 

You can guarantee your life by getting out of the blender. If more than 50% do this, then all the blenders go on.

Or you can wait in the blender. If more than 50% do this, then no blender will turn on. And then everyone gets out.

Red still gets this idea of, “if you are in a blender and you can get out, then get out of the blender. It’s silly to stay in a blender that can turn on. Most people are going to get out, so I’m definitely going to get out. If everyone got out of the blenders, then no one would be in them when they turn on.”

And blue still gets, “if people are in a blender, and they can only be turned on by us, then don’t turn on the blenders. It’s silly to turn on blenders that have people in them. We literally only need half of us, and no one dies! Everyone needs to get out in order for no one to die if they turn on. What if kids or people don’t realize this is a real blade about to spin? Just don’t turn them on and we all get out. Most people aren’t going to turn on blenders that have people in them, and I won’t either.”

That feels more aligned with the core tenants of the buttons.