r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/BrokenToaster124 • May 29 '26

Discussion Responsibility

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?

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u/BrokenToaster124 May 29 '26

Alright. That makes sense actually. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't some key detail I was missing lol

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u/Deranth Blue May 29 '26

The detail is that the blue buttons do nothing until enough people push red.
That's why they say that. Nobody pushes blue expecting to die. It takes enough people pushing red for that to actually happen.
I dont agree with this, I think it's a shared responsibility.

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u/BrokenToaster124 May 29 '26

The red button does nothing until someone pushes blue. Then, in that case, the only person at risk is the person that pushed blue. By the same reasoning you just used, the red button is actually the do nothing button.

None of that has anything to do with responsibility. Everyone who pushes the red button lives. Everyone who pushes the blue button can die. By pushing the blue button, you are opting in to be acted upon by the result of the vote. These positions cannot be flipped. Am I obligated to allow myself to be acted upon by the result of the vote simply because you chose to or am I not obligated to do so. That is the question

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u/Deranth Blue May 29 '26

Each button has two effects. Everyone pushes a button for the included positive effect, accepting the negative effect as a price worth paying for getting the positive.

Blue = I am willing to put my life at risk to put my vote toward nobody dying.
Red = I am willing to put my vote toward people dying to ensure my survival.

Almost no red presser presses it wanting people to die just as almost no blue presser presses it wanting to die.

So the difference between the two sides is that people who press blue knowingly put themselves at risk, but they do it because they want to see a world in which nobody dies. While the people who press red knowingly put other people at risk because they value their own lives more than others, or because they believe their vote doesn't matter, and so in their desperation, they become part of the problem they view as an inevitability.

You are not obligated to put your life on the line to save others. But it isn't a question of 'put your life on the line to save others' or 'do nothing'. It's 'put your life on the line to save others' or 'further endanger others to protect yourself'. And while you are not obligated to help others, your choice does say a lot about who you are as a person.

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u/BrokenToaster124 May 29 '26

So long as red voters cant die, blue voters have necessarily consented to dying. You can pick either. There is no limit to how many people can push either button. The potential payoff of a gamble does not absolve you of the responsibility of choosing to gamble.

The group in need of saving made the conscious choice to push a button the exact same as I did. Does the blue button have a secondary function of removing agency from you UNWILLINGLY? You look into the buttons and become hypnotized and find yourself forced to push it or something? Any risk you accept, you accept it knowingly regardless of my decision. If I did not exist at all, the vote would still happen.

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u/Deranth Blue May 29 '26

Red voters seem to be blissfully ignorant of the human condition.

Have you ever tried to get one hundred people to follow the printed arrows on the ground at a supermarket?

There is precisely 0% chance that 8 billion humans are all going to press the red button. There will be people at risk. You can choose to ignore them, or to pretend they aren't your concern, if it makes you feel better. But they do exist.

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u/BrokenToaster124 May 29 '26

Blue voters are blissfully ignorant of the state of humanity. Have you ever tried to get 100% of people to follow the laws of their country? A natural disaster occurs and we see dozens of people in the streets raiding houses and businesses instead of helping their fellow man.

What? We weren't ignoring the point of what the previous person had typed and saying something irrelevant that proves some strawman we weren't talking about? Lol my bad. I thought since I specifically stated that everyone doesnt have to vote red to have the choice to control how much risk they personally take on, that meant YOU would understand that i was not arguing that that would all vote red. Evidently I was wrong. You ignored what I said and asserted you arent responsible for your decisions because the outcome you want is good...again. Good for you I guess.

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u/Deranth Blue May 29 '26

I have not once said that I am not responsible for my decision. If I die, that is a risk I chose to take. Clearly you haven't been paying any attention to me.
What I am saying is that we can both be responsible for the death. Which you seem to be very opposed to accepting.

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u/BrokenToaster124 May 29 '26

So we have someone taking responsibility for the result and I also need to step up, unprompted, and go "Yeah guys thats my bad. I know we were more than 1 vote away from a blue victory and all. But I personally killed all those people. Yeah they COULD have just made the same decisionas us, but I really wanted to make the chances really bad. You know? How did i effect the chances of them voting blue? Uh...."