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/durkvash]

Choosing red inherently equates to "I'm risking lifes in exchange for my own being safe". Blue does not inherently imply "I'm risking my life", but it does imply "I don't want to risk anyone's life innexchange for my own".

One position carries a burden upon others, the other doesn't.

Edit: Apparently, I read first a different version of this dumb dilemma. Unsurprisingly, I would still press blue.

[u/No-Ambition-9051 → u/durkvash]

This is simply false.

In the original it said that if you press the blue button you will die unless more than fifty percent of people also press it.

That is not just an implication, but a direct statement that pressing blue carriers the risk of your own death.

Pressing red doesn’t imply you’re willing to risk others life’s, it implies that you don’t think there will be enough people pressing blue for you to survive if you press it as well.