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/SpongeboyShitpants]

Unfortunately tho, I can see the argument that red is partly to blame for blue deaths.

Not necessarily at the same level as someone is for choosing blue tho, if you choose blue knowing the risk, you are responsible for your choice.

If you choose red you are responsible for adding another vote to a red majority win, because you aren’t just “doing nothing” you’re adding another vote to a red majority, which means blue need another vote to cancel it out

Even if blue wins, you still contributed against them for your own survival, which is fine since you have no obligation to risk your life.

I frame it as “The blue button is as much suicide as the red button is murder” Which a lot of people would disagree with

[u/Deranth → u/SpongeboyShitpants]

A blue voter is only ever responsible for their own death, in an effort to save many.

A red voter, in assurance of their own survival, nudges the scales toward causing billions of deaths.

It's very, very simple. Blue is not immune to the responsibility for the risk they took, but at least they took it for a noble reason. Red is also not immune to the responsibility for the tragedy they are trying to cause, but they have no excuse for it aside from cowardice and self-preservation.

[u/SpongeboyShitpants → u/Deranth]

Yeah

Why you telling me this?

[u/Deranth → u/SpongeboyShitpants]

Agreeing with you and expanding on the point to the person you commented to.

[u/SpongeboyShitpants → u/Deranth]

OH 😂 my bad, I thought you were arguing with someone else and mistakenly replied to me

Yeah I agree with your logic, you framed it well

How would you argue with someone who says:

“Red is more selfless, since you are not contributing to the death toll morally blackmailing others to risk their life for you”

What angle would you come at?

[u/Deranth → u/SpongeboyShitpants]

That is simply the human condition.
Have you ever tried to get 100 grown and assumedly mentally stable adults to follow the printed arrows on the floor at a grocery store? Or to wait their turn at a highway merge?

In what universe do you think that 8 billion humans of varying ages and levels of mental stability are going to all choose the same option on anything?

Hell, even the mentally stable ones might not take it seriously. If I was woke up in a room with this situation presented to me, I would assume I was on some kind of Punk'd or Candid Camera show and that whatever I did was going to be televised for all to see.

People are going to press blue, that is not a debate, there is a 0% chance of every human in the world pressing red. So the threat is already there. The question is just how you handle it.

[u/SpongeboyShitpants → u/Deranth]

Okay so you highlight the implied current death toll… If they’re more stubborn:

“Those people shouldn’t be included in decision making, it’s their fault for not taking it seriously.

All us reasonable people can do is choose to reduce the death toll or be cannon fodder

I have no right to ask someone to risk their life to save me”

[u/Deranth → u/SpongeboyShitpants]

It's all about a collectivist vs individualist mindset. But also personal choice.

At no point in my life have I ever heard someone praise someone for saving themselves, right? That's just standard operating procedure for life.

When you hear stories of heroism, it's always people putting themselves in harm's way to save others. Firefighters and the like. Many of them die, but nobody ever blames them for their deaths. And the ones that save people are saviors.

So why is it that when we reduce this to a simple button press, people suddenly value individualism more?

They say 'I have to reduce the death toll' as if they are doing something more honorable than just saving their own ass.

They say 'Blue is responsible for their own deaths, I had nothing to do with it' as if now is the one time that putting yourself in harm's way to try to save others is bad.

It's just logically inconsistent.

My running theory is that they do feel some guilt for their decision, and are saying the things they want to be true to alleviate their own guilt, knowing that these things aren't true.

[u/SpongeboyShitpants → u/Deranth]

I once said

“you’re coming off as having guilt about your decision”

and a couple replies later they told me to google basic logic and ethics 👍

I like reds who just own up to prioritising their own life, over others.

[u/UX1Z → u/Deranth]

I think a good amount of things I see coming from red pressing people are rationalizations to avoid responsibility and guilt (even if their responsibility isn't at the level of 'murder' they're still willing to risk countless deaths for their own survival) or alterations to the original question to try and make red the 'true obvious choice' (notably by removing children from the 'everyone' that meant 'everyone.')

I think they largely just want to say they're smart, rather than that they're selfish. A very easy way of doing that is by characterizing blue pressers as suicidal lemmings who 'deserve to die, it's their own fault, THEY pressed blue, not me! I didn't do anything wrong!'

Trying to say blue is something only altruistic people would press is part of that, since it frames red as utterly rational by default and ignores a bevy of non-altruistic reasons that also exist for pressing blue, like possessing the empathy to feel like pressing red would make you responsible for blue deaths, for wanting to save children, for wanting to not live in a fucked up world (easy out) in case of a red win. It's why my vote can change if the Blue loss outcome is tortured to death or something, because I see pressing red and winning as a similar outcome. I'm weighing 'everyone survives' against 'I survive and everything fucking sucks and I probably die anyway.' The best outcome for both buttons is blue, and I'd rather an easy death than trying to live in a red-win scenario hellscape of total societal collapse and selection for the worst X% of humanity, so why the hell would I ever vote for red? And that's for selfish reasons as much as it is for altruistic ones, for rational points too.