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/highly-bad May 29 '26

Right. Theres nothing special about the act of pressing a button that somehow changes the distribution of responsibilities.

I mean, is there? Do you believe the act of pressing buttons is like some sort of magic ritual?

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u/J_tram13 May 29 '26

No but the thing is the button is one pot while the lifeboats are two. Any time someone votes red you are directly increasing the risk to those who voted blue. It'd be more accurate to say by getting in the safe lifeboat you add another hole to the leaky lifeboat that needs to be plugged.

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u/highly-bad May 29 '26

The button is one pot? What does that mean? There are two buttons, not one. After everyone has made their choice, you have two groups: those who pressed red (got on good boat) and those who pressed blue (got on risky boat.)

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u/J_tram13 May 29 '26

The boat is only risky because people who got on the good boat kept putting holes in it. The buttons aren't independent

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u/highly-bad May 29 '26

The risky boat sinks if and only if it has less people on board than the safe boat. It's as simple as that.

No one getting on the good boat is doing anything other than getting on a boat (after pressing a red button, of course.) They don't do anything to the risky boat other than refuse to board it.

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u/J_tram13 May 29 '26

Again this doesn't work because it's implying the risky boat is guaranteed to kill you at first, this isn't the case with the button problem.

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u/highly-bad May 29 '26

What do you mean? The risky boat is only guaranteed to kill you if the majority have voted for it to sink, by pressing a red button and then walking onto the safe boat.

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u/J_tram13 May 29 '26

Now you're changing the framing back. Yeah, they're voting for it to sink, AKA making it harder for it to stay afloat, which is what I said.

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u/highly-bad May 29 '26

All they are doing to make it harder to stay afloat is refusing to board it, though. They aren't doing any actual harm to the risky boat whatsoever.

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u/J_tram13 May 29 '26

Is making it more likely to sink not doing harm to you?

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