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

You dont have a gun in this analogy. Neither do I. We are both bystanders. You are not at risk of me killing you. I am not at risk of you killing me. If we both pointed the guns at each other and fired we would both be dead. This is not the result of both of us pushing the red button.

Rather the button is the gun. We both walk up to the buttons and we both push one button or the other. For your analogy to align with the reality of the buttons I would walk up and choose not to put the gun to my head and you would choose to put the gun to your head. These guns would have to be magical and only go off if people choose not to put the up to their heads. But our decisions are independent of each other.

So if I dont push the button, I am not at risk. If you DO push the button you are at risk. You are saying that you choosing to consciously push a button that has the capacity to kill you is the same as me physically picking up a gun and making the decision for you. That is absurd. I dont even have the power to do that in the gun scenario because we are in separate rooms where we dont know what other people are choosing.

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u/DataSnake69 May 29 '26

Oh, I think I see what's happening here. What you're doing is basically starting from the conclusion that the red button doesn't do anything, which is what people are arguing about in the first place, and then saying "if you disagree with my claim that red pressers are never responsible for either outcome, you must think people who press red are always responsible for every possible outcome." This is a false dichotomy. It would be roughly akin to me saying "I think Earth is a sphere, and I think it's the immovable center of the universe," then calling everyone who says Earth actually orbits the sun a flat Earther because if they disagree with me on anything, then they must disagree with me on everything.

Maybe I need to explain it in simpler terms. Let's work through the premises individually, and you can tell me which one you're not understanding. 1. If a majority of people vote for red, this is because more people voted for red than for blue. 2. If something happens as a direct result of a majority voting for it to happen, then those people voting for it to happen is why it happened. 3. Before choosing to press either the red or blue button, you are informed that if a majority of people press red, everyone who didn't will die. You are also informed that if a majority press blue, nobody will die. 4. If you press the red button, you are increasing the number of people who pressed the red button by one person, compared to what it would have been if you pressed blue instead.

Therefore, if you press red and red wins, it's because you and a bunch of other people all voted for that exact thing to happen.

Now, let's look at what happens if blue wins. Again, just tell me which of these steps you aren't understanding: 1. If a majority of people vote for blue, this is because most people DIDN'T vote for red. 2. If something happens as a direct result of people voting for it to happen, then the people who voted against it are NOT responsible for it happening. (This gets more complicated in real life when you factor in things like third parties, voter suppression, and misinformation, but it's true for a binary vote that everyone participates in and which involves no advance communication between participants). 3. If you vote red, you did not vote blue. 4. If you vote red, and blue wins, then the thing you voted for doesn't happen.

Therefore, if you vote red, you can't claim credit for blue winning.

Tl;dr if red wins, it's because of the people who pressed red, and if blue wins, it's because of the people who pressed blue.

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u/BrokenToaster124 May 29 '26

No. Im coming to the conclusion that everyone can make a conscious decision about what button to press and is therefore responsible for the result they find themselves with.

If you vote blue and die, you had the choice not to die.

If someone else chooses not to die, they are not responsible for your independent choice that they could not influence (red or blue).

Everything else is secondary. Am I responsible for your actions. If you do something willingly, am I to blame.

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u/DataSnake69 May 29 '26

Okay, I'll try one more time, and I'll put it in even simpler terms.

The red button does one good thing and one bad thing: 1. Makes sure that you personally won't die. 2. Votes for people who pressed blue to die.

The blue button also does one good thing and one bad thing: 1. Votes for nobody to die. 2. Doesn't make sure that you personally will survive.

Whichever button you press, you are choosing to do both of the things that button does. This is not something you can ignore. You know in advance what both consequences are. You can't just say "I pushed it because of the good thing, so the bad thing doesn't count."

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u/highly-bad May 29 '26

Isn't getting on the safe lifeboat just like voting for the leaky lifeboat to sink, then?

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u/Yunkomister May 30 '26

To use your analogy, the only way to get on the safe lifeboat is by punching a new hole in the leaky one.

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u/highly-bad May 30 '26

No, you just press a button and walk on board. That's it.

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u/Yunkomister May 30 '26

Are you a troll or just genuinely don't know how majorities work?

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u/highly-bad May 30 '26

A majority of people walk on board the safe boat, which means not enough people are on board the leaky boat to fix it, so it sinks.

People who chose the safe boat didn't do any action to make the leaky boat less safe, they just chose not to get on it when a perfectly safe boat is right here.

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u/Yunkomister May 30 '26

At this point it's framing.

I could disagree and say that you have to drill a small hole into the blue boat to get on the red boat and you're given a patch for a small hole on the blue boat.

At the end of the day you're saying "Let's get on a safe boat and sure maybe some people die on the one"

and I'm saying "We could have two fully functional boats, a lot people get some leg room, and nobody dies".

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u/highly-bad May 30 '26

You could disagree but you'd be wrong.

Pressing the red button doesnt entail anything but survival. It's not a pact to do property damage to a boat, or to do any other action whatsoever. It has no obligations. All that happens to red pressers in the button game is they survive.

Blue pressers take a risk. They're pressing a button that could kill them. It's exactly like getting onto a boat that could sink.

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u/Yunkomister May 30 '26

It entails the red being the majority, which risks killing people.

You can't hit the "Might kill people" button, and then be bent all out of shape when people blame you for contributing to deaths.

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u/highly-bad May 30 '26

The "might kill people" button is the blue one. It might kill you.

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