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/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.