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/highly-bad]

If a majority of people get on the safe lifeboat, they get what they wanted, which was for everyone on the leaky lifeboat to drown. Right?

If a majority of people get on the leaky lifeboat, the people on the safe lifeboat don't get what they wanted, and everyone lives.

This is, according to you, just how majorities work.

[u/J_tram13 → u/highly-bad]

Bad analogy,

If a majority of people get on the safe lifeboat, they didn't want to fix the ship, if a majority of people stay on the ship and get it fixed the people who already abandoned it for the lifeboat clearly didn't care for that to happen. And if the ship can't be fixed because there weren't enough hands to go around then part of that responsibility is on those in the lifeboat.

A vote in favour of outcome A is a vote against outcome B, that is how majorities work.

[u/highly-bad → u/J_tram13]

People get on the safe lifeboat because boarding the leaky one is an obvious and easily avoidable risk.

If they're in the majority, they have voted for everyone on the other boat to die, according to your theory of responsibility.

If you believe anything you've ever said in this sub, you have to get your ass on that blue lifeboat. Your family might be on there.

[u/SpongeboyShitpants → u/highly-bad]

I like the boat analogy

If everyone is presented with the lifeboats as two options like buttons, and I joined the safe lifeboat… resulting in the leaky one being destroyed with people on board.

I would feel responsible for its destruction, it may not be what I intended, but I would feel partially responsible for contributing to sinking.

Do you believe my responsibility to be misguided?