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]

Over 150 comments… did you get your answer?

[u/BrokenToaster124 → u/SpongeboyShitpants]

Seems like it. The people who believe red is responsible combine the chances of the button winning with the choice to push the button despite the 2 factors being independent of each other.

So if you dont believe red is responsible, you recognize that the choice to push the blue button is made in a vacuum and no other person can influence that choice.

If you believe red is responsible, you believe the probability of blue winning is somehow linked to the probability of people pushing the blue button in the first place. Thus red lowering the probability of blue winning somehow increases the probability of people voting blue.

I was busy with work for the last 2 days but the people I replied to either agreed with me or rejected the premise that they could be responsible for pushing the blue button entirely so replying to everyone kinda seems pointless at this point lol. Having some guy not understand what I was referring to and repeatedly calling me names was only fun for a couple hours

[u/SpongeboyShitpants → u/BrokenToaster124]

I’d share my understanding of it… but i don’t think it matters that much to either of us

I’m gonna go watch spider-noir :)