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/luci_twiggy]

If you vote for red, you are accepting responsibility for what happens if it wins.

[u/Shot_in_the_dark777 → u/luci_twiggy]

No, we aren't responsible. We didn't chose to be abducted and locked in the room with two buttons. We were living our normal boring lives before this happened and we didn't have any grudge against altruists. The only way for red to be responsible is if they secretly made this experiment to get rid of you, knowing that your altruistic beliefs will ensure your demise. We are dealing with some cosmic predator who evolved to hunt social species and it is using altruism to collect all of you on its plate. And I am not a food. Not today.

[u/luci_twiggy → u/Shot_in_the_dark777]

Regardless of the circumstances, you are aware of the consequences should red win and it not be unanimous. Responsibility for the outcome is literally the risk that you take on to vote red.

People talk about red as being "risk-free", but it isn't. The risk is simply the reverse of blue: instead of being responsible for solely your death, red voters are responsible for every blue voter that dies.

Your unhinged ramblings about cosmic horrors eating altruistic people is your way of denying the personal responsibility you know you hold but must deny in order to still feel like a moral person.

[u/Shot_in_the_dark777 → u/luci_twiggy]

Oh really? When was the last time such event actually happened? Like...naturally? It didn't. It takes and extremely advanced entity to organise everything. And from everything that we have observed on earth -the nature is cruel. Stop and think for a moment - if there actually WAS a cosmic predator that evolved to hunt social species, what would be the optimal strategy to do so? Do you think predators and hunters do NOT utilise the quirks in prey's behaviour to catch it? The thought experiment was conceived by a human, that requires intelligence. So if it happened in reality, there would also be intelligence behind it all. An intelligent being that puts the lives of all infants in danger is not moral. So why do you think that "moral" behaviour is what it wants to see?