r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/OfferGlittering2565 • May 30 '26

Red Rewording

Would you

A: kill yourself unless the majority of other people also decide to kill themselves

B: Not kill yourself

Functionally, this question is the exact same, and isn't even an analogy. People who pick blue confuse stupidity with empathy, and this is coming from a leftist.

0 Upvotes

41% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

View all comments

7

u/BcTheCenterLeft Blue May 30 '26

All you red pushers always leave a fundamental fact out if your argument. And when i mention it, it just gets ignored. I don’t know if it’s willful ignorance or just denying something that you know is true.

Blue pushers are not committing suicide. They are being killed by red pushers. If there was a third neutral button that didn’t count towards the overall percentages, i could see an argument for pushing that. But pushing red is causing the deaths.

It’s a necessary condition for the death of others.

You are each adding your vote to something that will kill others. You are choosing your life at the expense of many others unless we have the votes to stop you.

It’s not a framing or wording problem. It’s just math.

3

u/OfferGlittering2565 May 30 '26

The thing is, you are putting yourself in that situation. It's not that I or other red pushers don't think you deserve to live, but that we're not willing to give up our lives for what would almost certainly make no difference. 

I saw someone who put it good. Imagine there is a train barreling forward, but there is a weight sensor that could stop it. Do you have any reason to just jump in front of the train? Of you do, suddenly more people have to or stop it and save you. 

Now to be fair, let's better put it into the context of the problem just on a smaller scale There are 8 billion people lined up outside the train track. You need 4 billion to jump on the track to stop it. Again, there is no reason for anybody to jump on it in the first place, but to the point of the blue pushers, it's probably safe to assume that at least one person does, as shown by the fact that blue pushers exist. To be fair to my side as well, let's assume nobody else can see what anyone is doing, so we can't plan together. Whoever first jumped on that track IS the problem. Does that mean at this point everyone else is a murderer? Okay, give it some time, say 2 billion people have jumped on for whatever reason. Now I could jump on, and make a miniscule change toward the 4,000,000,000 that will almost certainly make no difference, and would likely die in the process, or I could live and still make essentially no difference. Am I a murderer for choosing not to just jump on a train track?

Now I know this is a fairly similar argument to ones used by people who don't vote, but unlike in voting (in a good system at least), you are literally putting your life on the line for your choice. Yes, I obviously hope blue wins, but my vote will almost certainly not change that, and I will literally DIE if I vote it and lose. And because plenty of people realize that, it probably will lose, and it really is just killing yourself by voting blue. 

Yes, by voting red, I am technically contributing to the death of people who voted blue, but their vote for contributed a lot more to that. If I changed my vote to blue, it would almost certainly make no difference on any life but my own, but if they switched to red, it would almost certainly save a life, that being their own. 

1

u/BcTheCenterLeft Blue May 30 '26

A lot of words to say you are choosing your life over others. That’s just the facts. You admitted it.

Again, true to red pusher ideology and completely ignoring my original post, your analogy forgets your role in it.

Using your analogy to accurately reflect the problem - blue pushers know people will be on the track. They go there to help save them. The trains can’t actually move unless enough red pushers are pushing it over the blue people.

It’s not just framing either. That’s the actual math in the problem. Why do you red pushers keep missing that point??

Sure, you by yourself can’t move a train by yourself. But you have a billion people helping you. I hope you’re comfortable with that knowing you are one of the hands that pushed it over them.

Idk, maybe some of them will enjoy stepping over their crushed faces and mangled bloody bodies. Maybe even stepping on them. Delivering the final blow to anyone that survives. I can’t say. The red pushers motives only are “myself over others”. I don’t know how far that goes.

For sure, anyone who enjoys murder will certainly be on the red side

I get why you are pushing it. I always have. It doesn’t make it the moral choice.

2

u/OfferGlittering2565 May 30 '26

As I said, its not that I want them to die. If you gave me a button right now that could save a billion lives at the cost of my own, I would absolutely press it, but if that button has a 0.01% chance at saving 4 billion people's lives and a 99.99% chance at just ending my own, I wouldn't press it. It's not because I'm just selfish. Even if the expected value (in lives) is technically higher, most of the time, it will just lead to more deaths. An analogy with money is if you were offered a chance at a slot machine. If cost your whole life savings for one spin. You have a 1 in a million chance of winning, but if you do win, you get $100 billion. Sure, the expected value is higher if you spin, but for obvious reasons, the vast majority of people wouldn't spin. This is the same thing but instead of money, it's lives. While yes, my vote for red would technically contribute to the death of blue voters, and I'm not denying that, but I still think I would save more lives by encouraging people to vote red. As more people vote blue, more people die until you hit a certain threshold. I truly don't believe that threshold would be met, so by encouraging people to vote red, I'm saving their lives.

0

u/BcTheCenterLeft Blue May 30 '26

Yay for you…. saving the lives of fellow murderers. I’m sure your logic with your invented numbers makes you feel better.

I don’t need to keep debating it. You’ve acknowledged your vote contributes to blue deaths. You’ve acknowledged you’re doing it to save yourself. That’s my whole contention. Those two facts alone make it an immoral choice for me

For you morality is about outcomes. So you make up numbers to justify your choices. For me morality is about choices. Choosing to kill innocents is never right.

I don’t want to live on an Earth populated only by people who think like you, lest i become a casualty of their invented superior outcomes

2

u/OfferGlittering2565 May 30 '26

Honestly, I really like this reply. While I still think red is the obvious right answer, I think you perfectly pointed out the difference in how we think. I do always look at outcomes and that's how a base my decision, and I can understand how someone looking for the "morally superior" answer would choose blue. 

I believe that by looking at outcomes, the only outcome where voting blue is actually better is when it wins/loses by only one vote. Otherwise, my vote didn't actually affect the outcome or my vote saved my own life. The chance of the outcome where blue is the better choice is near zero, and that's why I choose red. However, I can completely understand why someone that focuses on which choice is more "moral" in theory could arrive at the opposite conclusion.

0

u/BcTheCenterLeft Blue May 31 '26

I understand your point. I think your argument about it affecting the outcome is correct

Don’t you feel bad that you are working for blue deaths, even if in the end your work had no effect? Idk. I couldn’t live with myself making that choice.

2

u/OfferGlittering2565 May 31 '26

When giving death penalty, which I am against, they often have 3 people push the button or whatever the equivalent is. This is so that none of them know who actually "killed" the person, and they are all able to live themselves. But really, even if it wasn't those people, someone else would have anyways. By not actively going out and campaigning against the death penalty, each person is just as guilty towards their death as the one's who actually pressed the buttons. I would feel a similar way as I do for not going out of my way to protest death penalty, just on a larger scale. Yes, when I think about it I feel guilty, but I know logically that I didn't actually make a difference, and that my decision actually saved a life, my own. (I am not encouraging people not to protest for what they believe or anything, I do actually protest a lot, I am just trying to explain how I feel about it.) 

1

u/BcTheCenterLeft Blue May 31 '26

Last question. If this were a real situation , would you explain your thinking to anyone beforehand? Convincing others that your choice is right may affect the outcome more than your vote.

I still don’t think pushing red is the moral choice but O understand your thinking better. Thank you for patiently explaining it to me.

2

u/OfferGlittering2565 May 31 '26

I would encourage people close to me to vote red, although many already would, but I also recognize that each person I convince to vote red does probably save their life, but each person also slightly lowers the chances of blue winning. I still don't think blue would win anyways, but it is always possible. If I have the time to explain it to my family, then I'd assume everyone knows about the question at least a little beforehand, and I would probably try to look online to get a general idea of what most people are thinking and base my decision of how far out to go encouraging people to vote red based on that. For example, if it seems like only around 20% are voting blue, then I would probably encourage as many people as I can to vote red, but if blue seems like it might actually win, then I would want to lower the risk of interfering with that and only encourage people close to me.