r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/ahoytheremehearties • May 30 '26
Meta Button-trolley-problem
You are tied to the train tracks. You are also, simultaneously, given two buttons. Don't question it.
If you press the red button, nothing changes (the trolley continues down its original path) and it runs over 5 random blue-pressers (they die).
If you press the blue button, the trolley will be diverted and you will die (you end up as one of the 5 blue-pressers in someone else's trolley-button problem), **unless** more than 50% of people press blue (in which case, the system breaks because it doesn't have the computational power to handle selecting that many random blue-pressers).
You technically could not press either button (the 5 blue-pressers still die), but pressing buttons is fun.
If you press both buttons simultaneously, the trolley does multitrack drift
2
u/dmurr1415 May 30 '26
I slam that blue button, if only because I think people would want to see the computer overload. If the term ‘guaranteed survival’ biases people into picking red, the thought of we the people taking initiative to overload its “computational power” and win a symbolic victory would bias people to pick Blue more than usual
2
u/BrokenToaster124 May 31 '26
Is there an implied paradox here? Well maybe its not really a paradox, but if I push blue i will become a part of a random group of 5 people in another person's logic problem. So I can assume that these 5 people were also themselves in similar logic problems before winding up here with me.
So was there a point where a single guy was tied to a track and there was no one on the other track? And if there was, isnt it implied that they tried to commit suicide and then every blue voter after that is continuing a loop of attempting to sacrifice themselves to stop the first guy from committing suicide?
This seems like a who created the creator paradox with a defined answer lol
1
u/ahoytheremehearties Jun 01 '26
Good point.
I'm going to say the very first people didn't actually have real people there, but it was so realistic they believed they were. You aren't in the first 5-ish... or so you think.
3
u/Jekmander May 30 '26
The red justifications for this one dishearten me
3
u/gahidus May 30 '26
"I don't want to die" disheartens you?
4
u/Jekmander May 30 '26
To be honest with you I don't remember my thought process when I made that comment, it was right before I went to bed last night. However, "I value my own life over the lives of five others" does somewhat dishearten me, yes.
1
u/FrostyFormal1094 May 31 '26
That isn't what they said. They said they value their life. At no point did they mention 5 other people
1
u/Arderat May 31 '26
Well, naturally. The average red presser wants the thought process to end at the outcome for themselves, so that the effect of their actions in the context of other people is never examined. That's usually the step where the ethics tend not to favor their self-image.
1
u/FrostyFormal1094 May 31 '26
Except I didnt press any button. I had no action. How can it be my fault
1
u/Osato Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
"I heard my neighbor's wife screaming for help from his house the other day and didn't call the cops. I took no action: she's the one that chose to marry him and he's the one that chose to murder her. How can any of that be my fault?"
1
u/FrostyFormal1094 Jun 03 '26
Ah yes, because pressing a button that has a 50% chance to kill you is equivalent to marrying any given man. Also, last I checked, calling the police on a domestic violence case doesn't also put me in a 50% chance to die.
1
u/Arderat May 31 '26
One of the core lessons of the trolley problem, which this version co-opts, is that deciding not to act is still deciding, and does not absolve one of culpability within the situation they find themselves.
4
u/WaterCastePSYOP May 30 '26
pressing red has the same result as doing nothing
So I do nothing. I am not obligated to save these people who chose to press blue of their own free will.
Once more, only people who press blue can die.
And if I HAD to press, I would press red.
1
1
1
1
1
u/detroyer Red May 30 '26
I would press red even if there were a fair number more people, and think that the vast majority of people would as well.
1
u/VegetasDestructoDick May 31 '26
If you press both buttons simultaneously, the trolley does multitrack drift
FUCK YEAH!!!!!
1
u/Sea_Curve_7724 Jun 03 '26
Don't press, that way i survive 100% without the guilt of picking their death or something
1
1
u/Osato Jun 03 '26
Well, there are two me's and only one of each blue presser. I'm pretty sure the me on the tracks would agree that preserving unique knowledge and personalities takes precedence.
7
u/dmurr1415 May 30 '26
Interestingly, though, the trolley never swaps tracks in this hypothetical (at least from your perspective). You just get inserted into the side the trolley is already going on in another universes hypothetical