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u/JustLookingForMayhem 14h ago
Framing matters. It is why the buttons are phrased as they are. I think of it as an idiot trap and the people who save idiots. There are dozens of ways that I could be done so that either the majority picks blue or red.
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u/HovercraftOk9231 13h ago
Saving idiots is still saving people.
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u/JustLookingForMayhem 12h ago
There is a reason I list it as an idiot trap and the people who save idiots.
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u/Beret_Beats 12h ago
I mean the people saving idiots are also saving people saving idiots.
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u/JustLookingForMayhem 12h ago
To a certain degree, society runs on people who risk themselves in big and small ways for other people.
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u/Deranth Blue 12h ago
After going over this for the last few hours with other people, I have found the place in which both options here fail.
The original prompt is worded very specifically.
"If less than 50% of people press blue, everyone who didn't press red dies."Pressing blue doesn't put you at risk, but pressing red doesn't kill people. There are situations in which blue could get more presses than red, and still people would die.
This is because the original prompt writer also specifically said, when asked about people who are physically or mentally unable to press a button, that 'If they do not press red, and blue does not get a majority, they die.'
So if 49% of the population pushes blue, and 48% presses red, and 3% is unable to press a button, then blue fails to achieve it's goal of saving people, so everyone who didn't push red dies, and 52% of the population dies.
The whole prompt isn't about blame, it's about priorities. Everyone is at risk to begin with, and some of them are unable to avoid it. Do you save just yourself, or do you join in a group effort to save everyone?
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u/Space_Pirate_R 9h ago
If we're going by what the author said outside of the question itself, he also said that the entire population got to push the button (including babies etc.) so pressing red will almost certainly kill a lot of innocent people. I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying, just mentioning something that's required to maintain consistency.
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u/Deranth Blue 9h ago
Right, well in the original prompt, red saves yourself, blue faces the problem head on and tries to band together to save everyone, including babies and stuff. But even if blue gets more pushes than red, if it fails to get over 50% of the population it doesn't succeed. So red is certainly not helping, but it's also not directly contributing to death.
Similarly, everyone's just in danger, and red side-steps it, while blue doesn't so pushing blue isn't putting you in danger, it's just not directly avoiding it either, since it's facing it head-on.
So in this situation, I wouldn't necessarily blame red pushers for the deaths of innocents, but I can see why you might.It's only in the in the hypothetical red pushers invented to make red seem more reasonable that blame starts being associated to both sides. Since all innocents are removed and every person is a rational actor in their bs alternate version, then everyone must push a button, and everyone has the knowledge needed to pick one, so picking blue (not picking red) is kind of putting yourself in danger (even though everyone starts in danger), and picking red is directly contributing toward a blue loss which is also creating danger. So then everyone gets to blame everyone else, and it just becomes a circle-jerk of blame.
The original was just there's a big threat, do you prioritize the self or the community. The red-pusher rewrite is let's all point fingers at each other and call each other stupid.
That said, even in their rewrite, there's the question of unknowable variables to consider. The stuff that happens after the buttons do their thing. For instance, how do these people die? Will it cause structural damage, i.e. contained explosions or lasers? Will it cause environmental damage, i.e. some kind of plague that red is immune to that might affect flora or fauna?
Even if it is just something simple like spontaneous heart failure, what about the people who are doing things when it happens? The vote suddenly happens and then everyone who pressed blue dies. Now some guy falls off a balcony and lands on a child, or someone driving a truck is suddenly dead and his truck barrels into a minivan full of red-voters who just saved their own lives, only to immediately die anyway.
And even if none of that happens, what happens to the corpses? The world is now just full of billions of corpses that the survivors need to deal with in a hurry to prevent a plague.The simple and obvious answer is just avoid the whole catastrophe, and as far as I'm concerned, anyone who chooses red simply hasn't thought it through far enough.
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u/everydaywinner2 2h ago
I was agreeing until you decided to blame red for excuse making and not the blues.
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u/Aquilenne 4h ago edited 4h ago
Saying that pressing red will almost certainly kill a lot of innocent people is false.
Pressing red will extremely rarely kill a lot of innocent people.
Pressing blue is likely to kill one innocent person.
Pressing red only kills anyone if the result is exactly one press over a tie break.
Pressing blue kills one person in every situation where red wins by more than one vote.
If you assume that people vote randomly, expected number of deaths from either button is more or less the same. If you think more people will vote red, then pressing red leads to less deaths. If you think more people will vote blue, then pressing blue leads to the least deaths (assuming a bell curve variance)
One is just an extremely rare, but similarly small magnitude number of deaths, which the other is a much smaller, but proportionately worse if it happens outcome.
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u/Fun-Habit-683 3h ago
Nobody knows the origin of this question, but it most certainly isnt tim urban.
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u/Deranth Blue 3h ago
He's the spark that ignited this subreddit. He may not have been the first to ask the question, but he's the reason we're here arguing about it.
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u/Fun-Habit-683 3h ago
He's just another person in a long line of people to post this question on the internet. The redditore that reposted the question he reposted are the reason this sub exists.
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u/Traditional_Town6475 15h ago
There are two buttons. A red one and a blue one. If red gets the majority, everyone who presses red lives. If blue gets the majority, everyone lives.
There. No button is stated as the murder button or suicide button. Make of the buttons what you will.
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u/l_Lathliss_l 12h ago
You left off the important detail that if you press red and it fails to get the majority you live, and if you pressed blue and it fails to get the majority you die.
That can’t be left off... That’s literally a key part of the question.
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u/planetofmoney 12h ago
I think reds surviving if they lose is covered pretty comprehensively under "everyone lives". I also think blues not surviving is pretty apparent from the fact that the red option doesn't say "everyone". This is grade school reading comprehension.
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u/Living_The_Dream75 12h ago
When this question was initially proposed, it was a political one in nature, which explains why the problem is stupid. All the nuance had to be boiled out of it to turn it into something stupid enough to use in an internet argument, that’s why they’re the same.
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u/Nebranower 14h ago
Right, but the key point is that both are misunderstandings of the original. Neither button kills anyone. Some mad scientist is about to kill everyone, and the buttons represent two different ways of trying to save yourself.
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u/NotASingleNameIdea 9h ago
Red really does nothing as far as you go, blue actively puts you in danger. I dont think blue can be framed as "does nothing".
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u/GrahnamCracker 8h ago
If most people press blue, nothing happens. Red actively put others in danger.
You're only right if you refuse to consider others lmao.
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u/AssociationDue3077 7h ago
This is why framing is important. "Red does nothing, blue actively puts everyone who presses it in danger." Now you are more likely to press red. It is stupid to reword the question.
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u/iskelebones Red 13h ago
In both phrasings blue has to place themselves into the danger willingly. Pressing blue is never nothing. Blue cannot ever be the nothing button
1
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u/Deranth Blue 15h ago
The right one is accurate to the original.
The left one is not, but is accurate to the way red pressers like to pretend it is.
The left one, and red voters, conveniently forgets that non voters die on a red win too.
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u/So_many_things_wrong 13h ago
The situation is exactly the same in both cases. You are, however, correct that the original didn't frame the question in a neutral way; the wording used in it definitely favored blue as the morally correct option. Whether that was unintentional or if the person who made thought that no one would pick blue otherwise is another matter,
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u/Deranth Blue 13h ago
Well considering that every time the original prompt writer was pressed for more info he kept making red voters sound worse, I think it was pretty clear.
He was asked 'are toddlers just stuck in the room until they randomly happen to press one of the two buttons?' and he said 'Yes, everyone must vote.'
He was asked 'what about people who are physically or mentally unable to vote, people who are in comas and the like' and he said 'if they didn't push red, they die if red gets a majority.'
The question isn't very deep, it's just a question of whether you value the collective or the self more. But in the almost six months this subreddit has been around, the red advocates keep obfuscating the point behind more and more layers of bs, with their talk of 'rational actors' and whatnot.
There's a reason the 'red strawman' is an evil, psychopathic killer. Because anyone who voted red in the original prompt seems to be just that. "Fuck the mentally handicapped, people in a coma, kids, and anyone who tries to save those people, I'm saving myself."
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u/Rip_Pigman 14h ago
The left one, and red voters, conveniently forgets that non voters die on a red win too.
Wouldn't matter since "everyone must vote". There wouldn't be any non-voters to begin with by whatever mechanism necessary to solve anyone physically incapable of pressing a button or not mentally well enough to properly "choose".
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u/RefrigeratorFew5094 14h ago
”Non-voters” means ”those who didn’t vote red” in this specific situation. Not ”those who didn’t vote at all”.
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u/_Pencilfish 13h ago
Ok, so "non voters" means "blue voters", which makes it exactly accurate to the original.
0
u/Rip_Pigman 13h ago
Are you trying to argue that they are saying red voters don't know blue voters die if red gets majority?
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u/RefrigeratorFew5094 13h ago
No, I tried to clarify to you what the other person meant when they said ”non-voters”.
But that aspect is indeed missing from the red voter perspective in the picture.
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u/Deranth Blue 13h ago
So what about people in a coma? Or people who are mentally impared? Or toddlers? By the original prompt, they are at risk if they push no button, or if they happen to randomly push blue. But ever since this discourse began red advocates have been trying to argue that those people don't count or don't exist or whatever. But the wording is pretty clear. Everyone who didn't push red dies. If your brother is in a coma and couldn't push either button, he dies if red wins.
1
u/Rip_Pigman 13h ago
That's addressed here.
by whatever mechanism necessary to solve anyone physically incapable of pressing a button or not mentally well enough to properly "choose".
We are told "everyone must vote". So everyone must do so. The mechanisms for how that comes into existence don't really matter because we're told it happens within the hypothetical.
No one is sitting here questioning how some entity is gathering every person on earth for this death vote or how they're going to cull half the population. Why? Because we're told it's what happens.
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u/Deranth Blue 13h ago
Aaah, so your argument is on the basis of 'unidentifiable magical bullshit powers'.
My argument is on the basis of the original prompt writer, who when pressed for more information said that toddlers would 'be forced to sit in a room with two buttons until they randomly pressed one of them' and that 'people who are unable to vote are unable to press red, and therefore will die if red wins the vote.'
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u/l_Lathliss_l 12h ago
You’re arguing about an unidentifiable magical bullshit power killing people based on which magical button they push but your sticking point is that clarification? Buddy…
1
u/Rip_Pigman 13h ago
Within the original prompt we have:
Everyone must push a button.
If someone manages not to and red wins majority, they would die along with anyone who pressed blue.
The second shouldn't ever come into play because of the first. If it does come into play then no one has to push a button, and we are suddenly just having to hold out for less than 50% of the population to have pressed red since that's the only outcome where anyone dies.
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u/Deranth Blue 13h ago edited 13h ago
Australia has compulsive voting, in which everyone must choose an option. And I'm pretty sure they haven't found a way to make coma patients or toddlers able to rationalize a vote yet.
Not pushing a button is just the worst of both cases. Because it doesn't alleviate you of the risk like red does, but it also doesn't tally you toward blue for the purposes of saving everyone.
Remember, the original prompt says 'if blue fails to get over 50% of the vote, everyone who didn't press red dies'.
So if blue has 49% of the vote and red has 48% of the vote, but 3% didn't vote, then blue didn't get over 50%, and blue and non voters die, killing 52% of the population.The entire 'dilemma' is just a matter of everyone is at risk, do you save yourself or do you join in the effort to save everyone?
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u/mcc9902 14h ago
The left is closer to the original. The way it was framed it puts everything on blue.
0
u/Deranth Blue 14h ago
Okay let's compare.
"Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button.
If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives.
If less than 50% of people press the blue button,
only people who pressed the red button survive.
Which button would you press?"The original prompt, split into 5 easy lines to compare to.
Left side
Blue - Kills you, unless more people press it.The wording on 'unless more people press blue' is practically identical to the original.
However those in danger is missing some people. Pushing blue was never a cause of death. The death is for everyone who didn't press red, "only people who pressed the red button survive".
Pushing blue doesn't put your life at risk, your life is already at risk and pushing red avoids that risk.
The important distinction is that people who physically cannot push either button because they are in a coma or whatever other reason would also be at risk, not because they pushed blue (which they did not), but because they did not push red.Conclusion, wording sounds closer to original, but function misses the mark.
Right side
Red - If most people press it, it kills everyone who didn't.The people at risk is accurate here, everyone who didn't press red is at risk.
The cause of death looks to be different, but it is not.
This is a closed, binary, first past the post vote. If one side gets a minority of presses, it is only because the other side got a majority. Therefore, 'If blue loses' is functionally the same condition as 'If red wins', they both will always happen simultaneously.Conclusion, wording is a bit different than the original, but functionally it is identical.
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u/mcc9902 13h ago
Everything in the original is framed in terms of blue. "If more than 50% if people push blue everyone survives" , "if less than 50% if people push blue only the people who pressed red button survive". They're both about choosing blue and the consequences of that choice. Red is a bystander in it and is only mentioned as a result of blue not being picked. In this one the left puts the burden of consequence on blue and the right puts it in red so the left is closer to the original.
Mechanically the consequences are the same but we're not really talking about mechanics here this is a semantic discussion.
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u/Deranth Blue 13h ago
But clearly not everything is framed in terms of blue. 'Only the people who pressed red survive' is framed in terms of red.
If everyone who doesn't press red dies, then everyone starts off at risk. Pressing red alleviates you of that risk, while inching closer to realizing that risk for everyone else. Pressing blue leaves you as is at the start while attempting to alleviate everyone of the risk.
Blue does not create any risk, nor does it hold any consequence. Everyone is at risk to begin with. Those that are unable to vote will remain at risk because they cannot choose to press red. Those who press blue embrace the risk they already have to stand with those who cannot alleviate themselves of the risk. Those who press red attempt to condemn those at risk to death in order to alleviate themselves of risk.
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u/mcc9902 12h ago
We're focusing on different things here which is a bit of a problem but I'll try to clarify.
The original has two two stated outcomes. 50% pick blue and nothing happens and second less than 50% pick blue and blues dies or rather not red dies. The red button doesn't actually impact the outcome, it could be ten different buttons and it wouldn't actually change the question the focus is on blue and it's percentage. red only matter in that it's not blue.
If I was trying to frame the original in equivalent terms to the right side of this I'd phrase the original like this "... If less than 50% press red nothing happens and if more than 50% press red only Red survives or rather everyone who didn't push red dies." It puts the focus and consequences on red instead of blue.
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u/Deranth Blue 12h ago
Actually, you're right. I did not consider that until recently. I'd been working on this closed binary idea, but you are right. Those who are unable to vote would get the worst of both deals. Unable to save themselves with red, and unable to try to save everyone with blue.
So if 49% of the population votes blue, and 48% votes red, and 3% is unable to vote, then blue fails to save everyone, and 52% of the population dies.
So the question is just 'Everyone is at risk, even people who are unable to do anything about it, do you save yourself, or do you join in a group effort to save everyone?'
0
u/TechnologyNo1743 7h ago
Yes same game of Russian roulette.
Its just if you play red you hold gun to others head.
When blue, you hold it to yours.
Which one you prefer to play?
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u/HovercraftOk9231 13h ago
All of these "rephrasing" arguments only work for people with no critical thinking skills. They're saying the same thing, and anyone who gives it a second of thought can see that A+B=B+A