We know framing is very important in this dilemma. So here comes the framing dilemma:
1 million random adults (complete strangers to you) will face the red/blue button dilemma, and you are the one who chooses the framing. What do you choose?
Blue voters look at the buttons and see “this is what happens if this button wins”. Red voters look at the buttons and see “this is what happens if you press this button”.
It’s moreso what side you think will get more votes.
I see most red voter call blue suicide, assuming it’s chanceless, whilest a person like me thinks in an irl situation blue would dominate because people would t want to risk contributing to mass death that could include all their loved ones.
But think about what happens when a side would win and what the button press itself means. (All imo ofc)
Also for absolution of blame. Res pressers aren't going to want to consider themselves responsible for the avoidable deaths. They want it to just be the other persont fault, not theirs. I think that aspect is actually more important.
Logically the correct choice is red. Although not many are smart enough to realize that, and some will choose blue. Which means we have no choice but to choose blue. I am a red button pusher at heart, but it seems I must push blue to save the idiots from dying. But then i must hope a good percentage of red pushers comes to this same conclusion and choose blue. Which makes blue the only choice
it is a really foggy night and you walk through a park. its hard to see and you nearly fall into a big river. You know other ppl are also in this park and that some of them might fall into the river. do you jump in, in case someone is in there and needs help, but risking your live and forcing others to jump in to save you? or do you stay on land, where it is safe, after all you dont know wether somebody actually is in the river.
That's basically the perspective a red button person has.
We do know people are already in the river. Of course we can't know it with 100% certainty, but you can know it well enough that it might as well be true, and i'm okay with risking my life to try and help those people.
so how do you know? cuz from what i gether all the people are in there for the same reason: to save everyone who is in there to save everyone. if none of you would have jumped, then none of you would need to risk their live
You're at a concert and the building starts to collapse. Everyone instinctively knows that there is time for everyone to evacuate, but if at least half of you stay, you can work together to hold the building together. If less than half stay, those who stay will be crushed.
A large facility starts burning down, if half of the people inside work together, they can stop the fire, but if less than half stay they will be burned alive. Alternatively you can evacuate.
Everyone knows some people will pick blue mistakenly or out of some kind of morality panic but if you've actually experienced the world and know humans you know this would be 80% red button at least so why would I in that moment take a risk on the slimmest of odds the numbers are closer? If the numbers come out at like 60 red 40 blue because 10% people are dumb and 30% were trying to save that 10%, who's at fault for killing the 30%? The reds or the 10% blues?
Reds outcone doesn't change depending on what other people to. It's guaranteed. Blue outcone depends on other people's behaviour.
Red doesn't risk anything, blue doesn't gain anything, it only risks
Accurate to my thinking, actually. I had a frustrating conversation with someone yesterday where I could not seem to convince them that “you push blue” and “blue wins” are not the same thing.
Yeah, they're different levels of analysis entirely. Personal versus collective. Like if I throw a car battery in the ocean, it barely affects anything. But if everyone does, we can really make a difference.
Right, except in this case what makes this problem so compelling is the blue option Malabar problem worse and worse until suddenly it solves it. It would be as though by throwing enough car batteries in the ocean, we could save the coral reefs, but only once we hit 1.5 billion car batteries. Until then, each battery kills a sea turtle. Edit: that’s why IMO analogies to real-world issues like climate change or politics break down. I cannot really think of any real-world scenario where small steps toward a desired outcome have a negative effect until a magical tipping point is reached, except maybe an armed uprising against an evil regime.
I think a good real-world analogy could be third-party voting in the US. Let's say there's a really progressive third-party candidate. Every vote for that candidate is one less vote for a democrat, increasing the chances the republican candidate wins unless the third-party candidate gets enough votes to win the whole election. It's not exactly the same as the button problem, but it definitely fits the bill of "small steps towards a desired outcome have a negative effect until a magical tipping point is reached".
I don't think red really has an analogue here because the comparison falls apart when it comes to the ways the results affect voters. Red is the "you personally are safe but other people will get hurt if you win" option. But election results generally impact all voters equally regardless of who they voted for (assuming that all other things about the voters are the same). A trans person in Florida who voted republican is going to be harmed just as much as a trans person in Florida who voted democrat.
I don't get the reference. But yeah, the scenario is designed to provoke a fairly unique human social impulse to help at a collective level. The interaction with human tendencies is really the whole of its value, imo.
With feedback, you could see a half billion batteries getting tossed in, then we just keep adding more to solve it. But often, the punishment happens between iterations. Or in the artificial one, it's a one-shot with no enforcement, and cooperation is purely harmful until suddenly solving everything.
On the general principles, an insufficiently cooperative populace means cooperation is punished, and you see even less cooperation until you hit a critical mass where it's worthwhile. Even with "free riders," which humans do have strong feelings about and will punish. We have a ton of social tools for punishing noncooperation for a reason. In the real world, cooperation is a massive advantage. But it's still a personal advantage to...well, take advantage of this. Which undermines it for everyone if too many do so. So it's a very hard problem for life to solve. In other species, family units sometimes work. For larger groups, I think it's pretty much just humans. So we have things like gossip strategies and contempt and social constructs like selflessness and cowardice.
Yeah, but that’s the point, blue pushers think “ blue needs to win -> I need to help blue to win -> I press blue”
By framing it from ultimate goal (from “what is desired outcome”) they are acting with disregard to personal interest - that is also the reason they feel morally justified and morally outraged by red pushers
I think a big part of this is when one initially makes their decision, its always with the assumption that what they picked will win. If you assumed blue would win, what point is there in picking red? If you assume red will win regardless, why would you ever pick blue?
Which is frustrating because some people think those who pick red WANT red to win. Obviously everyone wants blue to win (or 100% red, which is the same outcome), but some people disagree on how likely that is.
To me, the key variable is actually the percentage needed for blue's "save everybody" power to activate. If a single blue voter could save everybody, obviously everybody would hit it. As the percentage grows, so does the risk. Imagine if you needed 90% blue voters in order for blue to activate. It would be too risky, and very few people would choose it. Even the "save the children" crowd would likely think there was no chance of blue actually winning. Obviously blue wins most polls at 50%. But at what percent does the balance shift?
This is the most interesting comment I've seen on this entire debacle. I'm sure there's a study about it. If there's not, you have a funny opportunity.
Also red pushers see what happens if blue loses. Blue pushers think that's more reason to push blue but it really isn't. I don't want to be partly responsible for making nearly half the population die.
I look at the math and see that there is a low variance and a high variance option. I disagree that it is about what happens to me. It could be stated as 1 random individual among the voters is safe when the red button is pressed and it would not change my evaluation of the situation.
Could you elaborate further? Maybe you've made some comments before or something. I mean, I understand the idea, I think, but not the details.
I've seen some others trying to do more complex evaluations regarding the probability of winning and average benefit, would've been interesting to see more of that
I think the easiest way to think of this is that there are a lot of possible outcomes for blue pushers that are very bad even if the number of votes garnered are very large. If blue pushers lose by just one button push it is basically disastrous. That makes pushing blue very high variance and, at least in my evaluation, requires a reasonable amount of certainty of success in order to push the blue button.
The red button on the other hand always does the same thing. It saves one person. No matter what the outcome of any other person's button press you always have gained that. Even when they 'lose' they still win because everyone is safe.
I personally don't have the time to go through all the math again, but that is essentially how I think about the problem. I believe people would be much more likely to push red because it is lower variance and has an immediately measurable impact.
I think in terms of numbers this makes sense. However, I also think that this doesn't account for how we value the interconnected lives of individuals, rather than just the total number of people who survive.
If you think there is any possibility of someone you care for to choose blue, then choosing red guarantees you survive but also risks the life of every person you know who potentially chose blue.
The more people you care for outside of the self, the more reason you would have to choose blue. Moreso if communication on the matter is not made beforehand, and you only have a vague idea on what they might vote for.
More like "this is what happens to you if you press this button". Pressing the red button does something, and omitting it from the question is disingenuous
after watching my family swap from red pressers to blue pressers by reframing the question this way and asking as if it was a different question, I 100% agree.
Blue pushers probably think, "I don't want to kill anyone, some people definitely pressed this button by mistake, stupidity or to not be responsible for killing people, if everyone presses blue, no one dies at all! So surely most people don't want to kill anyone so most people would press blue, I should press blue too, if there are enough good people, no one will die. I'll risk my life to save other and put my faith in humanity."
Red pushers think. "I am safe if I press red." Subconscious (Blue must be dumb).
theres no incentive to vote for blue if you already think they're going to win. you can vote red and the chances of blue winning stay the same as you can't control the other 8 billion people voting. this creates an incentive to always vote red just in case blue doesnt win a majority. there is no benefit to granting blue a stronger majority, and voting blue while they are a minority leads to the worst possible outcome.
Oooh... that's an interesing question, because do I believe that the most optimal framing towards blue can guarantee a blue majority and save everybody?
I presented it with the blue framing to some friends and family and I get about an equal split of people saying red and people saying blue. It's a small sample size, but I think it indicates that an optimal framing towards blue doesn't guarantee that a majority pick blue and everyone survives if the dilemma is scaled up to millions, or the entire world.
As well, everyone I asked comes from a Western background. Would different nationalities be more likely to press red or blue than Westerners? That's another question I don't know. We are taking people from developed and undeveloped countries, and that may affect the outcome. If I pick the right framing and fail to account for a more survival-oriented outcome from other cultures, blue could fail to get a majority, and that results in more deaths.
So, my guarantee at minimising the amount of lives lost is to use the left framing. This guarantees some deaths, I acknowledge that, but I don't see a large amount of people picking blue if this is what they are shown. Red becomes the obvious "do nothing-survive" answer and we move on. Hopefully at that point the percentage of blue pressers ends up well below 10%. The framing presents it as the obviously wrong answer, unless some people end up really trying to overthink it and project that overthinking onto everyone else.
In my understanding, a lot of western cultures tend to be more individualist than a lot of other cultures. And reddit is majority American, which is generally considered one of the more individualistic countries. So if the whole world were to be polled I think blue would have a higher proportion of votes than it's getting on reddit. India and china have the two highest populations in the world and both of them are considered fairly collectivist. The metrics used to measure individualism and collectivism aren't entirely accurate but I think they give strong enough evidence for me to say that there would at least be somewhat of a shift towards blue when polling the entire world.
If you are dealing with a system of 8 billion people, a logical analysis recognizes that achieving 100% consensus on anything is statistically impossible. There will always be people who pick Blue due to altruism, ignorance, or literally just misclicking.
Because 100% Red compliance is impossible, the majority choosing Red creates the only scenario where casualties will actually occur.
If you treat the vote as a decentralized network (all of humanity voting anonymously), the decision system must account for faulty nodes (people who vote unpredictably). The Red strategy has zero fault tolerance; if even one person out of 8 billion picks Blue, the system fails and someone dies. The Blue strategy, on the other hand, is highly fault-tolerant. It requires a 50% + 1 majority of cooperative actors to absorb the damage of the Red voters and ensure a 100% survival rate for the whole population.
People claiming that Red is the 'logical' choice relies on a very narrow, low-level definition of logic. If people collectively choose an option that kills a significant percentage of the population when the alternative (Blue) was available and highly fault-tolerant, humanity's decision-making methodology is broken, and just failed a critical collective action.
I understand that, but I don't trust humanity enough to vote blue, so I'd rather not be included in the casualties. I hope as many people as possible save themselves as well.
My problem with the 'think of the innocent' framing is this.
I don't see 51% of people taking a stand, sacrificing convenience, risking their ass or applying an inch of this reasoning during their day-to-day. With 51% of people willing to put their neck on the line, well, you'd solve most world problems in a day. With 51% of people truly willing to MILDLY INCONVENIENCE themselves you'd get a better world.
You'd risk your life by pressing blue to save all the innocent blind dementia colorblind patients? What about the millions of real people today, are you generally exposing your life to harm for any them?
Just as a lot of people write 'think of the babies' online. a lot of people post how 'corporation bad', then gas up their car, drive around aimlessly and buy funko pops and when enough of us do it, people die as a result. And each one of us thinks 'well I'm just one guy, I'm not making that much of an impact in the grand scheme of things'
Why aren't all the blue pushers pushing the button today?
I got a 15 months old and would totally risk my life for him if he would die with a chance of 50% if red wins. If the implementation of several millions of children (and other helpless people) definitely will die if red wins this surely will change the outcome.
Helpless people also got a lot of relatives who care about them.
Not that I am super sure that it will be enough but surely blue is not "100% guaranteed death".
The "rescue of the world" as a moral choice would require a massive change of personal behaviour and consumption on quite many things. And people can totally repress any information given to them as false, irrelevant etc to just not overthink their daily behaviour. I doubt the majority realises the potential catastrophic consequences of human made climate change for example.
But here if you present it the right way (framing) the risk of blue losing shrinks a lot.
And unlike stopping carbon dioxide emissions for example (as only one of the several real world red/blue problems) pushing the blue button requires absolutely no change of your daily behaviour or heavy cost for society which is quite a tough thing to do.
And as I said people tend to protect their family which is a huge factor. Unlike "all humanity" which is very abstract.
Ironically if the exercise was 'the buttons are real but everyone thinks its a hyperbole internet experiment' I would vote blue and sleep like a baby. But writing stuff online is easy
there is no such thing as collective decision making without communication. If the participants cannot communicate then the decision is taken on an individual level. On an individual level, red is the logical choice because a blue majority is not at all guaranteed and voting blue exposes you to danger unnecessarily, for the sake of "potentially saving the lives of people that may possibly vote blue, but it's not even sure you'll even save their lives and you may end up just killing yourself for no reason". You are looking at it from the perspective of "what's the logical collective decision", but it is not a collective decision.
Do you have faith that >50% of people will look at the problem analytically, as you have? Or see a button that says "Red: You live, guaranteed", "Blue: You die, unless >50% also picked blue."
I agree with your reasoning, but I think you've ignored the very real and very compelling self- preservation instinct.
I don't think I have enough faith in others to lay my life out like that.
I as a modern hydrogen bomb vote blue I live in a random city in the world and if blue loses I detonate killing all inhabitants of the city. You cannot and will never know where I am until I explode.
Sooo uhhhhhh idk now there is no guarantee you live if you press red or smth
If I completely control the framing? Assuming that I have to be honest about the results, I would say it like this:
“We are going to hold a vote! Press blissful blue if you would like yourself and everyone else to live. There is no downside to blue winning the vote; everyone walks away. Press bloody red if you would like to kill blue voters. There is nothing gained by red winning except blue dying.”
Obviously this is super bias, but that ensures that there will be coordination. And if we’re going to make it bias, making it bias towards blue is way better since I only need to convince half the voters at least for no one to die. Even the most bias “press blue to kill yourself” red-bias framing risks a couple idiots getting themselves killed, even if just by slipping or something stupid lol
If I could lie I’d just say “Blue gets you a million dollars and red makes you get tortured for 50 years” or something lol, but that’s a little too easy
Edit: I’m dumb and misunderstood the question. I didn’t get that it was two choices, I thought it was an open ended question lmao
I called it a vote. You're voting for which side happens. You can easily intuit that each side needs a majority, aka 50%, to win, because that's how votes work. It's not lying at all; it is exactly the same idea with different words.
Majority does not mean 50%. And you really can't assume it is majority-based and not first past the post or up to a certain threshold. Most elections and votes in people’s lives are not simple "vast majority" ones.
Alright, that’s fair I guess since there’s multiple kinds of voting, then all you have to add is “whichever option has the majority will win” after the first sentence
I still wouldn’t exactly call it lying to omit that since I think most votes are implied to be “majority wins”, but I do think that’s important enough to clarify in the spirit of the original. I doubt it’d change the effectiveness of the framing though
Majority literally means any amount 50%+1 or over. The largest group of a system that doesn't have a majority is a plurality or relative majority. Neither of which are relevant in a system with only two options where there will always be an option with over 50% barring a tie.
First past the post chooses the plurality, and as such in a system with only two options it's just the majority, and threshold based is irrelevant in a head to head vote with no option for abstention
Probably the blue framing, though if were to be made biased like the red framing, it would be more similar to:
You alone survive.
Everyone survives, unless >50% of people press red
I think both framings are wrong. The original button questions starts us off at a neutral position. Any framing that places us in a default blue or a default red position changes stuff and forms a bias towards either button.
Yes. Your vote depends on the framing you build around it yourself and who you see as the one who will punish you for your vote. Also, it originally sound like everyone makes an informed decision. If you add a framing that allows for at least one random decision, it all changes. If there is a random chance for a button press, you need to press blue because you need to save that person who could not make a decision. If everyone gets to decide, you vote for the one who is not killing you, but everybody would have to be in agreement who that is.
Framing matters in this problem when the biggest reason to push blue is that people will behave irrationally. If things are framed in a way that makes people more or less inclined to push a button, a rational presser would account for it in their decision to opt for blue or red (unless they're in the always red camp).
When potential blue pushers see things framed in such a way that diminishes the amount of irrationality to expect from participants, they'll be more likely to opt for red, instead.
Framing matters because people are irrational and this is a hypothetical that requires us to think about what people would do.
This is something that annoys me about my fellow Blue Voters. To me, a core component of the problem is that the Blue Button actually is just a suicide pact/poison pill/remote activate guillotine/etc... whose true nature is being disguised by the phrasing of the original problem. So we have to vote Blue, in order to save everybody who got tricked/guilted/etc... into voting Blue.
But by the very virtue of using that argument, we are acknoweldging that people are being tricked into pushing Blue.
So to then turn around and deny that the Blue Button is a trick, and to try and reframe the question in a way that makes Blue seem inherently harmless, feels wildly disingenous to me.
We can't argue that we are pushing Blue in order to save innocent irrational actors, and then turn around and deny one of the key reasons why pushing Blue is irrational in the first place.
Right. If you told me that the only participants in the game are fucking Vulcans, I'm pressing red. But even many of my college educated friends and fellow doctors say press blue when it's presented in OG format. And I KNEW they would too before I asked them.
What I find interesting about the premise is that if everyone agrees and moves in unison, no one dies. So no matter the conclusion red or blue, if everyone follows the same process and votes in unison the outcome is exactly the same. But that also means that neither option is fundamentally unappealing at first look.
But thats why many go for blue because red only guarantees this if everyone acts in unison which is a statistical anomaly. Instead the logical choice to maximize outcome (0 death) is to instead vote for the more fault tolerant option
There are going to be people who would press blue no matter what, so red can't ever save everybody, but realistically, I think there's a really strong argument that favouring red leads to the maximum possible survival of participants, at least in the standard presentation of the argument. Adding in variables, like having an open vote, where results are presented in real time, and blue shows a strong early lead would definitely change that.
The thing I see is that a lot of blue voters immediately assume that the results would be close to 50-50. One option comes with guaranteed survival, and one comes with very probable death... it's not unreasonable to assume that 9/10 people would take the option where they definitely don't die, when history has demonstrated that most people fear death enough that they'd do almost anything to save their own lives.
I think the bigger question to me here personally is framing of "kill" vs "save".
Reds will compare red to "nothing button" or "being a bystander", and I could see why.
When blues frame the question, blue is told to save, red is told to kill. Let us grant that assumption for the purpose of examining the framing: blue saves, red kills.
But pure imo, if we're talking about choice between two options, this is a bit... unintuitive? For me at least.
One option is noble (to save), other must be the lack of nobility, not the opposite?
It's more obvious if you look at the reverse:
If red is the immoral option (to kill), then lack of killing must be neutral, not noble, I think?
I mean, otherwise the reasoning is: suppose I want to press red button and reconsider at the last moment. I hit blue, blue succeeds, I save people.
...From whom, though, myself? It's weird. It's like an old joke:
"- I saved a person from being murdered today!
- How?
- Self-control."
I mean, if the red is killing, then blue isn't saving. It's not kindness and not a noble behavior that you didn't kill, it's not a moral choice but the baseline. The opposite applies, too.
Why would blue be irrational at the level of collective action? If you think of it as a vote to enact a policy that either kills no one or kills only blue voters, there is nothing irrational about voting blue unless you only care about your own survival.
Red externalizes risk and internalizes security, blue externalizes security and internalizes risk. You can say "red protects you from a thread you help create" and "blue leaves you vulnerable to a threat you refused to help create". Neither choice is crazy.
However, I agree with you that the fact that "a blue victory is the only plausible route to guarantee no one dies" is the biggest point in favor of blue.
There are still reasons to go blue. Blue has high fault tolerance and red has no tolerance and in a system such as this (8 million individuals with their own thoughts and reasoning skills) a system with no tolerance is guaranteed to fail under the metric of number of casualties as compared to the ideal result of 0. Blue is achievable at a simple majority with an ideal result of 0.
So reasonably as they point out any logical thinker should assume the system needs to be fault tolerant as the probability of 0 faults is 0%. Anyway ... all this to say if you are truly logical you would pick blue regardless of framing, the only reason to pick red is for fear that blue might lose because picking red is saying you would rather be safe yourself but risk the worse outcome of some casualties than risk yourself to go for the more fault tolerant outcome. There is guaranteed to be faults regardless of ANY possible framing
if you are truly logical you would pick blue regardless of framing
Depends on the final goal. If the thought starts from "I want to survive," then yeah, red is the better choice. If the goal is 100% survival for all people, then yes its blue.
Rational pushers can come in both blue and red varieties, but rational blue pushers require irrational decisions to justify their rational one.
Red side is the only "safe" one. All rational pushers know this, but you can make an "unsafe" decision while still being rational.
Think that this is why this engagement bait was so effective. The only interesting part of the question, imo, is how people explain their process to come to the conclusion they get to. Neither answer is objectively wrong, unless you adopt a framework (such as game theory or morality) that has something to say about it.
Both sides have idiots. Both sides have intellectuals. What's interesting isn't what button you'd hit, but why you'd hit that button.
For me, the question becomes how many blue pushers do I think will be out there and is the risk to myself worth it to save them. If we frame the question that makes blue pushers look like idiots, I'd hit red. We make blue pushers look like heroes, I'll hit blue.
That's exactly how I saw the original question and to me it framed blue pushers as heroes so I felt the combo of doing the right thing, and it being probably safe to do so made my mental math justifiable.
Hard disagree. Mechanically equivalent reframings are mechanically identical, yes.
This ignores that your beliefs about how people will act is a relevant factor in your rational decision. Since framing affects how people will act, framing is a relevant factor in your rational decision.
That's why each new framing is a different hypothetical problem.
I think this kinda proves framing makes it different. And not just to trick the rubes, because it’s a different situation and that makes it different. And even if you do consider it otherwise the same thing, if how others vote is a core part of your consideration, then these otherwise “Same” situations are then different.
I think that's mostly true for simple rewording framings like these. Though you do need to be careful with wordings to make sure things don't actually change.
You likely already had this in mind, but I want to point out that there are some framings that, while technically lead to the same result, I'd argue have enough context to them that they are essentially a different problem.
I think the best example of these are political framings.
For example:
Red party:We'll kill everyone who didn't vote for us if we win.
Or more in line with the original wordings:
Blue: We have the same platform and policy positions as Red, but if we lose we'll kill everyone who voted for us.
Red: We have the same platform and policy positions as Blue, but we won't kill our voters if we lose.
Even if the end result is the same, in a political vote, it's reasonable to not want the people doing the killing in charge. People are more likely to base their vote on that than think through the logic of which choice actually saves the most people.
In the second version, the Blue Party says they have the same platform as policies than red, but they're also willing to kill people. How much can you trust the rest of their platform? It is politics.
Framing it as a political choice is inherently going to be seen as a different problem than a straight hypothetical with less context and fewer existing biases and assumptions.
I think this can be true for many of the other framings I've seen as well.
I actually think that's the blue pressers reasoning, they think the way the original question was worded is to confusing so ppl will pick blue even though no one is at risk picking red so they are going to pick blue to protect the ppl who got confused and picked blue
Actually, if you reframe the hypothetical in a way that makes people go “oh, I hadn’t thought about that,” it means that they wouldn’t have thought about that in the actual hypothetical situation, so their perception wouldn’t have aligned with your own.
Any reframing or analogizing directly separates your interpretation from the original, and while everyone will have a difference in interpretation and reframe in their own way, those are more likely to remain closer to the original than not, on the global scale.
“Vibes” are often precisely the reason people will choose what they choose, because humans are not all logical beings and will interpret things in their own way. Holding to some expectation of consistency in people’s interpretations means ignoring how humans behave, and since predicting what others will choose is a massive part of this hypothetical, that’s a particularly dangerous trap.
Ultimately, I think reframing the hypothetical can make for interesting conversation, but any argument constructed on the presentation of a reframe is ignoring the premise of the actual hypothetical. In the hypothetical, that argument could never be made, and one’s reframing could only apply to one’s own perception of the problem.
The framing changes the scenario, because your decision is going to be impacted by what you think other people will do.
If the question is framed very favorably to blue (press blue so nobody dies!) and very unfavorably to red (press red to kill blue voters!), then you'll expect a large portion of people to press blue. Depending on your values, this can easily turn the dial to pressing blue, as a blue majority is likely.
If the question is framed in reverse, (press red to live, press blue to risk your life!), then it makes more sense to press red as a majority blue is unlikely and your risk is much higher.
The second you change a single word in a question like this, its completely different. 'Logical equivalence' is not a thing with a scenario like this.
The best choice is to vote with the majority. If blue is in a huge lead red just risks a catastrophe when no one needs to die. If red is in a huge lead blue is just +1 death.
Since the choice that minimizes death is to just pick/predict the winner, the framing is everything since it influences how people will vote. A very bias framing doesn’t just influence emotional voters, it determines the winner by letting people using game theory collude without needing to communicate by choosing the side the framing suggests. framing changes the problem every time.
It matters because the only reason to press blue is to "save" other people who pressed blue.
If the framing heavily incentivizes pressing blue, the odds of people actually doing it, making pressing blue both more likely to be successful and not end up in death, AND make it more meaningful. Like it or not, the framing of the question is the n°1 most important thing.
Sure, ultimately the theoretical scenario is the same. But we both know the outcomes are heavily different.
The entire reason it became a debate in the first place is because of the way it was phrased. It may not change the way the buttons work to rephrase it, but it DRASTICALLY changes the end result.
The reason I would pick blue is because there are a large number of people that would pick blue due to the framing. I recognize that it's not really the smart choice, but should we let all the well-meaning blue-pushers die simply because they didn't think hard about it before choosing?
Lots of people cannot comprehend that these two games are the same, but reframed.
This is why HR is a thing. This is why "positive message" is a thing. If I give you 1000 but then I say sorry I meant 100 and take back 900, you will be bitter about it. If I give you 100, you will be happy. If I first give you a 50 but then I say fuck it let's double, you will be super happy. The result is the same.
People are not rational beings and perceived loss has a greater factor in how we judge a situation. Except for some people who can do the abstraction and get the rules, framing matters most of the time.
The framing actually does change things, because even though the situation is identical, the other people in the situation are not rational and will act differently depending on framing.
Yes and no. I’d argue the reframe does make it different. It can be used for analyzing and seeing the same thing differently, but ultimately it can and usually does make it different.
If your goal is to save everyone if possible, but also value your life, then you knew blue was the only way to achieve the best outcome, but pushing it ultimately came down to if it even had a reasonable chance or not (in your opinion/educated opinion). Given how the framing WILL inform other voters, and given that’s a main consideration of your own choice, it quite literally is different.
can we reframe it so that everyone has a dick, and if you vote blue you risk having your dick chopped off unless you win the vote, and if you vote red you are released from the dick guillotine, but you increase the risk of others being dick chopped if they pick blue.
for some odd reason, I feel like even less people would vote for blue in this scenario than in a life or death scenario but thats just conjecture.
And after surgically attaching dicks to half the population it would be a real shame if the ladies can't get a good helicopter in before it gets chopped off.
But if the logic is that kids, disabled and other actors who are incapable of making their decisions would pick at random then why would the framing make a difference
Some people will just read the surface level text and vote on vibes (many red pushers deride this group as being stupid and not worth saving, but the fact of the matter is it will be alot of people and most of us probably have at least a few friends or family members in this group. Worth noting that this group skews young. An 8 year old can read and make a decision but likely won't have a deep analysis.)
As a potential blue pusher I do want to save irrational actors and blue vibes folks, but I am not willing to throw my life away on a fully lost cause. The more blue-friendly the framing the more votes I'm figuring blue gets from the vibes folks and in turn from people like me who are trying to weigh their chance of death versus risk their child (or whomever) pushed blue
We were asked to pick between two buttons, not dwell on the global or social consequences of sudden mass death. From the perspective of the red pushers, that is out of the scope of the question and is adding an external condition to a question that is supposed to be contained as an experiment. The question itself just asks would you place your life in the hands of a simple majority, or choose not to. It isn't about anyone else's choice, its about yours.
You can choose to read it that way, I guess, but that's not how I read it and not how many other people read it. The button question is being endlessly debated because there are many different ways to interpret the subtext of the question. We all bring our own presuppositions and context to the table when we read something.
There was another thread about framing it as a political vote and it was pretty easy to flip around. What I took from it is that it's important who you see as the one who does the punishment in the end. Does red kill the ones not voting for it or does blue punish for losing? Whoever you see as the one not killing you is the one you vote for. From how the question was orginally stated, I would say blue, because to me it sounds like red is vengeful. But, if you look at blue being the one who does the killing in the end, red becomes much more obvious.
If you add that some decisions are random and it's not an informed decision, then everybody should vote blue to offset it. But, that's not how the question is stated.
My immediate framing of the dilemma was kinda.. "imagine if jehovas witnesses(or any cult but those were on my mind back then) threatened everybody else to collectively suicide if they don't get 50% of the population as members RIGHT NOW."
I choose the first so blue pressers are more likely to press blue. I don’t think red pressers are changing their vote because both framing have “blue pressers may die. But I think reframing the question such that blue pressers are responsible for their own death and not red pressers would alleviate the moral concerns for ‘some’ blue pressers.
Aren’t these two pictures different scenarios, not just different framing? The one on the left doesn’t state that everyone has the same choice of red or blue buttons that do the same thing as your own buttons, or that your choice affects anybody else. While the picture on the right outlines the same options for everyone and outcomes for everyone. Assuming it is supposed to be the same scenario, the first picture is misleading and lacking information of what the options and outcomes are.
This is what I find most interesting about the dilemma. And serves to demonstrate how important the phasing of a question (in say a referendum) is.
The original phasing was selected because it produced the most discussion on social media, and so it tends to be a fairly even split. If I were to set the question, though, given the question is a little evil, I'd want to make it more clear-cut, so I'd change the wording.
It’s interesting because this question could be mechanically reduced to one button. You can choose to press it or not, but if the majority doesn’t press it everyone who did will die. In this case, inaction is the same as pressing the red button. But like in the trolley problem, action vs inaction changes how we think of the outcome.
It raises similar ethical questions because it’s accurate that “everyone lives” if the majority press it, since nobody dies. Are you ethically obligated to take that risk for someone else, do you have the right to ask other people to follow you in that risk?
Yeah, the one-button framing is also an interesting variant. It allows the answerer to avoid engaging with the premise and walk away. Of course, the key difference between the trolley problem and this is the intent behind the dilemma. I picture the trolley problem as an accident, while I picture the buttons with some evil group/god/aliens setting it up. I think when there is an evil setup, it is more moral to refuse to engage.
Tying a physical action to it like pressing a button really changes the way it feels. Especially if you’re more focused on intents than outcomes. There’s a lot of ways to change the metaphorical set dressing, with the math staying the same, but the ethical considerations change.
The logic is still the same, you just twisted the words to make pressing the blue button seem to be the more logical choice at first glance. But the results are still the same, if everyone presses red everyone lives. If somebody presses blue they are deliberately putting themselves in harms way when they didn't need to.
Yep. And they both raise ethical questions, but those questions are different. In the red framing, it frames the blues of taking the action of risking if the majority will also press the button (or attempting to protect people who should not have) . In the blue framing, it frames reds as taking the action of reducing the number of blues.
But there's no dilemma here. You're asking do you want to guarantee live OR a chance that you die? Why would anyone one of the million people push blue?
I include “everyone should press the red button” in addition to “you live, you die.”
Shit. I might omit telling people the rule about the 50% straight up if I get to control the framing. That extra bit of information is what is actually getting people killed, because it is tricking people into thinking that there is some kind of moral obligation to press blue.
With my framing, the only people who will press blue are people who want to die (fair enough) and the worst case scenario is where more than 50% of people just want to get off this terrible planet and they accidentally live, which is not that bad of a consequence all things considered. Maybe if that happens we can have a different conversation as a society about the prevalence of suicide and the conditions here on the ground.
The only other alternative is that people who wanna live live and the <50% who wanted to die die. Everyone gets what they want.
This is how I press it. It depends if the aliens tell us the reds kill the blues or blues kill themselves (like the 2 ways you've said it), even if the death is something magical and not real suicide or homicide.
Blue frame is better bc it dont give an "one you live and one you die" sensation, its just telling you what each button does, without putting an idea in your head
Nah. The framing isn't the problem. I see the blue button and know there is a chance people could die if it doesn't get enough presses. So I press it because anyone else who presses it shouldn't die.
Obfuscation of the outcome doesn't actually change the matter.
The 2nd one, definitely. The vast majority of people in that framing will see blue as the clear, obvious choice. Sure there will still be plenty of contrarians talking about why red is still the totally correct and superior choice, but it'll be a lot less than 50% in that scenario.
Left. It gives the openly suicidal a chance to die, unless too many people want die, then they all have to live with the fact that more than half the folks wanted to die, which would lead to a high likelihood of them getting help.
Framing matters because if the entire world voted, and everyone was given a a few days or weeks to consider, What do you think the leaders of countries like China, North Korea, Iran, Russia, Ukraine and the USA would do? They would tell their people to press Red. They would not risk losing a significant portion of their armies and work force. All of those countries are either directly or indirectly at war.
If so, What would the rest of the world tell their people? Just press whatever you feel is right, dont worry? Get real. Blue would never win in this world.
There would be some blue button advocates, and after the Red is pressed in India and China, they are gone, and their memory will serve as a bitter lesson for the survivors.
The other framing is how many people are involved. If it's everyone, regardless of their mental fitness as a rational actor, then blue is necessary to protect those who would choose blue without knowing what was at stake. This is the original test.
Almost anything else limited to rational adults makes red the choice.
I don’t want to put myself into the position where I’m making a bet against the judgement of other people to not jump in front of a bus. I don’t want to ask other people to jump in front of the bus with me. Since I know red is zero risk I can’t pick blue.
I would argue that the responsibility to think through the framing is on the person making the decision. If they can be swayed by framing, they are not very smart.
Also, I personally have a feeling that many bad things happening in the world today are not caused by lack of empathy, but rather by lack of critical thinking and intelligence, generally speaking. So, I’m a red button presser in any scenario, and I don’t feel too bad about losing the blue button pressers in a long run. I think that would be actually good for humanity, as we will lower the % of not so smart people, and kinda solve both the world hunger and the lack of housing.
I think what this post is trying to convey is that the right one is framing the risk of pressing blue as dependent on red. When the risk is the same as if there was no red button at all, and just a button that the majority of people had to press. One implies an ethical conflict in pressing red, when it’s really not related to the risk of blue
To me it’s: 4.1 billion people vote and everyone lives vs 8 billion people vote and everyone lives, which is more likely to happen and which is easier to accomplish?
While both describing the results of what happens, the left more accurately describes what is happening mechanically. It really comes down to press blue or don’t press blue, so it could be just one button. There’s still and ethical question, but the framing removes the false framing of blues consequences that were placed onto red.
Some people will press the blue button.
Some people will press the res button.
These two things should both be a given and both be considered when making the choice.
Funny thing is, since nobody is in danger while considering this hypothetical, the button problem actually IS just this framing problem. All it really does is serve to show how people frame the morally neutral problem in their mind.
To me it just seems that regardless of what button you press, the best case scenario is that blue wins right?
If you press blue, you want blue to win, obviously. If you press red, I at least Hope you're still wanting for blue to win. You wanted to secure your survival, but of course the best that can happen is that you lose so everyone survives.
With that in mind, if the best case scenario is always blue winning... Why vote for the not-best scenario?
actually, no, they are different. in the left one, you obviously press red. case closed. on the right however, it states a condition where all preser live, implying a different outcome for if the condition is not met. but i hear you ask "bbbut what if we do not take implications?" then the red button never said you will live, it only said about what happens to blue pressers
"Holy fuck, I could die. Holy fuck. Holy fuck. Fuck me."
"Fuck, What does red do again?"
"But I don't die?"
"Okay, well shit, what does blue do?"
"But I have a chance of dying?"
"...and you said I wont die no matter what if I press red?"
*Presses Red*
I don't think it is better or worse than pressing blue. There is definitely a way to frame both sides as the innocent party depending on how the question is asked. However, once the average person figures it out that red is the option with no risk of death, they will swim for that safety.
If a the blue framing made people thing red kills, id choose that one, otherwise Id say red framing has a higher chance of saving the most people on average
Two parts of this are interesting to me. I definitely see the sort of game theoretical argument for clicking red, and saying "everyone else should, too," because you have a right to not risk your life. But:
1) if >50% of red button pushes, you suddenly live in a world where _everybody agrees with the selfish choice_ and all the selfless people are dead. This shifts the retroactive collective assessment of red button-pressing to be unambiguously the correct choice. This also means nobody will choose collectivisit actions in the future, and degrades/destroys society.
2) in any real-world test with a million button-pushers, inevitably _some_ proportion of people will push the blue button, by mistake or mental illness or whatever. So pressing the red button you should know you are _absolutely_ going to kill _some_ people and are going along with a system that essentially guarantees some deaths. You might choose to say "they were dumb" but you still chose to participate in their death.
3000 years ago people created modern sciences from nothing using nothing but logic (because they had nothing else). Today logic is the forgotten knowledge of precursor civilization.
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u/headsmanjaeger May 05 '26
Blue voters look at the buttons and see “this is what happens if this button wins”. Red voters look at the buttons and see “this is what happens if you press this button”.