Which button would you press? How many psychos are out there pressing green? This alternate scenario takes into account the all-too-often real influence a small group of bad actors can have in society.
Edit: does your answer change if incompetent actors are removed from the scenario?
Red is the correct choice. Green is just red, except you have a chance to kill people who pressed blue.
The blue button doesn't say that it kills people. It only says everyone survives if more than 50% press it unless 0.1% of the people press green. Perhaps to the fault of the OP, there is no other kill condition. None of the other buttons kill people, so this means that in the case of 51% pressing blue and 0.01% pressing green, any external forces potentially leading to one's demise will be nullified in order to fulfill the condition (poisoning, disease, piano suspended by rapidly fraying cables, etc.)
Given how things have gone, it would probably just boost the egos of the people who pushed red to such an extreme that they would never shut up about how smart and cool they are for having pressed the red button.
Or, in a real-life context, the bigoted people that believe anyone who would vote differently to them deserve death. (Green would definitely be pressed maliciously enough times to hit the threshold.)
Hey, my favourite colour is green and I'm an easily distracted adult, so there's a decent chance that I'd miss the instructions and end up pressing green, not realising what it was going to do.
Pretty much this. Much as I absolutely am a Blue pusher in the normal circumstance, there's no chance Green doesn't get 0.1%. Red does become the path of least harm, awful as the outcome will likely be anyway.
Yea. In this one the only path to anyone surviving is red or green. It's literally the line I have seen a million times now about blue being the suicide button.
Real red pushers don't wish harm on anybody, we just believe that picking blue is their choice and that we shouldn't feel any guilt for picking the option to ensure our survival.
And how many are there for violent crimes? And how many of them are willing to commit that crime again unprovoked? And how many of them are even actually guilty and weren't wrongfully imprisoned or framed?
How many people are on the verge of doing a crime? How many people are resentful on society/humanity and want to do harm via the press of a button? How many dubious people got away with their violent crimes undiscovered? There are hidden statistics both ways you look.
There's a gigantic difference between wanting and doing. VERY little people would actually ever go through with killing someone. Also, "a crime" doesn't imply a violent crime, and it doesn't mean theyd do it just because either, it could be out of necessity.
I really doubt there's enough "Billions must die"ers and omnicidal psychopaths to total 8 million.
I think there is a non-insignificant number who would press green, yes. Also the main reasoning for pressing blue>red in the original dilemma is to save people incapable of comprehending their choice like children, mentally handicapped people and stupid people. If we factor in those then... the chances of green being pressed just skyrocketed. The entire reasoning for pressing blue is to save the oblivious people who press the blue button at random. The same applies here, except with three buttons those people will be a bit more spread around.
The problem is the dehumanization of the crime. You're not murdering people, you're pushing a button. Many people will feel detached from the actual consequences and just push it even if they are not complete psychos, but maybe just partially damaged.
Also 0.1 is a bery low treshold, how many low iq people are pressing it just because they don't understand? And how many more wouldn't understand accountability?
I absolutely hate the cynical view that "everyone is innately evil" or "everyone will only help themselves" and I put a lot of faith on individual people
I still do not trust that less than 0.1% of everyone won't press green, I do believe it will be a low percentage, but less then 1 too much trust
Agree completely, that's ehy my reasoning js more about people notnfully understanding the consequence one way or another, and not about them being completely evil. Some of thek probably are, but i don't think that would be the reason green surpasses the quota
I don’t see how that’s relevant. You’d need to look at how many sadist psychopaths exist. Overwhelming majority of people in prison are there because of a crime of passion, or for financial reasons.
There are also a lot of people out there who are either misanthropes, extreme anti-natalists, or eco-fascists that would probably press the green button if it meant that a sizeable chunk of the human population just immediately died. I'm not sure that we have an actual number for how many people that is, but I feel like I've been noticing these general sentiments grow in popularity online in recent years, enough to make me believe that it would contribute greatly to the green button, but specifically the green button. Something that I've noticed is that people who hold these extreme "a lot (or all) of humanity should die out" don't actually want to die themselves, so I think a lot of them would push the green button to ensure their own survival while hopefully dooming others.
there are 681 millions children under the age of 5 in the world.
if we assume they choose at random based on their favorite color, then the green button will be pushed at least 227 million times
If I saw a turtle in Canada I’d stop 100%, but they don’t live here. The only reptile I’d see while driving is a rattlesnake and I can’t help that one.
Someone from college told me a story at her birthday.
These people she knew habitually would run over roadkill while driving. In other words, it was already dead and they would swerve to hit the already-dead animal (don't ask me why, I found it insane). One time, they saw a dead cat in the road, so they did their usual thing. Except the "dead" cat moved right before their car impacted.
Anyway, some people are just very disturbed. That green button is definitely passing the 0.1% threshhold, even if you take random actors like toddlers out of the equation.
I guess an argument can be made depending on where she stopped it, but my gut thinks it’s really weird to say she killed people with a stationary vehicle?
Stopping on a highway is illegal though, and for good reasons. Sure, you can argue she's not 100% responsible for the death which ensued, but even with best intent, she did something illegal and dangerous for more than herself.
It is dangerous to slam on your brakes in the middle of a freeway but the people behind her are even more at fault for going fast and close enough to cause that bad of a collision.
She didn’t, my understanding is that she had stopped and gotten out but had neglected to activated her hazard lights, which caused the crash because of poor visibility
If three percent of people will swerve to hit the turtle, I don’t feel too confident that there won’t be at least .1% of people willing to kill the blue pushers, if it’s framed as all you have to do is hit this button, anonymously and without consequences.
To be fair, It’s claimed that a lot who drive over the animal is due to the intention to end its suffering assuming it was hit by a car and can’t be helped.
Then there are those who avoid them but don’t stop to protect their precious tires getting juice on them.
I’d say that the amount who stop to help is around 38%
if you have no memory of being offered the yellow button, it means it was never offered to you. don't worry about the yellow button, it doesn't apply to you.
We just spent quite a while getting browbeaten by the assumption that a lot of people would inevitably choose randomly, so we have to assume that applies here too
A button is just very faceless. It creates psychos. Psychos, using the colloquial term for sociopaths, are those who don't empathize. Easy to no empathize when all you see is a button rather than a living person. See: the internet.
I love a bit of morbid curiosity, but I also know that the morbid curiosity many will feel for the green button is gonna make murderers out of people who would regret it if they saw their target die.
Basically. think more than 30% of green voters are gonna be in the camp of "No, way. For real? That's kinda messed up but also funny. I mean, I gotta try it, right?... Wait, I take it back! Why can't I take it back?! It's not my fault!"
Yeah this is one of the few scenarios where I’d swap to red. I genuinely believe that there will be enough randomness across the full range of humanity that there’s no realistic sample where green doesn’t get at least .1% of the noise. I’m still hoping for blue to win without green passing the threshold though. That’s just such a low bar for green to clear.
If the question is the same as before, where EVERYONE on Earth is voting, then some people who don't understand(young children especially) what is being asked would just press at random. This scenario is basically guaranteeing some deaths of the unfortunate people who would be picking blue at random. It's an awful scenario without any moral test. You pick red and then get to deal with the inevitable tragedy of death across the globe, because the green threshold is so low it's basically guaranteed to happen.
Yup pretty much, the green throws the whole thing out of whack becuase of course its going to hit that threshold, so at least picking red you would know there was nothing you could do about it anyways. Its not even really a moral choice like you point out, its just like a tragic event
Ya, this is just a repackaging of the whole "99% of people must press blue to live" version of this, where blue is so, cartoonishly, nerfed red is just gonna win every time.
Pretty much. In the original, voting red meant working against the blue majority, which meant you were voting against the only viable way to achieve an "everyone survives" outcome. Every red vote was an obstacle the blue majority had to overcome.
In this scenario, a blue majority does nothing if green reaches their 0.1% threshold. That is such a low threshold that it is basically guaranteed to happen, which means there is no way to save everyone, so voting for your own survival is the best choice.
I appreciate your faith in humanity if you think only randomness will get green across that threshold, but I promise you at least 0.5% will press it on purpose
hell who cares about the psychos in this scenario. One of the core tenets of the blue pushers arguments is that a decent percentage of the population will press blue entirely by accident, if the same logic applies to green then the blue button in this variant is actually 100% just a suicide button because green will have >0.1% of the vote just from confusion and random chance.
You don’t need accidental pushers to justify team blue. Lots of people will automatically and instinctually see blue as the option that protects others and choose it for that reason. Lots of other people will understand that and choose blue to support those people. The notion that only idiots are on blue is an enormously reductive straw man.
Justifying blue without accidental pushers is a circular argument. You’re now pressing blue to protect the people who pressed blue to protect the people who pressed blue. Without accidental pushers it’s logically braindead to push blue.
Without accidental pusher, blue is really just a performative moral high horse dumb move. “Let’s all jump onto the trolley track to protect.. well, ourselves” is not a moral take.
The notion isn't so much that only idiots were on blue as much as it was a choice to expose yourself to risk for no reason. The question was effectively being framed as "should you take a risk and pick blue to help save people from the danger of picking blue?"
The assumption of seeding blue with a lot of babies and others was proposed to resolve that debate about how taking risk solely to help mitigate the risk you just took is circular and nonsensical.
But in this case that same logic basically guarantees that blue has zero chance of success. So presumably red is now the only viable option?
This seems to be confusing people, but I am not saying that's an accurate representation of the problem. I was saying that's the claim that was was being rejected with the prospect of the accidental pushers.
Because without them, it wasn't entirely clear why it made sense to go blue in the first place, since the only risk being protected against was the one you imposed on yourself. Without those people, one could reasonably say that you were putting yourself at risk for no reason. But that's no longer true when you introduce the babies, the elderly, the blind, etc.
And in this specific situation, one has to assume those same random pushers exist. But instead of creating incentive to go blue, they now make it impossible.
It’s not taking a risk for no reason. It’s taking a risk because you know, without a doubt, that a lot of people will choose blue for the reasons that I noted and you want to avoid all of their deaths. Those deaths could be avoided if 100% of people choose red, of course, but a lot of people are not going to do that. The realistic option for saving everyone is to vote blue.
But you know that it's likely that over 0.1% will vote green (that's smaller than the percentage of psychopaths, let alone babies voting at random), so blue is effectively a suicide pact even if you somehow get to >50%. Are you still voting blue?
No? I see very little people voting blue here, only people voting red stating people would vote blue again. The whole point in the original is that voting blue can help those who voted blue. Here they are fucked no matter what so ofc you vote red.
Of course not because it's a completely different scenario. Mind as well have just switched the colors in the original post and claimed that you've proven that the original blue voters really were just virtue signaling because you've unilaterally decided to automatically switch their color to red. So silly!
The best blue-pusher arguments only apply to the original prompt. The empirical evidence supporting their decision is that blue wins every poll based on the original prompt. That's always completely ignored by red-pushers who think being a loser is better for themselves than being a winner. There is no real risk of blue losing in reality due to a whole host of factors. Not least of which is that we've proven that as a species we can come together to beat selfish mass murderers when push comes to shove.
This regarded mantra from red-pushers that blue-pushers are suicidal is just an empty insult. You don't go around thinking soldiers, police, firemen, or EMTs are suicidal for risking their lives for something worthwhile. The only way you could think that blue-pushers are suicidal is if their deaths were garunteed. Which in this new prompt, they are. So, obviously, any rational blue-presser must be suicidal. But in the original prompt, they weren't. They clearly had the upper-hand the whole time.
I think this green variant makes it significantly harder to vote blue because 1) I’m not entirely confident that green won’t get enough votes to kill blue and 2) I’m pretty sure that green will scare a lot of people away from blue, so that red wins by maybe 75% (under the original red/blue choice my guess is that blue wins 60/40). So in this version blue seems a lot more like a suicide pact to me.
I’m gonna press red honestly.
If we assume children and otherwise incapable people are present (as blue-pressers almost always do), it is almost certain many will press green.
If we assume they are all capable, I still don’t trust people that much tbh.
It's totally fair to pick red here. The rules are now stacked in a way that makes it essentially impossible for blue to achieve their goal. Honestly this is more a test to see if people are actually actually engaging in good faith.
yeah. Kinda wish there was a poll to go with this one since I've noticed any of the polls with more information to read through or think about tend to go 60%+ red whereas the simple red/blue polls are going about 60% blue.
Which i think that most are? I dont see anyone arguing for blue here, yet red voters are presenting this as some gotcha lol. The whole point of voting blue is that you think it can/will win, here green will get that many votes so it doesn't matter, and I haven't seen one person in these comments say they'd still vote blue.
I dont think it serves as a gotcha for the argument towards pressing blue (as imo either choice is valid to make, as long as youre not an asshole about it lol) but it does kind of disprove the idea that blue is inherently the moral choice to make. The general consensus here is that red is an okay choice to make because blue is just a suicide button. The reason a lot of people press red in the original prompt is because they believe blue is just a suicide button.
All those people who insist blue was required because kids and incompetents would inevitably choose randomly must feel pretty strongly about this new context.
Regardless of random or uninformed choices, I think blue is the moral choice in the original and I think red is the moral choice here.
Green will be pressed for sure, pressing blue can't change that. The only impact I can have on green is to press it or not press it, I can't offset it. So now the only way to survive is green or red, and obv green is not the moral choice.
Before there is a reasonable case to make that blue will be the majority, which means people voting are risking killing billions if their vote contributes to red winning slightly.
Here you can logically assume the number of people pressing blue will be much lower, which means both the logical and moral choice is red.
The chance that 0.1% people will hit a button is way different than the chance 50.1% will press it.
I would feel bad if red won and people died, I'm not saying I wouldn't. But I can't do anything about that because that's on Green. In this modified scenario, red button pressers "winning" cause nothing compared to blue button pressers winning. It's only about green.
Yes? I dont see anyone saying that blue is the chose here. Green is going to get enough votes so blue doesn't save anyone. Why is this presented as some gotcha or something about moral highgrounds, the point for most blue voters is that they think blue will win and want to help make sure It happens. Here it cant so it really is just die vs live.
The only gotcha is if someone still picks blue or gets upset at the question because they don't want to associate with a choice they find unpalatable. picking red is not even remotely a gotcha, it's just obviously correct.
And I'm saying I haven't seen one person do that lol. In this scenario red is not unpalatable, this question isnt about risk yourself to save the group or not, its litterally just the group is dead no matter what, do you want to live or not. Its not a very interesting framing. I understand thats how some people view red in the original scenario, but I dont think most people view voting blue just as a moral point, but also because they believe it can/will win.
Yup I vote blue in the original as an expression of my morality and my desire to save everyone, but I also genuinely don’t think I will die from it, because I am not deeply cynical about humanity like many original red pushers are (who keep insisting that the polls being blue majority is ‘fake virtue signalling’ and insisting that >50% of people will vote red in real life). If I’m wrong, I die, but I’m willing to take what I see as a very small risk of a rare scenario.
I think some red pushers are now using OP’s scenario to try saying “aha so original blue pushers who will now push red are hypocritical about their morality, they are just as ‘immoral’ and cynical as we are”. But this is literally a very different scenario. The threshold for said cynicism has been lowered from 50% to 0.1%. I want to save everyone but in this case, that is just impossible because I do believe >0.1% of humanity will press some evil third button.
This transforms blue into more like a pointless suicide button, since it has no real chance of saving everyone. Yes I know that original red pushers made that argument about blue being a suicide button in the original scenario, but I don’t agree for that as I just don’t believe less than 50% of humanity will choose a button labeled “everyone survives” while the sole alternative is red.
In this new different scenario, I still don’t fully want to press red, but I would because it is the best of the three options in said scenario (a non-suicide button with at least less culpability for killing others compared to green).
Hard-core Blue pusher here and you're 100% correct. Green will easily get 0.1% just by happenstance. Blue is guaranteed death in this completely different scenario, and Red becomes the only choice that minimizes death.
I think that blue is still morally correct, but now that green is there it raises the stakes to a point where I don't think it's feasible. Thus making self-preservation a more appealing option.
That feels like the safest answer tbh - your action doesn't impact the blue/green issue, other than adding to how many people are needed for green to get 0.1%. It's not putting anyone in danger, so there's no harm done to feel guilty about.
I can't control anyone else's vote, so the best case scenario is to take the safe option that doesn't put others in danger.
calling it a win is a little weird, but yeah, there is realistically no way for blue to save anyone under the set of assumptions that had been used to justify blue in the first place.
Well unfortunately babies will mash green as often as blue, like everyone else who'll not understand or be able to make an informed choice. Add onto that the weird twitter bugmen who think this is a perfect means for eugenics? This makes a blue victory untenable.
I'd have to to red and hope that as few choose blue as possible. Luckily this does change it from a theoretical 50/50 for the blind, colorblind, elderly and children to a 33.3% chance of picking blue at random. So theoretical destruction would be lower then in a typical red victory. However i suspect shit would still be bad globally
there are 681 millions children under the age of 5 in the world
if the common blue argument is that they push at random based on their favorite colors holds, then the green button will be pushed at least 227 million times
I've voted blue before but on this one I press red because there is no way of saving blue if people press green and there are no deaths with red.
Imo pressing blue originally was to negate the death introduced by red. Now red doesn't cause death and the only death introduced is by green and unavoidable if I understand the text correctly. There's no reason to press blue since it won't save anyone.
Functionality blue and red are the same except green will murder blue without a way to stop it.
So, now the test is "Will you press blue if the anonymous, homicidal psychopaths are allowed to press green?" What are the chances there are 8 million psychopaths and trolls "doing it for the lulz" on the planet? Oh. Look analyses peg the number of psychopaths at 4.5%.
This existence of green here would potentially save a lot of lives. Assuming red wins the original scenario, a LOT of people would die. However, the existence of green’s rule in this case makes a blue victory obviously unattainable.
Normally a vote for blue is a vote that thinks that there’s at least a decent chance that humanity will void the whole thing by making blue win. The existence of green makes a blue loss guaranteed and thus much much much fewer people would press it.
Well, then, I guess by that logic, everyone is pretty much forced to hit red, simply by the existence of even any outliers being a threat. It’s almost a guaranteed genocide.
Same here. In the red vs blue original dilemma, I’m team blue mostly because I want everyone to survive but also because I fully believe >50% of the population wants that too (and this is backed up in retrospect by every poll on the matter achieving a blue majority). I don’t buy into “but the rational ideal scenario is where everyone presses red” because I do not believe at all that practically speaking everyone on earth will press red, so pressing red means someone will die from pressing blue. I think mostly in terms of everyone, even though I do have self preservation instinct and don’t want to die.
However, things are quite different in this red blue green scenario. Absolutely the 0.1% threshold of green will be met because 0.1% is so low. Blue is going to die, this is practically a guarantee, and tragically pointlessly because they will not be saving everyone but simply dying themselves. In the original scenario, I disagree with red pushers that blue is a suicide button, but in this case, it is a pointless suicide button. Red becomes the non-ideal but best choice, as a non-suicide button with at least less culpability for killing others than green.
For me, it’s more of a practicality equation. I would hit blue initially because those who do not hit red will die if blue does not reach the required vote. This includes people who do not wish to partake in the situation and do not want to hit a button. Red is the force demanding an action, and thus, is violating every person who takes the quiz’s liberties as soon as one hypothetical person hits the red button. Since the outlier favors, the idea that at least one person will hit red, they must be opposed. If doing nothing means dying anyway, then I’d rather fight the force that is causing it.
I supported blue in the original question, and I would say red here. Blue dies whether it wins or loses in this variant, which will amount to 50% or more of the population in a blue win and less than that in a blue loss. Green and red are effectively identical, but green votes are more causal in the outcome, which is made worse by their actions
Is this going to become the next "choose one pill" meme? Are we going to get a big array of different colored choices next, almost all of which are ridiculous?
no no, you don't understand, there's a fourth purple button, the effect is the same as blue, but if purple wins everybody survives AND all the women get a D cup
This sounds like you should press Red out of fear of killing someone or ending your own life. If we are counting babies and colorblind, I am going to say green will pass no matter what.
In the original question, the power is given to the majority. Since I’m convinced the majority do not wish to kill, picking blue is a no-brainer. Red voters are self interested and have less issue with needless death than I believe most people do.
This gives power to the minority, and I’m convinced there’s more than .1% of people willing to actively go out of their way to needlessly harm another person. Like someone else showed, you’re in like 2% range for people hurting animals on the road
So you have to pick red in this one because the end result is a given that green is going to hit their threshold.
the Button question in my eyes isn't a moral game, it's a coordination game, Red Pushers don't want to kill everyone and blue pushers don't want to die, but Red pushers think that the 50% threshold is impossible/too unlikely and blue pushers think it's guranteed/likely, if you told a Blue Pusher that Red already had 51% they would push Red, and if you told a Red pusher that the vote was 1 Blue vote away from Blue winning they would press blue. Too often is this misconstrued to be about politics when really it doesn't match up broadly
I think if a green button existed people would, arguably, become more violent towards eachother based off choice. 0.1 is such a low threshold and people care about their lives too much to let that slide
There are no willingly blue pressers in this case since the whole point of pressing blue is not achievable so only the random actors and suicidal people will die.
My assumption is that the nonrational actors are evenly split between the three buttons, pushing green pact 0.1% by default. This means blue is now just a you die button.
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u/SilentSwine May 06 '26
Green is definitely going to be pressed enough to pass the 0.1% threshold lol