AIBU to wonder which button people would press to survive?

But if everyone has the same information then it makes no sense to choose anything other than red.

If there’s an information asymmetry then that’s different but assuming we all have the same information I don’t see why you’d not press red.

Red. Not even a dilemma

I am sure my loved ones would do the same

Because people you love may press blue? I mean, Im assuming this isn't something that gets publicly discussed before voting? So you'd need to be really sure your family, your friends, your kids would be choosing red yes?

Id rather die than know Id killed my kids.

So are we thinking this is a real OP or just someone training their chat bot to see if they can make an accurate game theory post? (Yes, must have three options for this style of game theory question. And one of the options IS the prisoner’s dilemma.) I know nothing about schooling these days, so maybe it’s super antiquated to think this could be a school assignment in which case fuck off OP and do it yourself, ya cheeky hen 😂

I’d press blue because if I press red and my daughter pressed blue I would have to kill myself anyway. Can’t take the risk of killing my child.

It is a great question because it helps us to understand how people behave. It is a branch of mathematics called Game Theory.

And adding to @OtterlyAstounding's point - choosing red doesn't involve death for anyone else.

@BertieBotts

Choosing blue involves you actively choosing a risk of death for yourself, and also hoping that a majority of others will, for some unknown and IMO not sensible reason, choose the risk of death for themselves as well.
The more I consider this, the more I think that blue is not only not sensible, but also morally questionable, because you do have to hope that many other people will put themselves at risk to support your choice. Red takes responsibility for yourself and puts nothing on anyone else.

No. Red literally means 'no choice of death', as pp says in the comment above yours.

If people wish to choose blue in some misguided suicide, you can't stop them, but only choosing blue introduces the risk of death, as suddenly now (if you choose blue) you're going to die unless enough people also choose blue.

If you choose red, then you live. No chance of death.

It's not about majorities, as you can't guarantee what the majority will be. It's about making the best choice for survival, based on what you know - which is: "If I choose red, I will live."

You could say that in theory, if everyone chooses blue then it makes the bowl safe for everyone...but it'll be safe for everyone if they all just eat the red sweets anyway!! Blue just introduces risk.

Well no, because the good thing about choosing blue is that not everyone has to choose blue.

Choosing red means everyone has to choose red for everyone to survive, which is the optimal outcome. But it seems unlikely that everyone will do the same thing. Some people will choose blue regardless of what I choose. Therefore the most realistic way to get the optimal outcome where everyone survives is to try and tip the balance towards blue which only has to be a majority.

Maybe I am seeing it morally but since it's not a logic problem, that's not against any rule.

Majority red guarantees a risk whereas majority blue involves no risk.

No, I don't agree with your analysis.

If you vote blue, it introduces a chance of death. If you vote red, there's no chance of death. It's not at all sensible to vote blue. I think you're still coming at this with the attitude that it's somehow morally superior to vote blue. I don't believe that. It's just IMO misunderstanding the question.

At The time of my vote (blue) it was 53%. So everyone survives.

Would we know the rules beforehand?
If we were just told 'blue= you want everyone to survive" and "red = you don't want everyone to survive", but were unaware of the actual way the choice led to the consequence described, that would make it a more honest question, without the possibility of mass collusion. I think
🤔 🔴 🔵

Well, that's true - in that scenario, only red sweets are guaranteed to be safe, and blue sweets might be poisoned. So why on earth would you choose to eat a blue sweet, in that scenario??

It's really not complicated.

If you choose red: You always live.

If you choose blue: There's a good chance you might die.

Why on earth would you choose to potentially die??

You could say that in theory, if everyone chooses blue then it makes the bowl safe for everyone...but it'll be safe for everyone if they all just eat the red sweets anyway!! Blue just introduces risk.

I don't understand the poisoned sweet analogy at all. If I'm choosing blue then it's not like I'm choosing a bowl with one poisoned sweet. I'm choosing a bowl with no poisoned sweets for anyone, although I might be wrong meaning some of the sweets could end up poisoned anyway. (Which I suppose is the point of the one poisoned sweet, but that doesn't feel intuitively right.)

Red means choosing a bowl with magic sweets where red sweets are safe and blue sweets are poisoned.

The oxygen mask analogy where people throw their masks away through panic also bears no resemblance to a scenario where you're making a choice. But my analogy with choosing to either wear the mask (red button) or not wear the mask but divert the oxygen so it fills the cabin (blue button) although this might not be enough (and the mask-wearers would be fine regardless) does make more sense to me, and makes me want to pick red, and feel that it is obviously logical for everyone to pick red.

I think because in (my) oxygen mask scenario, I see it more like the danger of death is external, it's not related to my choice, it's happening anyway and I have two possible ways to prevent it, but one of them is entirely under my control and therefore more certain, the other depends on the cooperation and communal action of more than half of the people on the plane, and I don't know if I would trust that and it seems crazy to do so.

In the sweet bowl scenario it feels like choosing blue is choosing a safe bowl for everyone, and choosing red means that poison would be introduced whereas it wouldn't if most people don't choose that option. It's not that I would feel responsible for poisoning people, it's just that I don't want that to happen to anyone including me, so it feels safer to go for the option with no poison.

I think the better question is what would you tell your kids to press?
Would anyone seriously tell their children to press blue?

I don't have small children - mine are teenagers. But I feel pretty certain that even when very young, they would've pressed red as the sensible choice. Obviously though, my comfort with pressing red is based on the fact that I know everyone I care about most would press red, and therefore I have nothing to lose by pressing red. It's a win/win situation.

But as I've said, I think the only rational reason to press blue, is if one knows that a person one cares about will press blue, and one wants to try to save them.

For those voting red, lets assume we cannot speak to family members like small children about this before they vote? Would you still be happy with your choice?

No, it doesn't. If I press red, then I will always live. If I press blue, then I might die.

If you press red, you are ensuring that you live, and there is no risk of death. If you press blue, you are both introducing a risk of death, and putting your life in other people's hands (and as this thread shows, you can't trust people to think clearly, or to think of others' well-being over their own).

To press blue is literally to say: "I could've pressed red and guaranteed my survival, but for some reason I've decided it would be more fun to introduce the previously non-existent possibility of dying, based on what my fellow humans vote for!"

I think my poisoned sweet analogy further down is probably a better comparison for the whole situation than the oxygen mask, which is really just about the fact that you are not morally responsible if someone else chooses to panic and throw their oxygen mask away (aka, you are not morally responsible for people's deaths if you press red, and they press blue).

Yes but my point is the clever ones realise and press red, the selfish ones dont realise but press red to save themselves, then the foolish people like me who are trying to save everyone end up dead.

But choosing red unnecessarily introduces the risk of death!

If most people choose blue then there is no risk of death. Nobody dies. Choosing red introduces death! It seems completely illogical to me for anyone to choose red, although I understand that some people will. Even though I made a chart, and see that red has no risk of death to the red-button-presser personally, it still feels like the illogical choice because it introduces a risk of death, which blue does not.

I can see there is a reason to choose red but I still think blue makes the most sense for most people to choose because if you choose blue, nobody dies, which is the best outcome.

It's not the same as putting your own oxygen mask on first, because if you don't do that, both you die and your child dies because you pass out before you can help them. If you push red and your child pushes blue then you couldn't have helped them anyway. I suppose it's more like - connecting your oxygen mask's supply to a pipe which would deliver oxygen to the whole plane at once and negate the need for masks, but which will only work if more than half the people decide to do this, otherwise there won't be enough oxygen in that system so only the people wearing masks would survive. In this scenario there is enough oxygen to support everyone wearing a mask.

Hmm. In that scenario I would probably wear the oxygen mask, rather than donate it, unless I could see that the majority were agreeable to the pipe connection plan in which case I would join it. Which probably tells me there's something wrong with the way I'm processing the button question.

Years ago (at least 20 years if not more) there was a TV programme that had this premise.

I only remember one that was were a plane had been hijacked and was going to be flown to crash into a high population area, (weird forshadowing of 9/11). And the team who was deciding what to do failed.

They had the options of

Shoot the plane down
Try to get one of the passengers to negotiate
Try to get the hijackers to crash the plane somewhere else.

Iirc, they chose B and then C. Turns out that official military advice (this was based on UK military) was to shoot the plane down. Yes 300 people will die but several thousand wouldnt. So on balance it was the best decision.

Imagine a world where this happens regularly every 5 years. Everyone except very young children participates, people can log their choice in advance (and change it freely and repeatedly until the cut of moment).

Would it end up as a regular no-questions-asked euthanasia event? Would people suggest to vote blue in attempt to save everyone who would had been trying to use it as one?

One would hope a person would think to ask their child how they'd vote!

But yes - pressing blue is illogical, against self-preservation, and utterly foolish, for most people (unless, as I said, they know someone they love will vote blue, and want to try to save them).

It should be a non-question.

A very rough equivalent would be: "Do you want to have to eat a single sweet from a bowl that contains one poisoned sweet, or a bowl with no poisoned sweets? BUT, if you choose 'no poisoned sweets', then everyone who chose 'one poisoned sweet' is guaranteed to eat the poisoned sweet and die."

Why on earth would anyone choose the option that introduces the otherwise non-existent risk that they will die??

This reminds me of one of those survival exercise things I read about years ago which I think was based on the remise of a plague type infection in a hospital. It was judged on minimising number of deaths and impact on society.
The team that won were ruthless, they sealed off the hospital containing the initial infection so staff and visitors at the time of diagnosis were all confined. Most of them died but others outside were saved.
The team who came last and decimated most of society (according to the simulations) by allowing the infection to spread outside of the hospital, claimed they still believed they did the right thing as they observed everybody's human rights so thought they won in moral terms, completely missing the point that the aim was to survive. They are the blue button voters in this scenario, blue is virtue signalling but not practical survival

I agree that in a real life or death situation no one can predict how they will act. But, that's because humans are not logical. Of course it's strictly logical to vote red. But then, as you are about to press it, you realise you never asked your child how they'd vote. You know your mum has strong principles and you can't be sure. Or maybe you hear people laughing outside and it moves you to tears and you think, I just want everyone to live.