AIBU to wonder which button people would press to survive?

[Boxingshibes]

Everyone on earth takes a private vote by pressing a red or blue button.

If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives.

If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?

Red or blue
Red- aibu
Blue-ainbu

If everyone on the earth pressed red though then everyone would survive! They all have the same choice as you.

If it was the case that only 50% of people were making the decision for everyone then I would be absolutely in agreement with you.

I looked at it another way: say a plane was going to crash, everyone has a parachute and can jump and will survive, or 50% of people can jump and the plane might be light enough to make it down safely so the rest survive too. Surely the whole plane would jump to ensure they lived rather than taking the risk? Why would you not??

Red, obviously. Then you have a 100% chance of surviving. If people want to self select themselves out by pushing blue that’s on them. You need a better example if you’re trying to set up a moral choice

If you exclude babies and change from the outcome then that isn’t going to be great if all the parents are dead because of the number of people pressing red.

Why would you assume it would be ‘nearly everyone votes blue’ in that circumstance?

Because if enough people press red, and if you exclude babies from the consequences, then you get a lot of parentless children and the ones pressing red aren’t going to step up. So the babies and toddlers will die ultimately

It's really quite fascinating that you can't understand that this isn't "game theory".
It's like you're seeing an abstract painting for the first time and keep explaining that the artist failed to make the objects look realistic.

Wouldn't be great for them if people fell for the framing and opted for blue instead of the everybody wins choice of red, either.

But they won’t. People may like to think they would risk themselves to save the lives of unknown people but it’s clearly not true in general.

I would still press red and if that makes me a bad person then so be it

The irony of all these people trying to guilt or shame others into placing blind trust in the altruism of strangers. Blind faith has been exploited throughout history to justify some truly terrible behaviour. There is nothing altruistic about using shame-based pressure to coerce conformity. In fact, knowing / seeing that some people automatically default to that behaviour is enough to ensure that I would press the red, all day long!

The irony of the blue button people...

It’s fascinating how consistent the outcome of this experiment has been across SM - I feel like Mr Spock watching this strange species acting illogically.

I pushed red, and now I’m pondering whether it would be better to push blue in the knowledge that so many other people would be daft enough to vote blue. I didn’t want daft people to die, tbf, I just assumed that when everyone is handed a life jacket they’d put the bloody thing on. Nowt queer as folk.

The naivety would be enough to make me press red even if I had faith in human nature!

shall I take personal responsibility and push red and survive?

Or shall I put my life into the hands of unknown masses of people, at a time when being stupid is celebrated like never before, at a time when society feels more divided than ever before, at a time when some people insist men are women and only bigots disagree, at a time when racism is celebrated, at a time when lying is common and also celebrated etc etc etc?

no way. I'll take the personal responsibility route, and so should everyone else.

Well said!