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The Blue Button/Red Button Dilemma
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
in Philosophy
This game theory, moral dilemma has been going viral online at the moment. So I'm posting it here. I'll leave my thoughts out for now, but I'd ask in addition to just saying which one you'd pick say why and perhaps why you wouldn't push the other. That just makes it more interesting.
Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?
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Comments
Blue button. I wouldn't want to live in a world with only selfish people.
I wouldn’t press either button, because I think Planet Earth would be better off without humans and their technology.
I would not press either button. But the blue button sounds the lesser evil option! Also, all of us dying, what an evil God or terrible government-spectator agency to live under!
This reminds me of the prisoner's dilema by the way.
"Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of speaking to or exchanging messages with the other. The police admit they don't have enough evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They plan to sentence both to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the police offer each prisoner a Faustian bargain. If he testifies against his partner, he will go free while the partner will get three years in prison on the main charge. Oh, yes, there is a catch ... If both prisoners testify against each other, both will be sentenced to two years in jail. The prisoners are given a little time to think this over, but in no case may either learn what the other has decided until he has irrevocably made his decision. Each is informed that the other prisoner is being offered the very same deal. Each prisoner is concerned only with his own welfare—with minimizing his own prison sentence.[3]
This leads to three different possible outcomes for prisoners A and B:
If A and B both remain silent, they will each serve one year in prison.
If one testifies against the other but the other doesn’t, the one testifying will be set free while the other serves three years in prison.
If A and B testify against each other, they will each serve two years."
The thing with most thought experiments like this is they're extreme examples of real world dilemmas meant to take away the ability to avoid moral responsibility. The one presented here is similar to vaccination where taking one protects others. Opting out kind of avoids thinking about the moral implications of complex situations with no clear cut right choice. Many choices are tradeoffs between imperfect options rather perfectly good and bad outcomes.
So in this case opting out, since it's anonymous doesn't send any signal against the system and functionally is a non blue vote.
It is also a non red vote, meaning you vote against your own survival… consider it a protest option against the absurdity of the thought experiment.
If I must push a button, then it must be the BLUE button as all life is sacred.