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Everyone on earth has to press a red or blue button. If <50% pick blue, only the red survive. If >50% pick blue, everyone survives. Choose wisely.

Which button would you press?

  • Red Button

    Votes: 8 21.6%

  • Blue Button

    Votes: 29 78.4%
  • Total voters
    37
  • Poll closed .
The better answer depends on prevailing social context. No one is hurt if a majority pushes blue, but no one is hurt if everyone pushes red.

If the blue buttons were not in the scenario it would simplify to "everyone must push the red button or die." A responsible government would encourage everyone to push red to protect themselves, including sending aides to try their best to make sure everyone (the infirm, the intellectually disabled, etc.) gets the task done. It would be moral to use every available apparatus of society and state—propaganda, threats, bribes—to convince everyone to push their red button in time. With the blue button added to the scenario, that approach doesn't have to change. The only reason not to push red is fear that a minority of people will self-harm by misguidedly pushing blue. One way to avoid that is to tell them not to, the same way we tell people not to run gasoline powered generators indoors.

That said, if the prevailing sentiment clearly inclined toward the opposite approach, with a majority advocating pushing blue, it becomes a moral imperative (if ones moral imperatives arise from the intention to protect life) to go along with that instead. As in the previous case, a responsible government would exert its power to enforce consistent choices, in this case of blue. It would be fair to portray anyone who could even consider pressing red as a reckless selfish coward.

Bottom line: any society prone to deep ideological division (that became subject to this scenario) had better see strong leadership stepping up. A pro-blue "movement" in a prevailing red society is a suicide cult. A pro-red "movement" in a prevailing blue society is a murder cult. Moral virtue in this case lies in being willing to do as you're ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ told.
 
It's the standard "Homo homini lupus est" attempt to prove that all people are selfish bastards, so it's okay to be one yourself, and only idiots think of humanity as a whole.

Fact is that it takes a lot of disfunctional education to make someone indifferent to their fellow humans.

If I assume that someone presses blue, I have to press it, too, or I am supporting murder.

Ethically, it's not difficult.
 
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Myriad said:
The better answer depends on prevailing social context. No one is hurt if a majority pushes blue, but no one is hurt if everyone pushes red.

If the blue buttons were not in the scenario it would simplify to "everyone must push the red button or die." A responsible government would encourage everyone to push red to protect themselves, including sending aides to try their best to make sure everyone (the infirm, the intellectually disabled, etc.) gets the task done. It would be moral to use every available apparatus of society and state—propaganda, threats, bribes—to convince everyone to push their red button in time. With the blue button added to the scenario, that approach doesn't have to change. The only reason not to push red is fear that a minority of people will self-harm by misguidedly pushing blue. One way to avoid that is to tell them not to, the same way we tell people not to run gasoline powered generators indoors.
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No. With the two buttons, the government's best approach will obviously be to persuade people to press blue. Why? Because you only need just over 50% of people to do what you ask for everybody to survive. This is a much lower bar than trying to persuade everybody to press the red button.
 
Press red and you're guaranteed survival. Is there, then, any good reason not to press red?
 
Hard to pass up an opportunity to possibly get rid of half of you... I mean, if the reds win with hopefully 51% of the vote and 49% gets Thanos-ed on outta here, that leaves a smaller group in the Mad Max chaos afterwards to take out one by one. I'm liking those odds.
 
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Matthew Best said:
Because you can be sure that some people will pick blue.
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Everybody can/should see the logic of pressing red. If some press blue then they're dimbulbs and can't be helped.
Doing the wrong thing because others will is not the way forward.
 
Small risk of a vast death toll or certainty of a much smaller death toll.

If there's a concerted worldwide campaign to press blue then it's very likely everyone will live, but there's a hard-to-quantify chance enough people will chicken out and press red to be a majority in which case perhaps billions will die.

If there's a concerted worldwide campaign to press red then everyone can save themselves with a fairly clear conscience but we have to recognise that there will be a proportion of people who get it wrong for some or other reason and will die.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Small risk of a vast death toll or certainty of a much smaller death toll.
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Or no risk of any death toll at all, if people are not pointlessly selfish.

This prisoners dillema would be a lot more interesting if there was an additional relatively minor negative consequence for pushing blue.
 
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