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PaperclipPerfector  14hr ago (text post)   706 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 1, 2026

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This has resurfaced and been trending for a while

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?

Currently at 42.1% red and 57.9% blue.

What would you choose? (See also r/slatestarcodex discussion)

I was motivated to post because I have a convincing argument for blue:

  1. Stupid people will choose blue. You may not care about the disabled, elderly, generally moronic, etc. but this includes children and people who are "too generous": nice, but emotional, and devote their lives to charity

  2. Thanos snapping a decent amount of the population (including random children, and biased towards selflessness) will probably overall negatively affect society

  3. I probably won't die because most people choose blue, as evidenced by the poll. Even if I do, it may be preferable to living with the survivors (point #2)

Back when this question first came out I unhesitantly said Red. Now that I am older and wiser I would likely choose blue, purely because of the framing of the question. Frame it as red:live vs blue:potentially die and I'd still choose red:live.

In addition to other comments about how phrasing the question biases the selection, I'm curious how much impact the red/blue color of the button are subconsciously influencing people's decision on what button to press.

Also, I believe that vote count was influenced by the reply to himself indicating "Blue voters hanging on by a thread currently." That might have given enough push for people to be willing to press the blue button to end up with the 42/58 split instead of something closer to 49/51 as it was before the comment was made.

I'm also curious if there is any data on the demographics of the people that would press each button. I think it's very likely women are much more likely to press the blue button, and men are more likely to press the red button. If the men who would press the red button was conscious of this, would they be more likely to change their mind? For example if 70% of women pressed the blue button but 80% of men pressed the red button, that would mean the surviving men now have to live in a world where there are only 3 women for every 8 men. For the red button pressors, does the possibility of having to live in such a world impact your decision in any way? If you knew this possibility was made aware to all red button pressors, do you think it would impact enough red button pressors to become blue button pressors that could change how you perceive blue button pressors?

What if the question was modified so that the death/survival put you into random groups of X number of people? Or more simply, rather than this being a game of everyone, this is a game of a set number of people e.g. 10,000 or even just 100. At a low enough number, your chances of dying if you pressed blue actually increases significantly, if we assume the 42.1% red to 57.9% blue ratio holds true (it likely won't and I already expressed some skepticism at that number being a "true" answer). I presume red button pressors will always press red regardless of the size of the group. Are there any blue button pressors that would press the red button in smaller group sizes? For red button pressors, what if it was a small group e.g. 100, and within that group is a friend or family member that you know would likely press the blue button. What if this button was presented strictly to people in your family (or people in your friend group). Would you be more willing to press the blue button?

What if the percentage of people that needed to press the blue button to survive was increased to 60%? 75%? 90%? Most of the provided reasons for pressing blue still holds true because none of them take consideration any calculation on what percentage of people one might believe to press blue to warrant pressing blue. For the blue button pressers, is there a number at which you would change your mind? There has to be a number, because if the requirement was 100% of blue button pressors must press blue for blue button pressors to survive, knowing there are people that would press the red button even if the number was only 50% required would make any rational actor press the red button instead.

That's a good enough margin for blue to take away most people's excuse for not voting blue.

It should converge to blue, because people have loved ones, and the recursive "what do I think they think I think they'll press" combined with enough shared cultural sentiment of "I wouldn't want to live in a world without my loved ones" = Blue wins

but personally, like @sun_the_second , if I'm being brutally honest with myself, I value my own survival above others'. I'm a rationalist, not a romantic. I'd pick Red. Extrapolated out, maybe Red wins

(no, I don't have kids)

The blue button is the optimal choice here. Either it gets 50% of the vote and nothing happens, or it fails and I get to go to Heaven, because risking my own life to save the lives of all the people who don't understand Monty Hall problems is the ultimate act of self-sacrifice.

Question as phrased, blue, because lots of people will look at that question and press blue.

More evil variant:

You are told that you will be presented with two buttons, one red and one blue. If you press the red button, you will survive and no additional people will be told about the buttons due to your actions. If you press the blue button, the question will be presented to two other random people in the world (unless no people remain who have not been asked the question). Once this process completes, the votes will be tallied. If strictly more than 50.0% of the people asked pressed blue, everyone survives. Otherwise, everyone who pressed blue dies.

What's the ethical thing to do here?

Red because most people won’t understand the question and will just hear “you will definitely survive” and “nobody you know and love will probably be in the 2 random people asked next”. The original question works ‘better’ because it’s more intuitively understood by the average 85 IQ human being on earth.

Alright, variant for you:

Instead of being drawn from the global population, additional people are drawn from the set of people who have ever argued with someone about (explicitly) decision theory on the internet.

(also, I think I found a situation where FDT performs worse than naive CDT - naive CDT + not arguing about decision theory will always achieve outcomes that are strictly not worse than FDT in this scenario)

There are two ways to phrase the question. This way is phrased here basically demands Blue.

Rephrase it like this and I think there would be more Red pushers:

Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. Everyone who presses the red button will live with no risk of death. If you press the blue button, you will die unless more than 50% of people also press the blue button.

Phrasing this way demonstrates that the blue button pressers are creating a risk of death which doesn't really need to be there.

But what about kids? I think adding a (those who are incompetent or underage will have their button pushed by their parent/guardian) parenthetical would change it even more.

Because consider the parent now. If you asked a parent, "Which button would you press for your kid, the one where they will always survive or the one where they might die?" I think most parents would press the red button without a second thought.

Basically this. If you don't immediately perceive that a vote for blue is a vote to be killed, perhaps you deserve that outcome.

This kind of clause defeats the point. The point is everyone gets the question at the same time and must decide instantly. In that context your choices are:

  1. Press Red, guarantee your survival, hope everyone you love also chooses Red or that enough people choose Blue. If Red wins, live with knowing you might have had the defining vote (assume nobody knows the exact split of the final outcome) however unlikely.

  2. Press Blue, either die instantly with a clean conscience or everyone lives.

Why do you assume it's an instant death and not a slow drawn out painful death?

I think there is a related interesting question here if red merely has a high probability of survival (99%, say), but blue has better/guaranteed odds if you solve the coordination problem.

The phrasing of "everyone is presented with the option to walk into a woodchipper (or not!), but it'll jam if 50%+ of the population all decide to walk into it together" is a similar phrasing that'll probably lead to fewer choosing blue.

I think the difference is, a kid will see that a woodchipper is scary, but a kid might see a blue button as enticing.

I think most people who answer blue are thinking of children (maybe?) and most people who answer red assume children wouldnt' be asked.

most people who answer red assume children wouldnt' be asked.

I think a lot of people who would answer red assume children old enough to understand the question and to press a button would be asked, but that enough children could be convinced by their parents to seriously, not joke around, just press red. Now if you assume babies who don't understand the question and are unable to push the button as a deliberate act are included, then blue is a more reasonable answer.

I think adding a (those who are incompetent or underage will have their button pushed by their parent/guardian) parenthetical would change it even more.

Then I agree with you, but also, I’d say anyone “competent” in this situation (and not suicidal) would press red

I think that almost everyone with young children, and who can comprehend the question (can more or less than 50% of human adults even do that?), is pressing blue. I certainly am.

Aside from that though the real interesting part of this, which has mostly gone unexplored afaict, is how the question changes depending upon the group under consideration. If it were just my church, I'd have zero concerns about pressing blue. If it were my whole county I'd still feel pretty good about it.

But 'everyone in the world' forces me to ask some hard questions about the psychology of foreigners and I find myself a lot less certain.

(The other difficult question is which button I coach my older kids to push.)

I've also had a lot to think about since the first time we've had this question. My current honest thought process is that if the question is asked to "everyone in the world" I'd feel confident in pressing Blue. However if the question gets asked only to people in Quant Finance there's no way in hell I'm pressing anything other than Red.

My position, which seems to annoy both blues and reds, is that blue is the "altruistic" choice, but advocating or recruiting for blue is evil. If you want to press the probable-suicide button because there's a chance it might save some lives even though it certainly risks your own, OK, that's your business, and I can at least respect the courage that takes even if I think it's dumb and almost certainly doomed given the parameters of the hypothetical (it is asking literally everyone in the world, not just a Twitter bubble), but where it crosses the line is when you try to pressure others into pressing the suicide button alongside you through either manipulation or coercion: I have seen quite a few tweets about blues fantasizing about hunting down and purging all the reds once blue "obviously" win, which, to be frank, is not great optics.

Blues who threaten and coerce others into voting blue don't seem to seriously grapple with the possibility that blue won't win. They claim that reds have "blood on their hands", but convincing someone to vote blue and then losing is more fraught, morally, then opting to not partake. And the act of advocacy and coalition building is so obviously self-interested it diminishes the "altruism" in pressing blue.

Blues generally want to see themselves as saviors or martyrs, then fantasize about killing reds (or positing hypotheticals where the buttons are secretly switched and all the "anti-social reds" exterminate themselves, or where your choice of red or blue is actually made public); this is actually more cynical than the red perspective in many ways.

So there are broadly four categories of voters. You have people who advocate red and press red: their priors are that blue won't clear the threshold and pressing blue is suicidal. They argue for their family and friends to press red to save themselves. The presence of "randomizers" (toddlers, confused people, the colorblind or whatever) is unfortunate and it means that "everyone presses red" is not a possible outcome, but one can at least reduce the death toll by converting blues to reds.

Then you have the people who advocate blue and secretly press red. These are the "free riders" who benefit from the virtue signaling of claiming blue allegiance but don't actually bear any risk. I think this group is unambiguously the most evil, and, crucially, it's impossible to distinguish from a self-proclaimed blue-presser.

Then you have people who advocate blue and press blue. They want to build a large enough coalition to "win" and save everyone. This is noble in intent, but if the blue cause is actually doomed then they're just recruiting people into their suicide cult. Given that blue doesn't win in a landslide in an internet poll where the incentives are strongly oriented toward signaling cooperation and altruism, I'm not optimistic about blue's odds when the stakes are real. Plausibly these blues actually do believe that they can pressure and guilt enough reds to secure a victory. In any case, they're gambling with other people's lives and I think they're worse than "honest" reds.

The final group, which may not even exist, is the population that advocates red and then presses blue. This seems inherently self-defeating (as they're actively reducing the chance they survive) and suicidal, but if you're unsure whether blue will win and uncomfortable asking or coercing others to risk their lives, then this is at least a coherent position. This manifests as imploring your wife and children and anyone of sane mind to press red then solemnly entering the voting booth and pressing blue, expecting to die but unwilling to risk the possibility that your red vote could kill half of humanity. They would believe that pressing blue is a choice you have to make of your own volition: pressing blue because you're worried that the blue death squads will hunt you down in a post-button world isn't altruism, it's just a red who read the room.

Blues generally seem to believe that a blue victory is possible because humans are fundamentally good, or because we live in a high-trust society, but I'd argue that the highest trust society looks more like everyone independently choosing that last group -- advocating red then pressing blue because their conscience won't allow them any other option. A "fun" thing to consider is how many people might choose this path: how many of the filthy reds the blues fantasize about exterminating will waver in the moment and press blue? The discourse surfaces what people claim and the nature of the secret ballot means that just as the advocate-blue-press-reds are indistinguishable from blue's strongest soldiers, the reverse is also true.

I think that red pressers are unambiguously worse people than blue pressers. Blues are trying to make a better world - maybe they fail, but they're trying. Whereas those who press red put themselves first, even if that means it costs other people.

Agreed, but there's also a vast contingent of people who imagine they'd push blue right up until they're actually making the choice, at which point red becomes irresistable.

Yeah, I agree with that. It is only once you face the test in the moment that you truly know how you will respond. There are any number of things where I hope I might handle it in a certain way, but I won't know for sure until I come to the choice for real.

I disagree that simply persuading people to choose blue is unethical. Ultimately it’s their decision, and it’s not obviously wrong.

But

I have seen quite a few tweets about blues fantasizing about hunting down and purging all the reds once blue "obviously" win

A way to lose in real life is to get worked up over a silly hypothetical.

I disagree that simply persuading people to choose blue is unethical. Ultimately it’s their decision, and it’s not obviously wrong.

An example to demonstrate my point: there is a cult leader who has spiked the Kool-Aid with lethal poison. He genuinely, 100% earnestly believes that everyone who he convinces to partake of this drink will go to heaven; after he's tended to his flock he intends to follow them. Is it unethical to convince people to join him? He is genuinely acting in what he believes is their best interest. I think this figure is tragic, delusional, and dangerous, but, if he's a true believer, one could argue that he isn't unethical, though he is, at the bare minimum, projecting his utility function onto others.

Now, let's change the parameters: the cult leader is no longer certain that everyone who drinks the poisoned Kool-Aid will go to heaven. He's actually only about 50% sure. Maybe drinkers will go to heaven or maybe they'll just die. Nevertheless, he continues trying to convince everyone to take this gamble -- and he knows it's a gamble. Can he ethically advocate for Kool-Aid drinking? I think this is a decision that everyone should make for themselves after being informed of the risks, and that persuading people to drink the Kool-Aid (by asserting that their family and friends are going to drink it, for instance) is dubious and paternalistic. The strongest argument I think he is ethically permitted to make is something like, "I personally believe there is a 50% chance that drinking the Kool-Aid will get you into heaven; I believe the reward outweighs the risk and encourage anyone who agrees to follow me voluntarily."

This is not quite isomorphic to the button problem as posed but there are strong parallels. It is pretty close to the button problem where the results are already determined -- that is, no matter how many people you convince, the outcome won't change, and it's worth noting that this is the most common case: your advocacy is unlikely to change enough votes & minds to swing the results one way or the other. "The votes have already been tallied and one side has won by a significant margin: you and your family are the last ones left. How do you vote, and how do you instruct your family members to vote?"

I suspect people get worked up because they know that a person who presses red is also a person who is very likely to defect in other scenarios requiring everyone to work together for the good of the whole, and they want to get rid of those who would benefit at the expense of others. But as you said, it's a hypothetical and it's best not to get worked up about it.

Every poll on this I've seen has shown significant split between the two choices, at most maybe 70-30 one way. This has convinced me that, if this were done IRL, there's basically no way that Blue would get 50%, and I'm skeptical it'd get over 20%. If the voting is split when there are no consequences and you can choose whatever makes you feel virtuous knowing that you won't ever have to walk the talk, then in a situation of fatal consequences, there's simply no plausible way that the "don't die" button wouldn't have overwhelming victory. Given that, I don't see how I could justify adding one more body to the pile, instead of gritting my teeth and accepting the responsibility of keeping society running after it's been approximately decimated.

There's no person in the world I wouldn't prefer to outlive rather than die. In addition, many of my friends I've polled vote red and they're not that bad to spend the thanos snap apocalypse with.

If Twitter is that close, and assuming that Twitter selects for caving to social pressure and aggressively pro-social signaling, then I don't have high hopes blue wins overall.

Funny thing, I recall that last time this was dropped I was arguing for blue.

I have always found this question to mostly assess which individuals have such strong feelings of personal moral culpability that it will push them to make objectively irrational decisions. My answer is clearly and obviously red, because my individual vote does not count and is unlikely to sway anything when everyone in the world is taking the poll. That is 8.3 billion people. The outcome is dichotomous. There is, for all intents and purposes, zero chance my vote will influence the end result at all, and so it's literally just a choice between "Live/Possibly Die".

No-brainer, to be honest. The only way anyone can even begin to mount a convincing argument for blue is by explaining how my vote will have a material effect on the final outcome, and I doubt you can argue that.

My first immediate reaction is to press blue. My second reaction is that I hate voting. The larger the franchise, the more I'd push for me and everyone I know and love to vote red. If the people I love insist on voting blue, id do it too.

The obvious reason to choose blue is that many of your closest friends, family, people you love will choose blue, and do you really want to be a survivor in a world populated entirely by people who choose red?

The obvious reason to choose red is that many of your closest friends, family, people you love will choose red, and do you really want to be a survivor in a world populated entirely by people who choose blue?

If everyone commits to pressing red, everyone lives. If you leave it to "push blue?" then there's a good chance people die. If you want to maximise your own chances of survival, push red.

do you really want to be a survivor in a world populated entirely by people who choose blue?

There is no world populated entirely by people who chose blue.

Obviously this is a coordination problem that presupposes that everyone is presented with the problem and must choose instantly without speaking to everyone they know and love (otherwise we could obviously all agree, as the human race, to choose red, and all definitely live).

It only works if you don’t know what your parents, children, spouse and friends have picked or will pick.

It's more that I was trying to point out that if you are a blue, then yeah you'll think reds are bad, just because they're red. But if you're a red, then you'll think blues are bad, for the same reason: just because they're blues. You need more of a convincing reason than "ugh, those people, do you really want to be in the same hemisphere as those stinky losers?"

If the majority of the population are going to be blue, maybe I would prefer to be dead!

If everyone commits to pressing red, everyone lives.

This is outside the bounds of the thought experiment (children, mentally infirm, etc.) and so irrelevant.

Does it specifically say children, the infirm, etc. are included? It just says "everyone who pushes this colour, this thing; everyone who pushes that colour, that thing". You can just as easily argue that children and the enfeebled are not going to be permitted to push buttons and so they don't come in to the experiment.

Indeed, if only the button pushers die, then everyone who doesn't push a button probably lives anyway, so red or blue doesn't apply to them.

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?

Here is the prompt again, emphasis mine.

Not accusing you of this but a whole lot of people are somehow reading it as 'mentally-competent adults' which is not what it says.

Right, it does say "everyone in the world" which presumably includes children. I think the problem is we instinctively go "well clearly not babies, babies can't press buttons" etc. and that leads to the "does this really mean children, how old is the child" and so on.

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