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PaperclipPerfector  18hr ago (text post)   786 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)

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.

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