Let’s say two parents and a child. They know that both strategies work:
They don’t know for sure which strategy others will apply. Perhaps the parents fear that the child chooses blue, and they would prefer to die instead of seeing their child die because they made the wrong choice. So they might choose blue. In case the two others choose red, then at least the other parent can take care of the child.
Honestly it’s not that you are wrong either. Both choices have a clear way to be defended, the only thing that bothers me in your assesment is that in a potentially fatal outcome for blue, you claim that blues are dying solely by their own choice. In this setup, outcomes are determined by the combination of all votes, so responsibility for the outcome is necessarily distributed across all participants. You picking your own survival directly impacts the odds of a positive collective outcome (assuming the “positive collective outcome“ is everyone’s survival), so you can’t just blame blues if they do end up dying. The collective outcome doesn’t come from blues vote ALONE, but from a comination of blue AND red votes.
Your ariplane example recalls a far more visceral response but structurally it’s still the same threshold problem, so my answer doesn’t actually change.
As I expressed, the issue with the airplane example is how you frame red as the default safe choice while blue as the unnecessary risk, but once again blue is the only way that everyone can survive.
Once again, this is not completely correct and you keep ignoring that the risk only materializes if there are enough red voters. The risk for blue isn’t inherent to the choice in isolation, but rather conditional on how the votes are distributed. If enough people choose blue, there is no risk at all. The risk only materializes when the threshold isn’t reached, which depends on the mix of both red and blue votes. So it’s not accurate to say that blue alone “introduces” risk. Choosing red also affects whether that risk materializes, because it reduces the likelihood of reaching the threshold where everyone survives.
I agree that each person decides individually based on their own expectations, but that describes behavior, not the mechanism of the outcome. The outcome itself is still determined by aggregation.
I agree that each person decides individually based on their own expectations. My point is just that the outcome is still determined collectively by the aggregation of those individual decisions, not in isolation.
The fact that each individual vote is extremely small doesn’t make it irrelevant in principle. The outcome is still the sum of those small contributions.
Also, you’re not “gambling” your life on a 0.001% chance of staying alive, those are two different things. Your marginal percentage contribution to the outcome is not equal to the chance of you staying alive.
Upon consideration: I’m not pushing either button, I reject the conditions of the psychopath making this ultimatum (in the hypothetical, not referring to OP). Anyone threatening mass murder in this way is not trustworthy and I don’t believe that everyone pushing the blue button really will be safe. Maybe when “they” come to execute me in five minutes I will have a chance of fighting back and stopping this sick experiment.
Maybe this answer is a cop-out but I submit that there are not real-world conditions where this level of perfect information about outcomes exist. This fact may explain the very interesting vehement disagreement about which choice is obvious, not only because of a divide in how people think, but because of how people relate this impossible situation to real situations with which they are familiar.
The “trolley problem” is a similar thought experiment that has been used to justify “utilitarianism” ethics and decision-making. Again this grates on me because the “utilitarian” decision-makers usually assume they are smarter than everyone else and can accurately predict the consequences of their sometimes repugnant choices.
This is absolutely on point. By the way you will be told “this is the most important election of your lifetime”. You will also be told that “your vote counts”. Blueman voters can’t understand how Redman voters could be so selfish, while Redman voters doesn’t understand how Blueman people can be so stupid. This is purely hypothetical of course. They all think that their best hope to improve the world is by voting when in fact there are many things they could do today that would have a more concrete positive impact on the very problems they worry about.
I am glad that we are reaching a common ground/understanding. 
A few things I’d like to add, to clarify my points, if you will:
I do not claim that they “die by they own choice”, but that they are putting themselves “at risk, by their own choice”.
It is subtly different, but important.
I do not claim that anyone voting blue is suicidal, but I assume that they have their own good and well-meaning reasoning for risking their lives for the greater good (including their own).
Whether that assessment will prove correct or not is a different issue, of course, but thankfully that’s just a thought experiment.
I understand this point and I think that here an example like the one @jlt brought up with the monster, is apt and easier to fathom, since you can use it to got to the next step and imagine more realistic scenarios with similar premises.
In real life you can actually get in a position where if enough people back you up, everyone will benefit, but if most people bail out, then the people that bailed will be certainly safe (or even profit), while those that didn’t bail out will pay the price. If you do not mind anecdotes, I can provide you with two real life examples.
In both cases nothing as serious as a life threatening situation was a stake of course, and even though the odds were so much lower, in both cases the majority bailed out and let the few people that looked after the collective good to flounder.
In both cases I (or my family) was in the “collective good” group that was left out to dry.
However, I like to think that I learn from my mistakes and the mistakes of others.
That’s fair enough.
Would you say that “blue introduces the risk, but red actuates it” is a fair description/compromise?
No argument there.
All I am saying is that since each person gets to make an individual choice, red is an “easier sell” than blue, for an individual (certain safety vs potential safety, for themselves).
As I already said, if we were in a scenario where aliens pose this issue to us and the whole of the planet had a month to communicate and coordinate, then blue would have been an “easier sell”, for a collective.
I didn’t say that the chance of survival was that low, but that the percentage of contribution of each vote is that low, so we agree on that.
This also means that if we have one billion participants, if you vote red, blue comes sort and people die, then you only have less than 0.00000001% (if I placed the zeros correctly) of the responsibility. Most people can live with that kind of responsibility or totally ignore it.
While such perfection is non-existent practically, similar problems occur.
For example, let’s say that the people that do not have a car want to vote for the creation of public transport in your city, but lack the votes to do so themselves.
a - blue) If the people that have cars join the people that don’t, then the motion will pass (50+%).
b - red) If not, then only the people that have cars will still be able to move around the city, as they like. Whatever issue the people that voted blue had, will still persist.
A different issue, far less dangerous or psychopathic, but a similar experiment.
Sometimes the “collective idea” wins, sometimes Not-In-My-Back-Yard wins.
It depends on the issue.
After all, an idea being collective-created or collective-minded, doesn’t automatically make it better or correct.
I don’t think that split quite works. The risk doesn’t originate from one side and then get triggered by the other. The risk exists only at the level of the system, as a function of how all votes are distributed. Neither blue nor red create risk in isolation, but rather it emerges from the interaction of both choices.
I agree that any individual’s contribution is extremely small. My point was never about the magnitude, but about the nature of the contribution. Even if it’s tiny, it is still part of what determines the outcome. Whether someone is comfortable with that level of responsibility is a separate personal question, but it doesn’t make the responsibility disappear. This isn’t meant as a judgment, just an observation about how the system works. Once you recognize that, people are free to act according to their own preferences.
I think at this point we mostly agree on the structure of the problem, even if we disagree on how to act in it. For me, the key point was clarifying that red isn’t a neutral choice, and that the outcome is inherently collective, even if the decisions are made individually.
Can’t agree on that. Already with 18 voters here we’ve seen two very different “understandings” of the experiment. You can’t know nor dictate not decide how people will understand the experiment or what their decision process will look like.
When I read the first post my immediate reaction was that I would press blue. I couldn’t imagine anyone pressing red unless they valued their personal chances of survival so much that they were willing to murder billions of people just to increase their odds. Then several people on this thread posted the opposite reasoning: they couldn’t imagine anyone pressing blue unless they didn’t understand the experiment or didn’t fully comprehend the consequences.
And that’s just on this thread of relatively like-minded people (at least we have the game of go on common, which is already a lot). There’s no predicting how 8 billion different people will understand the experiment.
Not to mention many other possible behaviours:
Anyway, in my mind it all comes down to:
So of course I’m going to press blue.
Why would you aim for the full red equilibrium? Why would you want so many people to die?
"press this red button if you want to live
…
or press this blue button in case you want to die
…
unless the majority of all people also want to die, in which case the button malfunctions and nobody dies"
It’s a hard choice, ngl.
I want to press blue, but I should reread if it’s not too dangerous. No, not too dangerous, blue is fine. That was my thought process.
I mean you’re not wrong, but it doesn’t make for a very interesting conversation 
if you find the premise objectionable, surely you might be able to find a reframing where there is no psychopath involved. It’s not like all our day-to-day decisions all have a clear right or wrong…
Press the blue button if you want everyone to live, it’s an easy decision.
I think the core difference is risking your own life vs risking the life of other people.
Actually that made me think about this variation:
A red button that says “stay alive”
A blue button that says “die instantly”
And you know that each button only works 50% of the time, the other 50% it malfunctions and does the opposite what it says.
Which one would you press, and why?
Or maybe more like legalised voluntary euthanasia, as long as most people don’t press the blue one?
Can you? It should be possible but it’s not coming to me.
Maybe the crux of the problem for me is that generally if I consider a decision to be morally right, that rightness is independent of whether a majority happens to agree. Also there are few situations where all actors must decide simultaneously with no opportunities for decisions to influence each other. (Cf. the “iterated” prisoner’s dilemma.)
This doesn’t quite capture the (potentially disproportionate) punishment connected with choosing blue and failing to achieve a majority.
True but if the question were simply “are you willing to make a sacrifice or take a risk for the sake of possibly improving the lives of others” we would be having a different discussion.
Hardcore objectivists might believe that if everyone made the “selfish” choice in every case it would also produce the best result for everyone. But from my standpoint I consider this position pretty easy to refute.
To be fair I might add that hardcore “collectivists” would always favor the option that appears to benefit the many, which is a similarly flawed ideology.
You can opt out of taking part in the thought experiment. You cannot make up conditions about the experiment that aren’t part of the experiment. There is no option of “fighting back” and everyone will be safe after the experiment. These are the conditions set by the thought experiment. You can’t just change the setup according to your liking.
Nobody was talking about “what their decision process looks like”. And yes I can decide that the participants in the scenario will understand everything, I created the setup clarification and I decided that that’s the setup.
That’s not at all an example for people “misunderstanding” the experiment. It just shows that it’s an interesting experiment because people have different opinions on this.
Yes and they are totally allowed to do that. The question is what you would press?
Yes and they are totally allowed to do that. The question is what you would press?
Yes and they are totally allowed to do that. The question is what you would press.
And now we’re back to the real experiment. People here completely understand what you are saying but they are nevertheless disagreeing with you. That’s the interesting thing about all of this. And I explained what I believe to be the reason for this somewhere earlier in this thread, even as a reply to you.
Obviously @ArsenLapin1 was not suggesting people change their mind after pressing the button, but right before pressing the button.
Edit:
You sure about that?
Oh I misread that. He meant “reach”. I see. I’ll update my reply accordingly.
Why would anyone not understand what he is saying? He has explained his position pretty well. You can read some lengthy replies here from red buttoners explaining their’s. To me it seems to be very clear that red buttoners understand the experiment, as well as the English language, just as well as blue buttoners. It’s not a good behavior in my opinion to claim that people disagreeing with you probably just didn’t understand the task at hand.
I cannot see how that’s different from “press a button, you have 50% chance to die after pressing either and your choice doesn’t matter.”
Oh come on you cannot really accuse red pressers with murder or wanting people to die that easily when it has been said many times that’s not the case.
I think that weighing the probabilities is just as hard as any moral dilemma. Consider something with stakes like this:
1000 people enter a lottery and are given this choice:
If you think most people are picking red, of course you should pick red. Blue has an advantage when people choose more randomly. I think for 1000 people the ranges are around 55-100% and 45-55%. So what’s the chance that people are biased into one zone vs. the other? And how good is their estimation of that chance and understanding of the binomial distribution vs. yours?
Sorry, I was half joking, because you showed a misunderstanding in the same post. Anyway, assuming to “completely understand” others seems a bit dangerous to me.
In this case it doesn’t really matter since it is a 50/50 chance on the label, but 50/50 chance of malfunction, so each eventuality has an equal 25% chance and you staying alive is 50%:
Button A is pressed button A works 25% (you live)
Button A is pressed button A malfunctions 25% (you die)
Button B is pressed button B works 25% (you die)
Button A is pressed button A malfunctions 25% (you live)
Since everything is equal, I’d press button A (stay alive), just for psychological reasons.
If it works then you made the right choice.
If it doesn’t work, then you did your best.
True, but there is no such severe test in real life.
I just made an attempt to provide a more realistic case where such choices could present themselves and yet still, in many such cases we see people ignore the “general good”, even if the stakes are far lower.
If you take that as a starting point, how likely is it that people will became braver and more altruistic, by raising the stakes? I think it is reasonable to expect that the opposite would happen.
Choosing red doesn’t involve any danger/sacrifice so maybe you meant to write “are you unwilling”?
I am not a “hardcore” anything, but in this case I’d just simply press red even just on the premise that I do not really like gambling.
Now whether we have an obligation to help “produce the best result for everyone” or not, is a totally different discussion.
I’d say that living within a society, the “social contract” contains the basic premise that we should all look after the common good, however there is a big caveat of the question “where does individual freedom of choice ends and where does the common good begin?”.
Now, that is a personal choice and a lot of people could place that boundary here or there, but I think that everyone will agree that such boundary does exist somewhere, therefore we are not always oblidged to prioriotize the choices that “produce the best result for everyone”. After all that word “everyone” also includes us.
I’d pick red again for the same not-really-into-gambling reasons.
Misread this (thank you @Jon_Ko for pointing it out ):
Red choice = a certain dollar.
Blue choice = 1/1000 gamble to win 1000 dollars or get nothing.
Red choice = 50% chance to get a dollar.
Blue choice = 0.01% to win 1000 dollars.