Trogdor1123
Member
If it's blue, you might want to get it looked at
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Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Everyone on Earth has to press a button
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
Fbh
Member
There's a Caput Mortuum and Smaragdine button
If more than 50% of people press the Caput Mortuum button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the Caput Mortuum button, only people who pressed the Smaragdine button survive.
The colors are only revealed once you enter the room. Can't bring your phone with you!!!.
BloodFree
Member
Insane Metal
Member
Well, bye blue bros.
You aren't. You're voting to increase the pool of people likely to die by one, and hoping for others to put themselves at risk to mitigate the consequences of that choice.
If the original scenario were the same except with the addendum that a single unknown person had been forced to vote blue, then voting blue or red would be more aligned with how the blue voters are imagining it right now. Red voters would be choosing to prioritise their own lives ahead of the death of another, and blue voters would be putting themselves at risk to save a life. In that case, I'd like to think I'd decide to vote blue. However, in a scenario where everyone has exactly the same choice, with no impediments, and one of those choices is to survive, all voting blue is doing is choosing to create a problem which only previously existed as a self-chosen ambiguity: you don't know if anyone else voted blue and decided to put themselves in danger, but you do know they made that choice of their own free will. By voting blue, however, you know for sure that there now exists a pool of people, even if just one, who will die if billions of others don't risk themselves by voting the same way.
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Bojji
Gold Member
We will haunt you red motherfuckers.
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Red = Everything stays the same
Blue = Actively turn the situation into a gamble
That's what people voting blue don't seem to be seeing. Those picking red are not responsible for trying to minimize the risk factor of the gamble those picking blue created, most certainly not by putting themselves at risk of death, and they did not create the risk by voting red. If there was some way of picking blue without putting one's own life on the line, making the altruistic effort to save those choosing blue from their own foolishness would make more sense. Are those picking blue really the "hopeful" and "positive" and "caring" portion of society, or is it the "reckless" and "irrational" and "imposing" portion of society? Maybe both?
It seems at the root of this is an underlying question "Is there moral weight where consequence cannot be measured?" and that is an interesting thought. If you enjoy this little puzzle I would recommend the film The Mist since it is all about people acting in the unpredictable and unmeasurable unknown with life or death on the line, exploring their different mentalities and reasons for doing this or that, with many varying results of their choices. It's an interesting film.
Blue = Actively turn the situation into a gamble
That's what people voting blue don't seem to be seeing. Those picking red are not responsible for trying to minimize the risk factor of the gamble those picking blue created, most certainly not by putting themselves at risk of death, and they did not create the risk by voting red. If there was some way of picking blue without putting one's own life on the line, making the altruistic effort to save those choosing blue from their own foolishness would make more sense. Are those picking blue really the "hopeful" and "positive" and "caring" portion of society, or is it the "reckless" and "irrational" and "imposing" portion of society? Maybe both?
It seems at the root of this is an underlying question "Is there moral weight where consequence cannot be measured?" and that is an interesting thought. If you enjoy this little puzzle I would recommend the film The Mist since it is all about people acting in the unpredictable and unmeasurable unknown with life or death on the line, exploring their different mentalities and reasons for doing this or that, with many varying results of their choices. It's an interesting film.
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
This is a wild take.
Some people are going to vote blue, that is just an obvious fact when we are talking about 8 billion people.
They will do so because they see it as saving people from dying.
You have to be being really obtuse to think that as a red voter you aren't voting for people to die.
The wildest thing about this thread is the logic expressed that twists what "blue voters" are doing lol
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nkarafo
Member
38.6% of GAF didn't try to save me, i pressed the red button i saved myself. 38.6% of GAF tried to save the other blue voters from themselves.38.6% of GAF tried to save you and themselves in this scenario, now we're dead because you had no faith in us.
Yes, Twitter. Where everyone tries to virtue signal and show how better they are from one another.
Now make it so the blue voters get a ban unless there are more than 50% blue voters. Then tell me if they would vote blue when they have something to lose, let alone their life.
GAFers are more real.
It's similar in that it asks me to do something dumb in order to save other people from being dumb.
And then accuse me of being a murderer for not doing the dumb thing.
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
They are responsible for their choice. There is no "inevitability" forcing the hand of anyone. No one is responsible to risk their own death to try and lower the risk that the blue voters create for themselves.
a multicultural team of v
Member
Nobody actually considers these experiments further than the choice itself, which makes no sense. Picking red is the "correct" choice, but picking red will lead to a worse outcome for the person picking red no matter what the result is.
//DEVIL//
Member
you got confused and lost by the wording of the questions.
its either Blue or Red. Each has 50% survival chance. If less than 50% press the blue, it means the majority pressed the red and so on. Got it?
It only confirms GAF is full of degenerates, sociopaths and nazis. Time to join the purple place of peace and love!
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HRK69
Member
That's untrue
The idea that Red leads to a 'worse outcome no matter what' is a logical fallacy. You're confusing social utility with individual survival
Calling Red 'wrong' assumes that the person picking it cares more about the global population than their own life.
poodaddy
Member
Mr Reasonable
Completely Unreasonable
near
Gold Member
"Red = Everything stays the same" - would only work if everyone presses red. Once someone presses blue, pressing red contributes to blue votes failing to meet the threshold, which is what turns the risk into deaths.
Blue doesn't create the gamble, the scenario already created the gamble. Everyone being placed into a scenario where the outcome depends on whether enough people choose the collective survival button.
Someone pressing the blue button willingly accepts a personal risk to push the world to a scenario where there are no deaths. Someone who pushes the red button avoids personal risk, but also makes the collective survival threshold harder to reach.
If everyone presses blue, everyone lives. And if blue gets over 50%, everyone lives. And if for some strange reason everyone pressed the red button, everyone lives anyway. Let's just avoid the RED BUTTON!!!!
Yes, you saved yourself by pressing red. That's true. But the blue voters weren't trying to save other blue voters from themselves, they were trying to reach the set requirement where everyone lives!
Bojji
Gold Member
Try living in the world if all farmers picked up blue, and/or most of your close family.
a multicultural team of v
Member
If half the population died instantly, which is what would happen if red wins because I don't think red could ever win by any sort of meaningful majority, then the survivors will be left with a civilization that instantly collapses. They will either die of starvation, or die of murder because the only people left alive are people that were willing to kill half the world and end civilization just so that they can make the correct choice.
Also, multiple of your grandparents, parents, siblings, best friends, etc are going to die. You baby child randomly chose blue because they were incapable of making a real decision and they are dead too.
HRK69
Member
This is just an emotional appeal to avoid the math
First, the 'Farmers' argument makes no sense: If I choose blue and the farmers choose red, I'm dead. A corpse doesn't need a grocery store. Choosing red is the only way to ensure I'm actually alive to face the logistical challenges of the 'new world'
And my individual vote doesnt decide the fate of my family, the collective vote of 8 billion people does. If the world fails the threshold, me choosing blue doesn't save my family; it just ensures I die with them
You're essentially arguing that I should commit suicide as a gesture of solidarity for a world that (by the very rules of this experiment) failed to save itselt
I'll take my chances being alive in a difficult world over being 'virtuously' dead in a non-existent one
BloodFree
Member
A bit of a psychopathic response, even as a joke, no ? Even if you ignored the rest of that post and would somehow avoid societal collapse. Just saying ...
HRK69
Member
You're describing a world that has already failed. If the threshold isn't met, the collapse happens whether I'm dead or alive. I'd rather be alive to navigate that collapse than be one of the bodies in the pile.
Also, calling people 'murderers' for choosing survival is a reach. Red-voters didn't kill anyone, the 50% of people who gambled on the 'blue' fantasy and lost are the ones who failed to secure their own lives
If the world is ending, being 'right and dead' is just losing twice
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Bojji
Gold Member
Pressing the red button is a failed choice, not the other way around. It's a test of humanity and if enough people pass it, everyone will be saved.
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
Which button would Jesus press?
HRK69
Member
Eh no
It's a survival experiment, not a 'test of humanity.'
Treating a life or death gamble like a moral pageant is how you end up dead
If 'passing the test' requires me to ignore the math and bet my existence on the hope that billions of strangers are feeling altruistic, then I'll happily 'fail'
I'd rather be a survivor who failed your ethics test than a corpse who passed it
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Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
No, it only does not diminish the risk that voting blue created, where the choice to diminish it is no small ask but putting one's own life at risk.
No, the scenario created the ability to create the gamble by voting blue. Each person who votes blue created the gamble for themselves and lower their risk by their measure of influence.
Objectively they only create the overall risk for themselves while lowering the size of that overall risk by their percentage of influence. Whatever ideals they had besides this as motivation are just notions of their mind.
They don't make anything harder, they simply do not lower what those voting blue brought on themselves.
Each person voting red guarantees that their life goes on just as it did before being given the option to russian roulette with their trust in the world to save them by voting blue. Distinct from this is the knowledge that some portion of the world may have just signed up to die.
But no death would happen unless someone votes blue and then blue is less than 50%, therefore the risk of death coming into play is a consequence of their actions, therefore meeting a threshold to ensure they live is in fact an attempt to save them from the consequences of their own actions.
People choose to do dumb shit that gets them killed all the time. Do you risk your life to prevent those outcomes? If not, then your daily decisions are incongruous with the choice to pick blue here.
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Bojji
Gold Member
GAF doesn't represent the population very well, I think in the real world blue would win the vote, especially that ~50% of the population are women. Old people would most likely also vote blue.
The only vote that can ever lead to people dying is a blue vote. Blue voters might vote that way because they see it as saving people from dying, but they are absolutely wrong: if nobody votes blue, everyone lives. It is literally creating the problem, then blaming those who had no role in creating it for not risking themselves to mitigate the consequences. In a population of 8bn, it is indeed extremely likely that a significant number of people will vote blue: however, 'extremely likely' is not 'guaranteed', so the supposed altruism of a blue vote is still based on a projected hypothetical and becomes a self-fulfilling act of destruction. If nobody votes blue to save a hypothetical number of people, it is 100% certain that there is nobody who needs to be saved.
It's akin to a non-time travel variation of the bootstrap paradox: people voting blue to save others from the consequence of voting blue, who are themselves voting to save others from the consequence of voting blue, decisions made in anticipation of an effect which may never have had a cause (e.g. no independently reached reason for voting blue for its own sake). Not only is the reasoning circular and contradictory, but even in the event that someone did devise a reason for voting blue other than one related to anticipating how others may vote - none have been offered or are obvious so far - the 'altruistic' argument is fundamentally an imposition of your preferred outcome onto that voter without any knowledge of their motivation. For instance, what if some unknown person voted blue because they want to die? Is it your place to impose on them the assumption that they want to be 'saved' based on no knowledge of their circumstances, because you don't even know they exist and are both assuming their existence, and their motivations for voting the way you think your hypothetical person did? Again, it's taking a problem which initially exists solely as personal projection and materialising it just for the purpose of mitigating negative outcomes which you can only be sure existed because you materialised them. Who really composed Beethoven's fifth?
A red vote is a vote in belief of one's own autonomy, in that it is based on the determination of one's own fate, and the autonomy of others, in that it imposes on them no consequences or outcomes which they have not chosen to impose on themselves, and no assumption that they did not make their decision based in full knowledge of what those outcomes would be.
Trilobit
Absolutely Cozy
The losing team gets a 'they/them' signature for a month. The winners get 'Biggus Dickus'#TeamViagra
You should ban the losing team for a week and gold for the other
Exactly!
The blue people are the ones making this a problem by demanding that everyone must risk their lives to save the blue people. Like...what are they even talking about?
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Bojji
Gold Member
Red voters KNOW that many people will vote blue. And they vote to kill them anyway.
If people had time to discuss this before, there could be agreement to vote only blue or red (the best outcome), but this scenario assumes that nothing like this happens.
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nkarafo
Member
Red voters are voting to save themselves, not to kill others. Any potential deaths may be a consequence but it wasn't the actual choice.
Removing the blame from blue voters entirely is also obtuse. The blue voters chose to bet on a pretty much lost cause and lost, while knowing the consequences.
I think you are using the same logic of voters who vote for the winning president are forcing the rest of the people who didn't vote for him to live under his rule. Is that correct?
But there is a difference here. Let's say the president won. The outcome for the losers is being forced to live under that president's rule. In hindsight, the losers couldn't avoid that outcome no matter what they voted for. If they voted for the president, they had to live under his rule. If they didn't vote for the president they still had to live under his rule. That makes the voters who voted for the president fully responsible for the losers fate.
In the red/blue button scenario, the losing outcome is death. To avoid death you have to vote red. Let's say red won. This time though, in hindsight, the losers could avoid this outcome. If they voted for blue they would have died but if they voted for red, they would live. That means the red voters didn't force the blue voters to the outcome of death in the same way the winning president voters forced the non-voters to live under his rule.
If we apply the blue/red button logic in the presidential vote logic, it would be like the winning president rules the winners and the losing president still rules the losers but it turns out he sucks way more so now the losers are blaming the winners, even though the losers could still choose the winning side.
Surely there is no logical flaw in this train of thought
Which is basically saving the blue voters from themselves. The red voters not in danger to need any saving.
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ZeroZeroQuatre
Member
I pressed blue before seeing the question...
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BloodFree
Member
I pressed blue before seeing the question...
That's actually fucking HILARIOUS in this context, since you're straight up proof that it is impossible to get everyone to press the red button so everyone is saved.
Out of curiosity, after reading the question would you pick red instead ? Cause then you'd be condeming people like yourself to death.
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poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Or you could be alive in a world where no-one died, you seem to have forgotten that option.
Ultimately this is a glass half full, glass half empty question - people aren't really choosing the best scenario - they are picking the one they think would win. If you assume red would win - picking red is the only logical choice. If you think blue would win picking blue is the obvious choice if only so you can look your kids in the eye afterwards.
Ultimately no-ones single vote would make a real difference in an 8 billion vote poll - the answer to the question is about what you think of yourself and what you think of other people.
No, red voters might hypothesize that many people will vote blue, but even with that hypothesis, I for one do not see it as my place to assume that the hypothetical blue voter did not know and accept the consequences of what they were freely choosing to vote for, since it is not possible for me to know the motivations of an unknown individual. The only choice I am making is to save a life, mine, knowing that everyone else has that same choice and the same capacity to make it. If they choose not to, that is them making a decision for themselves over which I have no control, nor any desire to take it. To do otherwise is to wind up in the same circular trap outlined above as blue voters voting for altruistic reasons to save theoretical other blue voters from the consequences of their altruistic reasons for saving other blue voters from the consequences of their altruistic reasons, and so on down the rabbit hole we go.
Boozeroony
Member
Who wants to live in a world with selfish dicks? Blue for me.
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
You know for a fact:
- Voting blue has a 0% chance of you contributing to people dying, other than potentially yourself
- Voting red has a >0% chance of you contributing to people dying
Literally every single red vote is increasing the chance of people dying.
I mean you said it yourself, it's a consequence of your action lol
It's just a dumb thought experiment but imagine you go into vote red, and come out and all of your children, your wife, your siblings are dead because they voted blue. "Well I was just saving myself it's the blue people who created that problem"
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IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
And I'll repeat that this is insane to me.
"They created the problem, why didn't all 8 billion people vote red?" (Something that would never occur in reality)
Well why didn't at least 4 billion + 1 people vote blue? The red voters are creating that problem, with every single vote.
Blue voters are voting to save everyone, including the selfish people. Red voters are voting to potentially kill a bunch of unselfish people. Enjoy the aftermath I guess.
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poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Or they bet on a sure thing and saved everyone.
It does seem that people who would vote red seem to think that the vast majority of people think like them such that this is purely a choice between 'live' or 'die'.
nkarafo
Member
How about this.
- Voting blue means there's a chance for you to die, thus contributing in the potential death pile.
- Voting red means there's no chance for you to die, thus it does not contribute in the potential death pile.
Literally every single blue vote is increasing the chance of people dying.
You are saying you voting blue and willingly taking your chances on your own free will and ending up dead isn't a consequence of your action?
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Wildebeest
Member
People think it is an immortality button or a my live goes on as before button but that is just wrong. It never says that in the question it is just inferred. 40 press blue and 70 press red. Almost immediately there could be another vote saying that the next round of voting is now open. It is not percentage based. It says that now if 80 choose to press blue then everyone lives. Or you need 25% blue for everyone to survive but if you vote red then 2 other people die but you are safe unless someone else kills you, so if 50% vote red you are guaranteed to die. In the world where the first button test was plausible the second button test appearing instantly is also plausible.
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nkarafo
Member
Wrong, there is no "sure thing" in hoping for others you have no control of to do what you wish in order to save themselves and you.
The only sure way to not die in this scenario is to vote for red.
John Bilbo
Member
The premise is flawed: everyone should press the red button as there is no penalty for pressing the red button, but there is a penalty for pressing the blue button.
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
You are still looking at statistical probability as inevitability and removing personal responsibility from the issue.
Blue voters increased their chance of dying from 0% to whatever the stats end up being. Red voters are not increasing anything. Red voters, if they had voted blue, could only have diminished the initial percentage the first blue voter created, at risk of their own life. It is literally "Help, I just gave myself a 99.999% chance of myself dying. Please risk your life to contribute to the possibility of bringing this back down to 0%."
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IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
This is absolute insanity. It's the blue voters voting to save the entire earth who are removing personal responsibility? And not the red voters NOT voting to save the entire earth? lol
The belief would be that you are NOT giving yourself a 99.999% chance of dying, that's some serious projection there. The belief would be that at least half of humans would vote to save all of humanity.
BloodFree
Member
You ain't getting everyone to vote red no matter what, especially in a no-initial-prep vote, so that consideration flies out the window instantly.
Look at this shit that happened in this very thread with a sample size of 121 votes (currently) which is hilarious and proves this:
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near
Gold Member
If someone jumps in to a lions den at the zoo, and I'm a zoo keeper or some shit, no, I'm not obligated to risk my life saving them from their own stupidity. But that isn't what pressing blue is here.
Blue is only dangerous if collectively humanity fails to outnumber those who press red. If enough participate in doing that, everyone lives. That is quite different from some idiot creating pointless danger and dragging everyone else into it.
If you vote blue, you aren't creating a pointless problem and demanding others to rescue you out of it. You're participating in the only - no one has to die - outcome. Red voters are choosing not to participate in that because it guarantees their own survival. And that's understandable. Maybe even rational. But it's not the same as refusing to save someone from a stupid decision. It's refusing to choose the only option required for everyone to survive.
John Bilbo
Member
Some people just want to die.
Yes some people will fail to understand the assignment as well.
No matter what some people will press blue even though there is nothing to be gained.
nkarafo
Member
You ain't getting 51% to vote blue no matter what either, especially in a no-initial-prep vote.
Yes, it's impossible all 8 billion will vote red so some people will die.
But it's also highly improbable for more than 50% to vote for blue, knowing the world we live in and how humans work. So some people will die then as well.
The choice is whether you want to live with the red peeps or die with the blue ones. Because the chances everyone lives is highly unlikely.
Basically you only vote for blue if you think the chances 51% of people will also vote for blue is highly likely. Doing otherwise is a suicide.