# Red button or blue button dilemma **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 16, 2025, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041 "2025-10-16T22:59:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/281 "2025-10-21T14:16:47Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > That’s fighting the hypothetical It’s a different and related hypothetical meant to interrogate one specific statement (well, and other people who said the same thing): > [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Choosing death over an entirely selfish world is very much a choice of what kind of world you want to live in. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/282 "2025-10-21T14:29:27Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > in a scenario where red is guaranteed to win “Sometimes as much as 60%” is not the same thing as “guaranteed to win”. And a scenario in which 40% or more of the population is suddenly dead is also a scenario in which a whole lot more people will be dead before long, most of them nastily, and probably including me. Yeah, a lot of the survivors of the Black Death did better afterwards. They hadn’t been living dependent for their food, heat, light, medicine, and everything else on a tangled international web of seven billion others; long distance trade, while important, didn’t supply most of their basics. And I’d have been dead at least a couple of years ago in that world, anyway, even if I’d survived childhood. Yes, if everyone’s staring at the vote as it occurs and got to talk about it beforehand, that ‘don’t be the first to press blue’ argument makes sense. But as I said before I think assuming that makes the whole dilemma senseless. > [@Babale](#): > > You’re assuming that your vote is the one that decides the outcome No. I’m assuming that, as in any vote held involving a lot of people, the decision will be made by the accumulation of a lot of individual votes. Once in a while a vote that has major consequences is decided by a single vote — it’s happened a couple of times in the USA recently — but that’s quite rare. I show up at the polls anyway. Don’t you? > [@Babale](#): > > It seems obvious to me that red will win You’re not the only one in this thread who thinks so. But I don’t think it’s obvious at all. > [@Babale](#): > > > [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > > > If a majority push the red button, they live, but **anyone who pushed the blue button dies**.” > > Emphasis mine. > > To me, it seems obvious that most people will focus on that part and say “Why would I ever push a button that gives me a chance of dying?” To me it seems obvious that most people will focus on that part and say “Why would I ever push a button that makes it certain a whole lot of innocents, probably including some of my loved ones, will die, when instead I can push one that gives us all a chance of living?” > [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > If there are 3 people in a room, it’s trivially easy to say “does anyone here want to die or kill anyone else? No? Then let’s all make the same choice.” Yet again: if there’s advance discussion, I don’t think it’s really the same problem. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/283 "2025-10-21T14:31:40Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > It would be shitty to live in a world of people who were rewarded for choosing their own self-interest at the expense of everyone who prioritized communitarian altruism. I don’t mean that I’d be sad that my preferences didn’t win out. I mean it would be pretty miserable to live in a world that’s decided it’s every man for himself, because it puts the possibility of a functioning civilization in serious doubt. It would be a world where there’s no need for a red button to be pushed, people would simply be killing others if they felt they could get away with it. Which they could, because the only thing that can stop such a thing is a state monopoly on violence, and this requires subordinating one’s interests to the common interest, which the entire world will have just proven that it has no interest in doing. I’ve got news for you, then. This is literally the world we live in right now. And the only reason we have a functioning civilization is because there is indeed a state monopoly on violence. If the government collapsed tomorrow (due to nuclear war, pandemic with a high mortality rate, supervolcano eruption, asteroid impact, etc.) civilization would promptly collapse as well as the survivors banded together in small groups and started warring with their neighbors. And yes, people would be killing others and taking their resources if they felt they could get away with it. This has been human nature since before there were humans. In such a situation, the only reason we do cooperate is because we have made a calculation that it might benefit us. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/284 "2025-10-21T14:49:47Z")
> [@robby](#): > > Making an analogy with getting vaccinated to help with herd immunity (like I alluded to upthread), it’s the difference between getting a vaccine that has a one-in-a-million chance of an adverse effect compared to one that has at least a 60% chance of killing you (and possibly greater). To expand further on the vaccine analogy (with the goal being to achieve herd immunity against some deadly disease), I feel like the red button-pushers are saying there’s no way they would get a vaccine that had a better than even chance of killing you (say 60%), and the blue-button pushers are saying that the percentage is lower (say only 40% likely to kill you), so we should go ahead and get the vaccine. Getting such a vaccine (equivalent to pressing the blue button) is foolhardy whether it is 60% likely to kill you or 40% likely to kill you. …unless the disease you trying to protect against is 100% fatal and you are certain to get it. (But there is no comparable adverse consequence to a red button-pusher, so the analogy breaks down at that point.) (And of course real vaccines have a chance of an adverse effect that is more in the range of a one-in-a-million chance.) ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/285 "2025-10-21T14:53:53Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Ok, so if you woke up tomorrow and found out that everyone in the world except you was offered the choice in the OP and that 60-80% chose red while the rest died, would you kill yourself rather than living in the world that remained? I didn’t want to be this blunt, but since apparently it’s required and requested, yes: I’d rather die than live in the aftermath of a world populated entirely by people like you, because that kind of philosophy has only produced tyranny, totalitarianism, and genocide. Even if world governance wasn’t at stake, and the question was whether I’m that kind of person, I’d rather die than be that. Both of my grandfathers risked their lives in WW2 to fight that kind of mentality, and I’m cut from the same cloth. Selfish, transactional people are the easiest to manipulate into fascism and tyranny, because all you have to do is alter the terms of the transaction. Their buttons are easily pressed and worn on their sleeves. Not a world I’m interested in living in. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/286 "2025-10-21T14:59:44Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > “Sometimes as much as 60%” is not the same thing as “guaranteed to win”. I think you are mixing up percentages. Let’s assume that many high-quality polls indicate that 60% of the population will choose red. That in no way means there is only a 60% likelihood of the reds being in the majority. If you run the scenario repeatedly and 60% of the population chooses red repeatedly, then the reds are in the majority 100% of the time. And personally, I think the percentage of people who will pick red will be even higher than 60%. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/287 "2025-10-21T15:01:12Z")
“who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families” — Margaret Thatcher. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/288 "2025-10-21T15:05:13Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Selfish, transactional people are the easiest to manipulate into fascism and tyranny, because all you have to do is alter the terms of the transaction. Their buttons are easily pressed and worn on their sleeves. Not a world I’m interested in living in. Again, you are living in that world right now, whether you realize it or not. Why do think we are in the current situation we are in right now in this country? I’m not saying there are no altruistic, selfless people in the world who would risk death to avoid potentially harming others. I just don’t think they are in the majority. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/289 "2025-10-21T15:23:24Z")
> [@robby](#): > > Again, you are living in that world right now, whether you realize it or not. Why do think we are in the current situation we are in right now in this country? That’s incorrect. The hypothetical world we’re talking about is one where the most selfless people have all opted out of existence, and only the self-selected most selfish people remained. That wouldn’t be a world worth living in or fighting for. The fight would be over. But things in the real world aren’t decided or concluded. It’s an ongoing conflict. To me the most interesting part of this experiment is the arguments that it draws out. We see decidedly selfish people justifying their decisions by claiming: my choice isn’t immoral, because actually most people are like that, and if most people are like that, then it can’t really be wrong, can it? I would slightly amend what I said about me choosing death by pressing the blue button. I don’t believe it’s a death choice because I’m not convinced the majority is like that. A figure of 60% has been mentioned, but in reality there’s not even the barest sliver of a cite that a percentage was determined, let alone proof that it was determined rigorously. And yet it’s being trumpeted as fact by people who desperately want to believe their defector morality is the majority view! So by choosing blue I don’t think I’m choosing death, because I think it’s more probable that blue will prevail, and I’d risk my life to find out, and I don’t think a red-dominated world is worth living in. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/290 "2025-10-21T15:45:26Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > To me the most interesting part of this experiment is the arguments that it draws out. We see decidedly selfish people justifying their decisions by claiming: my choice isn’t immoral, because actually most people are like that, and if most people are like that, then it can’t really be wrong, can it? I would classify myself as a realist. I don’t think I’m particularly selfish—nor do I live my life that way—which was the point of my extended preface in my [first post in this thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/37). And I agree with the premise that the only thing that is putting the blue button-pushers in danger is the entity who set up the scenario, and the blue-button pushers themselves who are needlessly putting themselves in jeopardy out of what I consider to be a sense of misguided altruism. > [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > …So by choosing blue I don’t think I’m choosing death, because I think it’s more probable that blue will prevail, and I’d risk my life to find out, and I don’t think a red-dominated world is worth living in. I find this to be pretty surprising, that anyone would think that the likelihood of blue being in the majority is most probable. Maybe I have a more cynical view of humanity. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/291 "2025-10-21T18:04:26Z")
> [@robby](#): > > And the only reason we have a functioning civilization is because there is indeed a state monopoly on violence I do not understand this sentence. Unless I’m mis-understanding, it seems the opposite is true. > [@robby](#): > > And yes, people would be killing others and taking their resources if they felt they could get away with it. If the red voters ‘win’, and the blues were killed off, this process would be accelerated. > [@robby](#): > > I find this to be pretty surprising, that anyone would think that the likelihood of blue being in the majority is most probable. Maybe I have a more cynical view of humanity. I have a sneaking suspicion that is a bias of mindset. Blue being the obvious (and therefore majority) choice seems obvious to me. Though I have to admit, this discussion makes me fearful. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/292 "2025-10-21T18:19:55Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > If the red voters ‘win’ The red voters aren’t “winning”, because it isn’t a competition. They are merely making the optimum choice with the information they have to hand. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/293 "2025-10-21T18:28:10Z")
> [@robby](#): > > Let’s assume that many high-quality polls indicate that 60% of the population will choose red. I’m not. I’m looking at a statement that says some polls (not all) show as much as 60% choosing red. What the other polls showed we don’t know, except that presumably the percentage was less than that. And I have no idea of the quality of the polls. > [@Lumpy](#): > > who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families” — Margaret Thatcher. Sure sounds like her. And it’s nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/294 "2025-10-21T18:37:17Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > > [@robby](#): > > > > And the only reason we have a functioning civilization is because there is indeed a state monopoly on violence… > > I do not understand this sentence. Unless I’m mis-understanding, it seems the opposite is true. Have you never heard the term “state [monopoly on violence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence)”? The [state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity)) (in the form of law enforcement officers) is the only entity permitted to employ violence to keep the peace. Indeed, per the Widpedia article, [Max Weber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber) in his essay _[Politics as a Vocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_as_a_Vocation)_ (1919) stated that the monopoly on violence is the defining conception of the state. If I have a dispute with my neighbor, I can’t legally use violence to resolve the dispute. That includes family feuds and duels. If you lose the state, you lose this check, and you lose civilization. That’s why after the Roman Empire collapsed, Western Europe devolved into a bunch of warring tribes. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/295 "2025-10-21T18:49:02Z")
> [@Kron](#): > > The red voters aren’t “winning” Which is why I put the word in single quotes. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/296 "2025-10-21T18:49:25Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > I have a sneaking suspicion that is a bias of mindset. Blue being the obvious (and therefore majority) choice seems obvious to me. I really have no idea how you can look at the past 20 years and believe more than 50% of the USA would put others ahead of themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/297 "2025-10-21T19:04:55Z")
The OP didn’t specify an age range, it just said “everyone in the country.” Does it change the calculus of which button to press if you know that there’s going to be a shit-ton of children in the group pressing the blue button? ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/298 "2025-10-21T19:29:22Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Does it change the calculus of which button to press if you know that there’s going to be a shit-ton of children in the group pressing the blue button? And the converse of that. What are you trying to convince the children in your life(yours or other people’s) to do? Press red or blue? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/299 "2025-10-21T19:59:54Z")
> [@robby](#): > > the only reason we have a functioning civilization is because there is indeed a state monopoly on violence. Isn’t that straight out of Thomas Hobbes’s _Leviathan_? That only the iron first of authoritarian government keeps the savages in check? And wasn’t the entire Enlightenment philosophy of the American Founders dedicated to refuting Hobbes, that liberty didn’t mean anarchy and savagery? In discussions in multiple gun control threads I have had occasion to remark that gun control advocates seem to be more afraid of their fellow man than they are of overweening potentially tyrannical government; this seems to exemplify that mindset. **ETA** : and no, the state does NOT have a monopoly on legitimate violence. People retain a right to lawful self-defense. The state does reflect the consensus of society on what violence is lawful, but not that its agents are an elite caste with the sole privilege of administering it. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/300 "2025-10-21T20:47:11Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Isn’t that straight out of Thomas Hobbes’s _Leviathan_? According to the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence) I linked to that nobody has apparently clicked on yet, yes, along with an earlier work by the “French jurist and political philosopher [Jean Bodin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bodin)” in his 1576 work _[Les Six livres de la République](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Six_livres_de_la_R%C3%A9publique)_. But this would seem to be a topic for another thread. I’ll start one. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041.md?page=16)