The Red Button, Blue Button hypothetical is incredibly stupid and I wish I could just stop seeing it everywhere
Heya!
So, for the past couple days, it's been basically impossible to escape this hypothetical question:
"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?"
Everyone on the same page now? Good?
Alright, the reason i think its stupid is basically the following:
It's doesn't say anything.
Anywhere I see this question asked, its taken as this grand choice about your view on human nature or whatever, but like... There's no real life parallel to this. Whatever your opinion on this may be is completely meaningless, it says precisely nothing about the kind of person you are.
It's an incredibly non-specific situation that could literally never happen, and the answer I'd wager most people would pick varies wildly based on the surrounding circumstances.
For example, what does "Everyone in the World" mean?
Does it only include people capable of understanding the decision and its consequences, or does it, for example, include toddlers?
The context here wildly changes the decision. It goes from "Would you risk your life to potentially save people who willingly pressed a button that could kill them" to "Do you wanna kill 600 million toddlers for your own survival?". I'd like to get off Mr. Bones wild orphan crushing machine, pretty please and thank you Sir Tim Urban.
It also instantly changes the context from the sort of "Selfishness vs. Selflessness" scenario people often frame it as to one where you just have to hope that the number of toddlers that pressed red on accident isn't significant enough to sway results.
Next up, like whats the context here? How do the people die? Is it swift and painless? Do they just disappear? Or is the death excruciatingly painful? Do they like, drown for example. It seems easy to potentially sacrifice yourself if the details about how you die seem vague and unspecific, but I'd wager the outcome of these polls would change wildly depending on what method of death was specified.
That's the problem here, you can't give a proper answer. What button the obvious choice is changes wildly depending on what you think the real question is. It's a scenario so far removed from reality that it just Does Not Work as a standalone question. There is no real-life equivalent to the button that instantly kills half of humanity.
And it honestly just confuses me to see so many people taking this question so seriously. I've seen like, actual heated debates about this. And I just Do Not Get Why. It's a hypothetical scenario so obviously non-functional that I'm in awe how there could even be any debates about this. When you're debating about the red button blue button question, you're not having an actual discussion. You're just fighting shadows, because chances are that the person you're trying to convince of your viewpoint thinks that the whole situation works completely differently than you think it does. The guy who made the tweet that started this whole mess even admitted to that.
So, thank you for coming to my ted talk/empassioned plea to the universe to stop showing me debates about this incredibly pointless scenario.