Thoughts on the Red Button vs. Blue Button Debate

You might have seen the ol' red button versus blue button debacle floating around social media. Well, it's time for me to weigh in! Which to Choose You may have recently seen the debate going around about a red button and a blue button. I don't know who originally posted it, but MrBeast posted a version of it as follows: Everyone on earth takes 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? BE HONEST. When I last looked at the poll, it was sitting at 56% blue and 44% red, and I found that kind of surprising. After all, I would personally pick red. What's the Big Deal? If you've been following this debate, it's likely that you've already formed an opinion around people who select red: they're bad people. I'm not necessarily here to convince you otherwise, but I did want to write this article for folks who feel bad about picking red. I think it's actually okay to pick red, even if blue is the supposed moral choice. If you haven't been following along, here's basically how to debate goes: If you selected red, you might argue that red is the rational choice. If everyone simply chooses red, no one gets hurt. Given how abstract the scenario is, you might even suggest an alternative scenario—one where people could simply step out of the way of danger. There is no risk with red. You are not selecting the suicide button. On the other hand, if you selected blue, you might argue that there's a nonzero chance that other people select blue for whatever reason, and therefore you must also select blue to ensure their survival. For example, maybe children are also playing the "game" and don't understand the rules. Therefore, you have a moral duty to select blue for their sake. Generally, I've seen the two choices described as logical (red) versus moral (blue). I don't know that I buy that distinction, but that's basically how it's framed. As a result, folks in the blue team tend to frame their choice as morally superior, which allows them to look down upon folks in the red team. In fact, a lot of people seem to be using this hypothetical as some way to label people as narcissistic or even sociopathic. It's wild. My Take I mentioned at the beginning here that I would personally choose the red button. To be completely honest, I actually agree with the blue button argument. I think if we assume the world is not complex or nuanced, then each of us has a moral imperative to select the blue button. Honestly, the idea of selecting red in a world where blue doesn't cross that 50% threshold seems pretty brutal. It's like the Thanos snap situation. Likewise, I do not agree with most of the arguments made by folks who would push the red button. For example, the idea that anyone who presses blue deserves to die is truly despicable. Similarly, I don't think choosing blue demonstrates "suicidal empathy" or results in "tragic and pointless death," as argued in this thread. Blue also feels like a reasonable choice. However, even though I agree with the argument, that does not mean I would select blue in practice. Let me explain. When selecting a button, I have to factor in what pressing each button might mean for my life. In that case, selecting red seems like an obvious choice. See, when I select blue, I'm not just risking my life, I'm risking the futures of my kids. I would never take a risk that might leave my kids without a dad. That's what's on my mind immediately. It makes picking red a no-brainer. The counterargument that seems to come up a lot is "what if someone you love picks blue?" I would counter with, "what if I pick blue?" I'm the one with agency after all. Do I want to risk leaving my wife without a husband or my kids without a dad? How would my family feel if I died doing the "selfless" act of prioritizing other hypothetical blue button pushers over them? I certainly wouldn't want my wife to have to deal with the trauma of having picked the red button, left to feel like the selfish one. Not to get all weird with masculinity, but I think a lot of men would be happy to bear that cross for their family. And, what about the nightmare scenario of my kids being left without both parents? One of us has to pick red, and I would hope my wife would come to a similar conclusion. Of course, all of this sort of breaks down if the scenario is so insane that my kids would also be put to the task of selecting a button. If that's the case, there's no choice to make. I'd be forced to select blue to eliminate the chance of living in a world where my kids might not exist. So, assuming no kids have to play the "game," here are my broad thoughts. The blues tend to argue that there will always be some percentage of people that will pick blue (who I guess they assume are idiots). Therefore, you must pick blue to save them. While I agree, I’d argue then there will always be some fraction of people that vote red, and that not all of them are automatically bad people for doing so. See, there is this (as you'll see in the next section, not so) hidden assumption that people who choose red are selfish or bad people. In reality, they might just be more risk averse, such as parents or caregivers. Like certainly their votes for blue could lead to everyone living, but they may want to ensure that the possibility of their death does not lead to more death (i.e., if a caregiver dies for selecting blue, they can't give care). In this case, I believe choosing red is also a selfless choice. Maybe not of the same magnitude, but I wouldn't consider it entirely selfish. But, I can hear the comments now: “you only care about your kids, grandma, etc.” Sure, man. My bad for choosing to protect my loved ones. The irony being that loved ones are often used as a gotcha in this scenario. Ultimately, for me, this is about risk tolerance. Do I believe that more than 50% of people will select blue? Am I willing to stake my life on it? Am I willing to stake the future of my wife and children on it? The threshold would have to be much closer to a third before I'm comfortable taking that gamble. Yes, I'm aware that I'm staking the lives of everyone who selects blue on it too, but (as I'll explain later) I think voters (meaning both the people that choose red and the people that choose blue) are much less at fault than the divine entity posing the scenario. Maybe the Blue Pushers Aren't So Moral Do you see how in practice this is probably not going to go the way the poll did? In a Twitter poll, there's nothing on the line. You get to virtue signal that you would press the blue button, just like you get to pretend you would have housed Anne Frank during the Holocaust. Ultimately, it's larping. There's nothing at stake. I find this particularly interesting because I saw that some folks don't even care about the scenario. They want it all to be a ruse, where the buttons just label you with your choice. That way, you can go back into the real world, and the folks who picked blue can treat you like a criminal for picking red. I shit you not. Look at the comments on this video. There are people in there talking about not wanting to live with people who are "red pushers." Congratulations, you've reinvented racism. Like, seriously, read the comments in there. There are so many folks that are like "I picked blue, and I want people who picked red to die." Aren't you supposed to be the morally superior one? It's truly bizarre. There's literally dozens of these kinds of comments: The funny thing is the god or entity who teleported everyone to these buttons actually did it as a test for the civilization. They actually had it be that every person who picked red died so that the species would only be made of those with the moral character to not contribute towards the mass murder of others. Brother, what in the fuck am I reading? Here's one just saying anyone who picks red is incomprehensibly selfish: I’ve never heard of this thing either and in my head I just imagined “obviously blue who in the world would pick red?” and then I kept watching. I can’t even comprehend this selfishness I saw very similar sentiments in a Reddit thread. It's actually crazy how many people hold these two beliefs simultaneously: "choosing blue is morally superior" and also "people who choose red should die." In the button example, the blue button choosers might want everyone to live. They are willing to risk their own lives to help this. The red button choosers are deciding to kill off part of the population. They are selfishly deciding to protect themselves without regard to anyone else. On the path scenario, it requires 50% of humans to open the gate and get through. If enough people cooperate, everyone survives. Too bad we can't select to eliminate the selfish red button choosers. I think there's a case for certain groups in society to die (e.g., Nazis), but I don't think people who select red fit the bill. Again, by the blue team's own logic, there could be kids who don't know any better who select red (though, I would personally exclude them from this "game"; imagine being a kid who picked red while their parents die for picking blue). Certainly, kids don't deserve to be labeled as red pushers, or worse, killed. Additional Thoughts While this whole debate kind of fried my brain, I had a series of weird thoughts about it that I figured I'd share here. One thought that came to mind for me (and it's albeit a little demonic) is: what's the worst-case scenario of pressing red? Is it the Thanos snap? How many deaths am I directly responsible for? Is it like a one-to-one thing? Am I responsible for all 50%? Because, the remaining folks share the blame I think. I would be responsible for, at most, one death. Now, let me stretch that argument a bit further. Is everyone that dies a good person? Like, are we in agreement that blue pushers are better people (certainly not, as seen above). Because if not, what if pressing red actually causes some bad people to die? Maybe a dictator or two? Do I get to claim moral superiority in that case? In a similar way, what if people select blue because they want to die? Is it moral to stop them by also pressing blue? Wouldn't you be denying them of (presumably) a painless death? Also, suppose the death wasn't painless? Does that make blue a more or less obvious choice? Instinctively, I thought it would be the more obvious choice, but maybe it feels more risky or dangerous. Another thought I had was around how much time you have to make the choice. Is it seconds? Minutes? Hours? If you don't have a ton of time, I wonder what the distribution would tend toward. Would people opt for self-preservation? Would they have time to reason out that pressing blue increases the odds of survival for everyone? Obviously, you can't convince anyone of which button to press, and we don't know how much time you would have to do so. How does that factor into the outcome? Also, last tangent, I promise. I saw this really interesting take: That's not empathy, it's unnecessary self-sacrifice. The only people pressing blue are people who think they are saving people by pressing blue thus creating the problem they aim to solve. It's just stupidity. If you press a button that says you're going to die then you've made your choice. Again, I don't necessarily agree with it, but I do like the line that reads: "The only people pressing blue are people who think they are saving people by pressing blue thus creating the problem they aim to solve." Let's suppose everyone is a rational actor. Pushing blue does kind of seem like creating the problem you intend to solve. Like, I still think blue is the correct choice because it has a statistically more likely chance of leading to no deaths, but there is something kind of silly about it. The Politics of Button Presses Finally, I was thinking about this from the perspective of voting, right? Everyone seems to want to turn your button press into a political position. If that's the case, it kind of feels like the button presses might have certain trends in certain regions. People point to individualism vs. collectivism, and I'm not sure I buy that argument. However, if there are certain trends, there are certain populations, such as China and India, that control a large share of the vote. In that case, it might not matter how you vote individually if certain voting blocks can seal your fate. And speaking of politics, I'm a leftist. I don't care about optics. I care about real meaningful change. It's the reason I became an educator. And it's the reason I serve in the DSA, so I can protect the most vulnerable. For the last year or so, I've been a part of a campaign that has been working toward getting city councils to pass resolutions that stand with immigrants, a group that I am not a member of. So, talk is cheap. You can pick the blue button in a hypothetical scenario, but you're likely not doing anything now for people who need you. Would pressing the blue button lead to saving the most people? Absolutely. Am I willing to take a risk that could lead to kids losing a father, a wife losing a husband, or students losing a teacher? I'm not so sure. Like, in the US, we do a lot of voter shaming. If you voted Trump, you're a bad person. If you didn't vote, you're a bad person. This, of course, obscures the very real reasons for why people might vote one way or the other or not vote at all. Some people cannot vote because they cannot get to the polls (these are the incapacitated voters in the button "game"). Some people vote against you (e.g., for Trump) because he promises something that serves their community. Even if those voters are ultimately lied to or misled, that doesn't make them bad people (and it's in our best interest not to view them as bad people). In fact, I tend to be of the position that politicians need to convince people to vote. They have to stand for real meaningful change, or people are never going to go out and vote. Voter shaming is pointless and only leads to more apathy. It's the politicians who are responsible for putting together a platform that actually energizes voters. It's why you see massive turnout for leftists like Zohran and not the supposed "moderate" candidate who wants to continue funding Israel. See, voter shaming is silly in reality because we're given the illusion of control. We don't get to pick the politicians. They're mostly manufactured through the machine of Capitalism. They're all bought and paid for. Capitalism is responsible for whatever negative impacts happen to the masses, not individuals who refuse to vote blue no matter who. And for the record, I have always voted blue no matter who because I believe in harm reduction, but I don't shame other leftists who don't (e.g., voting for a third party, especially if they live in a blue state). Therefore, if this "game" is then an analogy for voting, then we're once again given an illusion of control. I am not responsible for the deaths of others if I choose red. The entity that established this horrific situation is. But just like voting in real life, there is this tendency to take out your anger or frustration on the people who voted differently from you. Don't blame Hillary and Harris for running horrible campaigns. Blame other people for voting Trump. Manufacture weird narratives on how voters are too sexist or racist to pick your candidate rather than contending with the reality that they were offering nothing but being not Trump. And speaking of Capitalism, this "game" gives us no mechanism to organize. If there were an opportunity to work with others to vote blue, I'd take that bet all day. At the very least, I could convince everyone in my family to vote blue, so we'd all go down together if we were wrong. There is no leftist that believes in people individually doing the "right" thing. That's why we organize: united we bargain, divided we beg. Anyway, it's awfully late, and I'm tired. I'm paywalling this bad boy because this was positively unhinged and probably doesn't reflect well on me, but I enjoyed writing it. Since we're sitting pretty behind the paywall, I'll spare you the usual begging. Take care! Side note, but I find it really interesting how badly people want to label others as selfish. This is something that comes up a lot in antinatalist groups; the idea that having children is selfish. Anyone who has kids would tell you that it's hardly selfish since you're making a significant sacrifice to give someone else a good life. Like, sure. Maybe it's selfish to decide to have kids (i.e., because you want them), but any reasonable adult that makes that choice is willing to take on that responsibility. And speaking of selfishness, I felt this comment reflected my thoughts on this button debate: The somewhat ironic thing is that morality of presenting your choice in hypothetical is kinda flipped. Admitting you are Red only makes you look a bit worse, for the sake of good faith discussion on human nature, morality, risk, etc. It is selfless.Saying you will vote blue on the other hand costs you nothing, since this is hypothetical, but can make you look better, and look down on others. It is selfish. There are of course many people that would honestly press Blue, but a lot of them are only saying it for brownie points, and/or lack empathy to imagine how risking your life would actually feel. In other words, I have to put this article behind a paywall because I'm not willing to take on the risk of saying I'd push the red button. People who say they'll press the blue button take on no risk. Therefore, it hardly surprises me that blue wins out in a social media poll (and just barely for that matter). I also like how this comment raises the question of empathy. Everyone claims pressing blue is the empathetic choice, but is it? You're ignoring, as I've stated endlessly, the real reasons why people would choose red. This ties exactly back to politics, and it explains why democrats never win. They refuse to engage with the people who vote for Trump or the people who don't vote at all. My hot take is that the people picking blue are largely liberals. They crave the optics of doing good without the effort or risk of doing good. Sure, conservatives probably pick red because they're unashamed of their narcissism. Everyone else is just trying to make the best of their own situation. Naturally, liberals find a way to villainize both without making any real progress. Then, society continues to get worse for everyone. Slightly unrelated, but I also saw this amazing take around risk tolerance: Did we not all go through the same pandemic 6 years ago? I am not going to gamble my survival on whether the MAJORITY of people would risk their lives for others. I have no faith that blue would win. People refused to wear masks or get vaccinated in public. Ain't no way I'm taking the risk in private. Last note, and I promise this is at least related. Ages ago, I got into an argument with my buddy over a Twitch streamer event. Several streamers were competing in a video game to win some money. For whatever reason, Twitch decided to host the event on public servers, so anyone watching (including streamers) could theoretically stream snipe the event. In other words, outsiders could aid or impede the progress of competitors. Naturally, one of the streamers decided to take advantage of this and started stream sniping one of the other competitors to try to make them lose the event. Ultimately, he was banned from the event for the action. My buddy firmly held the position that the streamer was a bad person for hurting the integrity of the event. I didn't (and still don't) see it as cut-and-dry. To me, Twitch is at fault for hosting an event on public servers. This should have been a known outcome of such a decision, and the lack of foresight is frankly disqualifying. Instead, Twitch was able to pick a fall guy (lmao). Do I think the streamer is without fault? Of course not. However, I think it's silly to demonize a single person or even a small group (see also: October 7th) for actions that were easily predictable. It's the system that failed, not the individual. I would make a similar argument about the buttons. The aliens posing the scenario are responsible for the death, not the people that chose red—no matter how much we want to demonize them for doing so. Hell, I think this extends to plenty of scenarios. A corrupt government starving its population? It's probably ethical to steal food in that scenario. It's the system that is responsible, not individual actors in that system. It's why I push so hard for systemic change.