The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising Answer

A curious question made its way around the interwebs recently, and not for the first time. By itself, it does not appear to be that interesting. And it isn’t, really. But the reactions to the question are astonishing. Enormous anger at people making the “wrong” choice being the most prominent.

Of course, instant, often performative, “outrage” over the slightest thing online is the norm, so peevishness is to be expected. But the discussion over this question revealed a bit more than that.

Here is the question. If you haven’t seen it, take a small moment and ponder your answer. Don’t read ahead until you have made your choice:

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?

Don’t read ahead.

Don’t read ahead.

Don’t read ahead.

Don’t read ahead.

Don’t read ahead.

If you found the question confusing, perhaps a change in wording to the logical equivalent:

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 more than 50% of people press the red button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?

Heading My Way

This, of course, shares similarities with the Trolley Question, which you must have seen. It is now a desert island joke: endless variants exist. There is even a meme generator for it, so you can create your own. Here is the one which works for us today:

The Red-Blue Button Question is also, in a certain way, similar to this poser:

If you have been paying attention in Class, you already know why the student’s answer could be considered correct.

Then there are definite reminders of the infamous Breakfast Question, too. Up to a point. Would you become angry if somebody asked you how you felt if you didn’t have breakfast today? Not anger over missing your rashers of bacon, you understand. The implied effrontery in the question being asked, I mean.

It’s Just A Game, Man

In the Trolley Question, there will be no situation where you race into a room and are confronted with people inexplicably tied to tracks, a runaway trolley, and with a lever (if you could even identify it) that allows you to switch tracks. This will never happen. It is therefore pointless to fly into a rage over somebody stating they would make the opposite choice of yours.

The choice of your rival reveals little about them. The question is so abstract, so preposterous, that you can find yourself answering “at random”, because it’s easy to see both sides of the argument. Still, if you’re asked to make a choice, you do. And it’s easy to invent justifications for your answer. But the whole thing is academic. Worthy of putting papers in journals no one reads, nor should, but that’s it. In per impossible you do find yourself in the trolley scenario, that’s when you’d discover what you’d really do.

The same kind of thing happens in the Red-Blue Button. This scenario will never happen. It is purely angels on heads on pins. You can say “I pick button X”, but then your opponent then says “But if you do that, then this happens” and you change your mind. Only to have a third person remind you, “Aha, but have you considered this other thing?”, and you change your mind back.

What You Didn’t Know You Thought

Because why? Because look at the answer to the limit question again. The “5” on its side, sleeping. Again, if you took the Class, and were paying attention to lesson “Test Your IQ With These Puzzles! (Not So Easy!)” the answer depends on tacit or hidden premises, information you assume but which is not given in the question itself.

The Question maker had his own tacit and hidden premises, too. And he assumed, and only assumed, you would share them. That assuming makes an ass of u and me is why the next number in the sequence “1, 2, 3, 4, 5” is not 6, but 7.

Because I am the test creator. I used tacit premises (about functions of prime number sequences) that I thought you shared. If you used the wrong tacit premises, then you got the wrong answer (and probably said “6”). It is because there are always any number of tacit premises to questions, that all IQ tests are not just about logic and intelligence but also about the ability to guess the mind of the test creators. (This conclusion, too, angers many.)

In the Red-Blue button there are also hidden premises. For one, who is “everybody”? Children, too? Infants? NPR listeners? Next, the opposite of “survives” is “dies.” How are people to die? Expire of old age while the others are forever preserved? Or do those who die do so horribly and painfully? Or just vanish? That one makes a difference, because it feeds into the Other Lives’ Value premise, which is the one that is making everybody nuts. And then there is the Other Minds premise which plays, too.

Who is doing the killing? What is their motivation? Is this like the situation where a gunman grabs as a random woman as a hostage and tells the cop if he takes one more step forward that he, the cop, is killing the woman? The gunman is the one pulling the trigger, and is “forced” to do so because he warned the cop to come no further. Is that the Red-Blue button, too?

Red-Blue Explanation.

Red-Blue Button Explanation

There are only four possibilities:

1. You pressed Red, but the majority selected Blue. Then you survive, and indeed everybody survives.
2. You pressed Red, and the majority selected Red. Then you survive, as does the majority, but the Blue button pressers die.
3. You pressed Blue, and the majority selected Blue. Then you survive, and everybody survives.
4. You pressed Blue, but the majority selected Red. Then you die, but the Red pressers live.

If you are a Red presser, then in every scenario, you live. If you are a Blue presser, you only survive if the majority votes with you. Else you die.

It would thus seem that you ought to press Red, because then, no matter what, you survive. Or it seems all, and not just you, ought to press Blue because then everybody lives. Both decisions contain hidden assumptions. The Other Minds and the Other Lives’ Value premises.

Hidden Assumptions

The Other Minds is what you think other people will think. The Other Lives’ Value is how much the lives of others means to you, as a function of who those others lives are: all humanity, or your neighbors (loved ones). Both are there, both are inescapable.

You Press Blue

One typical Blue presser responding to the question said, “red is an unbelievably phenomenally disgustingly selfish decision and i do not have theory of mind for anyone who would choose it”. Another (a “Dr” and “Philosopher”) said, “Red button people should be publicly mock hanged and broadcast on TV. Then everyone reinforces altruism and over time people become good people.”

The moral indignation (largely performative) reveals their tacit Other Lives’ Value premise. It can’t be “Every life is infinitely valuable” or some similar variant, because they (and they are not unusual) are reading to mete out extreme violence on their perceived enemies. They are not unhappy with caused death. It’s only that they want to be the ones causing the deaths, not the mysterious entities behind the Buttons.

This means their Other Lives’ Value premise is something vague about man, but not men. They value “humanity”, and love “the masses”, even the untutored among them, but they hold no love for their neighbors if those neighbors do not agree with them. These people expect everybody else ought to believe as they do, but they know that not all do. So they advocate Blue to save “humanity”, though they are willing to sacrifice actual humans.

Most women will largely and instinctively hold a “nice” version of Other Lives’ Value, thinking the best way to save people to is to press Blue. This set desire none should die. They believe they are saving even the “unthinking” (not bad) people who voted Red.

But in concentrating wholly on the Other Lives’ Value, and considering they are “good people” for believing as they do, they think they have escaped the Other Minds premise. But they haven’t!

For suppose for whatever reason the majority has lately boned up on logic, and our Blue person knows or suspects this. Or he believes “too many” are “selfish” and will opt for Red. He thus believes there is at least a chance the majority will choose Red, in which case our man’s Blue vote is for naught. All that “It’s called being a good person” goes for nothing if Red wins the vote. Yet if he holds the Other Lives’ Value premise especially strongly, he might still vote Blue, even if suspects the majority will go Red because then his death will prove to others how good a person he was.

You Press Red

If you can’t see why other people can’t see why all should press Red, then your Other Minds premise is that all ought to be able to see simple logic. Everybody, you suppose, is able to puzzle out that Red is the best option. Of course, given any experience with real people, you ought to know this Other Minds premise is false. But ought is not is, and many do not know this because Equality. And all this contains the tacit premise that you want to live (too obvious to state!).

To be specific, if you are adamant that all surely will be able to puzzle out Red is the best choice, then Red is the best choice no matter what. But if you think there is at least a non-zero chance some people, or even just one, will choose Blue, then your choice also depends on an Other Lives’ Value tacit premise.

If you believe even one person will press Blue, then you know there is a chance this person or those people will die. The chance depends on your Other Minds tacit premise. Consider some surely will make simple mistakes in logic and conclude Blue is always the best option, no matter what. Some people cannot divide 1 by 1 (one lady insisted the answer was 0 because once you take the 1 from the 1, “nothing is left”, but many do not believe me when I tell this story, again because Equality).

Then there are the people in this camp: “Blue pushers are useless cattle. I’d feel no dread knowing they would all die.” Yet the charge of strict Red selfishness does not bear up. A Red advocate might not consider only himself, because there might be some Blue lives he would like to save. The only way Red can do that, since he is unlikely to change any minds, is hope the minority will press Red. And he might suspect most will likely vote Blue, because most (he thinks) hold the Other Lives’ Values premise strongly. Yet, on the other hand, every now and then even the masses evince bursts of logic. So, not wanting to take any chances with himself, and not holding the Other Lives’ Values premise that strongly for non-neighbors, he votes Red.

The Right Answer

My Other Lives’ Value is this: I must save my wife, whom I love, and my sons and their sons, and my family. I will insist they press Red to save their lives. The eventual vote is private, says the rules. But I can tell them now, before the vote (obviously, as we are doing here and now). These are the only lives I must care about. You might assume My Other Minds is such I believe the majority will press Blue, perhaps because Equality. If so, then there is nothing to fret over. If not, then I will be sorry for the dead, but my concern is not for man, but for men, and women.

But my Others Minds is not that. It is that most of those who avow they would press Blue, except for the truly altruistic women Blue pressers, are lying, or only now believe they are sincere but when it comes down it they press Red. The angrier they shout Blue now, the more likely I believe they will press Red. Afterwards, if it turns out Red won the vote, they will say their button didn’t work, or that somebody pressed Red for them, or that the whole thing was a false flag or psyop. A few will say they knew everybody else was insufferably selfish and they had “no choice.”

In the end there are two commandments (in brief): Love God, and love your neighbor. Your neighbor is all you can know or care about in any real way. I cannot care in any but an abstract and dry manner about “humanity”. I can love a hundred, not a billion. Yet my Other Live’s Value premise looks with sympathy on the truly nice ladies who would vote Blue for purely altruistic reasons. Since I am morally convinced Red would win the vote, these ladies need men put over them to ensure that the Blue men can’t kill them.

I’m pressing Red. Wouldn’t it be nice if everybody thought this way.

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