If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

Basic setup & immediate reactions

• Scenario: Everyone must press red or blue. Red pressers always survive. If >50% press blue, everyone survives; otherwise blue pressers die.
• Many argue it’s trivial: everyone “should” press red; then all live and no risk is taken.
• Others say real humans aren’t fully rational, so some will press blue regardless (altruism, confusion, trolling, children, impaired people).

Rational self-interest vs altruism

• Red advocates:
  • Red guarantees survival; blue adds risk with no extra payoff beyond what universal red already yields.
  • Pressing blue is framed as needless self-endangerment or “suicidal empathy.”
• Blue advocates:
  • Expect a non-trivial blue minority; pressing red then knowingly contributes to their deaths.
  • Prefer to risk their own life rather than help create a world where self-sacrificing or cooperative people are wiped out.
  • Some explicitly say they would not want to live in a post-red world.

Game theory & collective action

• Several compare it (often unfavorably) to the prisoner’s dilemma: here the “cooperative” choice (blue) has no better outcome than universal red, and is individually dominated.
• Others note it’s more like a collective-action problem with a harsh threshold: every extra blue vote worsens outcomes until 50% is reached; then it suddenly becomes optimal.
• Debate over Nash equilibrium: if everyone is rational and knows everyone else is rational, “all red” is the equilibrium; but many stress this ignores irrational agents and children.

Framing effects and variants

• Alternate framings: magic guns that jam if >50% shoot; jumping off a cliff if enough others jump; overloaded ship; protest under dictatorship.
• Many note that making “do nothing” the safe option (e.g., don’t pull the trigger) changes behavior drastically vs “must pick a button.”
• Color choice and political connotations (red/blue parties) are seen as intentional and biasing.

Moral responsibility & blame

• Fierce disagreement over whether red pressers are “murderers” or simply declining to join others’ risky gambles.
• Some argue blue is akin to voluntary suicide; others say red is complicity in mass killing.
• Inclusion of babies, cognitively impaired people, and animals is used both to justify blue (protect the vulnerable) and red (don’t increase their risk).

Critiques of the thought experiment

• Some call it shallow “virtue signaling” bait or a “Shari’s Scissor” designed to polarize.
• Others dislike that it ignores long-term systemic context, reduces ethics to one binary choice, or assumes away real-world social structures.