A content creator I like popped up in my feed a few weeks ago confused by the repeated outcome of a particular experiment. I have since done a little digging, found several versions of this question, and was initially also confused since at first glance it seems like a no-brainer.
The situation is this: You are presented with two buttons, one red, the other blue. Everyone in the country is expected to push a button. If a majority select the blue button, everybody lives. If a majority push the red button, they live, but anyone who pushed the blue button dies.
Apparently a majority of people presented with this question push red.
I was shocked when I heard that. Then I looked up and remembered what country I live in.
Because before I even heard the end of the question, and got as far as "everybody lives" I made my choice. Of course it has to be blue. Why would anyone choose anything other?
But then I realized since the outcome depends on others, you are really being asked to make a choice based on the amount of trust you have in people you don't know. Those people are also banking on what they think you will do. The only way to guarantee you will live is to choose red.
When I posed this question to my oldest daughter, she did the same thing I did. Before she even heard the second option, she was already declaring blue. "Everybody lives" was all she needed to know. She couldn't believe the majority of the time people would select any option that kills people.
When I pointed out that red was the only way to personally survive, she stuck with blue, because living with the knowledge that you participated in the deaths of others wasn't worth it.
I knew this was what she would say before I ever asked her the question. That's who she is.
Which is why I knew my only answer would ever be blue, because to choose otherwise I would be electing to kill my daughter. I'd rather be dead than do that.
I would say this analogy is too on the nose—seeing as we recently had an election where millions of people literally chose red over blue, not caring about the lives of others—but these are days without subtlety. I haven't seen any fiction or satire that could compete with our current reality of callousness and the absurd. We might have excused people in the past for not being informed enough to do anything about government sanctioned injustices, but not today.
There are no excuses now except for willful ignorance, indifference or sadism.
I have steered away from a lot of news primarily because I'm no help to anyone if my blood pressure rises to the point of having a stroke. But listening to the president somehow blame Ukraine for the war they have been fighting for three straight years put me into a state of rage. The audacity to blame them for being invaded is a new low amongst unfathomable lows, only to be topped by trying to extort resources from that country like we are some kind of mob boss. It's disgusting.
This is literally "Oceania had been always been at war with Eastasia" nonsense.
Lives are being destroyed pointlessly, thoughtlessly, as damage is being done purely out of greed and an insatiable desire for power.
Nobody wants financial waste, but what are we saving money for exactly? I want my taxes to go to our general safety and for science and for education and for parks. There are plenty of programs and services that are of great importance to other people that don't apply to me directly, but I would never deny someone things they need. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is supposed to apply to all of us.
I'm not confused by the repeated results of the red and blue button problem, but it's incredibly disheartening, and says a great deal about our country and how myopic people become in their own fears.
If you would push the red button, I'm sorry you don't care if I die. If you pushed the red button this last election, you don't get to wash the red off your hands if that choice erases my kid and other people I care about. Even ones I don't know.
(also, I'd note that they are not saving the US money; even if you don't charge all the legal bills and financial settlements to DOGE, it's more expensive for the US in total to farm out governmental duties to all its states and citizens [more expensive for each state to keep a FEMA preparedness kit up to date than for the feds to keep, say, 5 kits up to date; more expensive for infrastructure to not be repaired, for kids to not be taught; more expensive to have not-clean air and not-clean water and not-clean food; more expensive to just let epidemics and pandemics sweep over us without warning or guidance; more expensive to lack hurricane predictions])(then there's the direct costs of DOGE and the costs to the US of having its secrets readily available to anyone who can socially-engineer any one of a set of young, malleable/venial comp sci dudes)(there's also the regulatory stuff which will just mean money will unjustly shuffle to those with the most outsized power - consider every bad actor major company who has been penalized by the US government in the last 20 years, then consider if, due to regulations being eliminated [as some have been already] or simply never enforced, it was simply business logic to do what was most profitable even if it's melamine in the milk or uncontestable hidden fees or whatever. [admittedly, Amazon and Wells Fargo have been doing this for a while to some degree, in the areas where they're pretty sure they can make more money than they'll be fined/sued for, but if they won't even be fined and can't even be sued? Good luck.])
ReplyDelete(and the anti-price-fixing that could maybe *do* things for US consumers: that's regulation, you know. and the intent to kill the USPS: expensive for Americans and for any business small enough to not have its own courier service and set of bargain delivery deals like Amazon does; profitable for the few who can put the squeeze on.)
I agree with you about the buttons, though.