You’re saying that’s why the game was created, or that some commenters on reddit give it that spin? I find the game fascinating and successful at showing that there are good arguments on both sides. I asked chatgpt how a range of philosophers would likely vote, and the answer was all over the map. None of these philosophers was accused of being bad at math or basic logic.
I’m saying that it made sense of what the experiment is getting at.
Is that a reddit spin?
M’kay.
Apparently I find it fascinating enough to speak on the matter.
That they’re all over the map is indicative of what I’m thinking.
What does the question ask, in the deeper sense?
The Tram problem gets at different ethical intuitions which are representative of normative ethical theories.
Does this question map to philosophy in a similar way?
What I said was that the best outcome of this game, everyone surviving, is achieved only by most folk voting blue.
It really is that simple.
I’m not familiar with the Tram problem, but the blue-red game certainty dips into issues of ethical foundationalism vs relativism. Schopenhauer, Sartre, Nietzsche and many postmodernists would gravitate red, while utilitarians like Singer and Bentham would go blue. Pragmatists could make arguments for both sides.
That’s something on which we can all
agree (I hope).
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I wouldn’t kill myself. If for some reason, due to a bug in the system, I fail to die after I’m a minority blue pusher, I’d bite the bullet and live on. You make your decisions based on situation you find yourself in.
If someone puts buttons in front of me with those instructions, I’m going to call their bluff. And at the branching point I’m going to vote for the projected world I want to live in. It’s a gamble against the odds, but then that’s life.
I do not begrudge you the choice of pushing red; but pushing red will result in a drastic reduction of the world’s population (it’ll have adverse effects, even if it’s as low as, say, 70-30). And then there’s going to be a personality bias in the remaining folks. You’ll meet fewer people, but you’ll meet more selfish ones - simply because they’re the ones least likely to push blue (no?).
My decision isn’t primarily a moral one: I’m selfishly voting for the world I want to live in - with my life on the line. Because I’m more afraid of the coming red-only world than death. That’s all there is to it.
I know enough about what it is to be suicidal for me, that choosing the path to likely death is not me being sucidial. But we do likely value sheer life differently. That is, I’m probably more cavalier with my life than you can imagine being. And I reject a duty to live.
And finally: my beef here is not with red-pushers; it’s with button providers. They could explain the situation, at the very least (I mean Michael convinced me to push red in the virus example; but this is different.)
(I do regret the tone of my post. I certainly was being melodramatic about it. But the choice is likely one I would make.)
The Trolley Problem is what it’s more often referred to. I was deffering to @Banno 's reference there. I’d be very surprised if you don’t know the Trolley Problem.
I don’t see it. But fair enough that if that’s what you see then run with it. I may just be being a grouch.
I disagree on Sartre 
And only say so in good fun.
I’m not persuaded that the question is a good philosophical question by listing possible interpretations for an answer with respect to various thoughts we’re familiar with.
Sure.
Maybe I ought say I don’t blame red-button pushers for pushing red?
We usually get along in terms of not wanting ethics of shame/blame/guilt.
I suggested in an earlier comment that Pat seems to begin from a moralizing abstraction, that players of the game are motivated either by a sense of responsibility for others or self-interested fear, and he puts a lot of weight on the pull of the ‘ought’, that it’s not a lot to ask that we give consideration to the welfare of others. You seem to be moralizing in the opposite direction, that the blue voters are foolish and irresponsible for expecting us to help them.
But I think what is at stake in the game is more clearly seen if we try to clear away the moralizing judgements. I try to imagine that all of the people I’ve cared about most in my life are the players and I assume the odds are 50-50 that more than half of them will vote one way or the other. How do I come to this conclusion? I assume that their vote is like a fact of nature. That is, it is the product of a stable set of views and convictions thar involve religion, ethics, politics and so on , that they have likely held for a while, and that places them within a larger community of persons with similar outlooks on such matters.
Furthermore, I have no more basis to consider any of these voters fools than I do members of this forum for choosing one way vs another. What’s important is that voting acts like a random aggregator. Evan as we may think we are coming to the rescue by pushing the ethical dial slightly in the right direction (say, toward the goodwill of the blue voters), our own vote represents a random slice of that diverse larger community that in a way is already determined.
However the already set pattern of philosophical and ethical worldviews is set within the larger community of voters, that’s how the distribution will look when translated into votes. Looked at this way, the influence of my own vote is no more consequential than my offering a prayer for the right outcome. Voting just mirrors already structured demographic facts, which in this case make the outcome a coin toss. So if my vote has no real effect on the outcome, which is 50-50, then the only substantive effect of my voting blue is that in exchange for registering my tiny slice of my demographic, I have incurred a 50% chance of dying.
Some argue that it is necessary to assume a meta-ethical ground for the adjudication of disputes within and between communities. Others say there is no trans-cultural stance from which we can determine what ought to be the case and what constitutes a violation of the ought. This means that ethical determination is always a political matter. Some cultural systems of ethics are so normatively tight that a vote on them will reveal overwhelming consensus.
But other matters will result in a split, revealing competing views dividing the larger community into subcommunities. I think the blue-red game reveals such a political split, which at the same time involves philosophical divisions. I suspect those who believe in a meta-ethical ground will be more likely to vote blue, as though ethical truth will find a way, with our help, faith and good will. That is the lesson they will take from the game.
The lesson ethical relativists will learn from the game is the ineffectiveness of voting and the robustness of pre-existing demographic-political factions.
Yesterday I was a bit bewildered by the responses. Today I have been making a straightforward moral appeal. I did not load the terms I used; they came loaded and I used them. I am hiding nothing. What I wrote is what I think. I make no claim that it is obvious, and I would not, probably, have written so much if I thought it was.
That there are other interpretations than mine is obvious. I argued for mine. Do you require that I argue for all possible sides?
I do not know how to argue that Red is right for some people and Blue for others. All are voting on the fate of all, not just the Blues who will die but the Reds who will be left behind. The Blues are willing to carry on in a world with people who voted Red; the Reds are willing to carry on in a world where the Blues have been exterminated.
I agree with you here. I don’t believe Red is right for some.
I don’t blame people for pushing the red button, though. In the world where the blue button pushers win, which I’m fairly certain would be the case, the red-button pushers were just scared, and harmless.
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I don’t know the provenance of this thing, but, as if to bolster my hot take, witness the opinion of our newly arrived member:
I’m suggesting we acknowledge a difference here. Trolley problems are those silly, unsolvable “gotcha” contrivances that take up the time of undergrads and novices hereabouts. The Tram Problem might better be thought of not as seeking solutions but as exposing inconsistencies in our ethical intuitions. Foot used the Trolley Problem to show that ordinary people intuitively accept the Doctrine of Double Effect in some cases but reject it in others, often without a clear reason why.
In the original paper Foot marks the contrast between the acceptability of pulling the lever and the unacceptability of pushing the fat man off the bridge.
This sort of consideration enters the discussion here, for example, in differentiating the OP scenario from Michael’s virus scenario.
The two are different ethically.
OF course the terminological difference will not catch on, but it is worthy of note.
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It was unclear to me who @Athi was referring to as stupid: those who think that all we need is for everyone to press red, or those who think most will press blue.
But the voting is a mere formality. The die has already been cast by the demographic distribution of the voting population. The final tally will just confirm those pre-set patterns of viewpoint and they will array themselves randomly to amount to roughly 50-50 chance of blue prevailing. There are important uses of voting in a democracy, especially adjuncts to community involvement, but the role of voting in this game , taken as it is in complete isolation from other meaningful engagements with others, is utterly without effect unless you add in faith or superstition.
Given that the vote is a mere ethical formality laid over a political done deal (50-50), the only direct substantive effect of one’s vote is to makes one’s death a coin toss. I admire altruistic spirit, but don’t waste a life on a meaningless vote.
Right.
Anyone who answers the question, red or blue, can only effectively do so with faith.
I could be wrong. I wouldn’t bet my life either way.
There is reason not to set the prior to 50-50.
The research I’ve seen on actual cooperation indicates that a majority will press blue. Something like 70-30 for blue would be expected.
Also, as the discussion has shown, pressing red is not “safe” in a cooperative world. It has a social cost.
And again, the forum is very much divergent from the wider community.
Let us assume a 10 sided die. You can choose either to live and allow 100 to die or you can choose to hope for a 1 on the die and no one dies, but if it’s not a 1 you and the 100 die. What do you do? Are you immoral to risk the die roll? Are you immoral to choose your own life?
Now play again, this time you can choose to live or hope for a 1 or 2. Same questions.
Now 1, 2 or 3 and so on.
Increase or decrease the number who die. Does that matter?
The point: this is an ethical question based upon a random event. That the OP chooses a random event related to unknowable human conduct (i.e. how many will press blue) confuses the thought experiment and makes it appear to say something about individualism versus collectivism. It doesn’t.
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It’s not hard to think up intractable ethical problems.
But it is a mistake to think that the scenario in the OP is intractable, or that the scenario is random. Again, the clear answer is that everyone is safe if most vote blue, and indeed that most will vote blue.
I’ll maintain that blue is the right choice.
The best defense of pressing red was that offered by @Jamal. But if his is the correct answer, then we find ourselves in a world in which nobody trusted each other enough to cooperate when it mattered most.