Ah, I missed that. Red then. (Watch them not having enough vaccine anyway.)
The choice is between everyone surviving and not everyone of us surviving.
On that basis, the rational response is to press the blue button.
Reducing the decision to considering only your own survival displays a gross lack of rationality. Rationality involves recognising when the algorithmic answer is wrong. Rationality is not equivalent to narrow self-interest.
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This. People are trying to interpret this as being a matter of pure self-interest on one hand and pure math on the other hand, without seeing its moral dimension.
What if it is inevitable that someone will choose Blue, no matter what one does. Is it moral to press Red then?
In effect to press red is to condemn all who press blue. Nice.
There’s also the point that the red voters, if successful, would find themselves in a world void of any common wealth. Not unlike the United States. No one wants that.
Not who you are killing, whether you are killing.
You have to make some other assumptions to make pressing blue or red an affirmative intent to kill anyone. You have to assume not enough people will press the blue button to assume anyone will die before you press any button at all. If you make that assumption and then press the red button, you could do so intentionally to keep the blue numbers below 50% and better ensure people die. Or, if you think most people will certainly push the red button, you could intend to kill yourself and not having any intention towards the others, perhaps assuming you were the only blue button pusher.
So intent can only layer in by adding assumptions - hopes and dreams that less than 50% will press the blue button.
Instead of trying to weed out who is the more depraved killer, if anyone thought about this for five minutes, with a pad and pencil and did some math, carried the one, checked it again, all with the intention of the most people living, anyone with a heart would start crying realizing that not everyone will figure out that we should all just push the red button. But why would one figure one could control any of this? What is in one’s control here? Only the red button seizes any control of anything here. We didn’t make the button or set out the circumstances. Pressing the blue button is likely, willingly joining with all of the other dead people.
So if you want to save the most people, you add yourself to the hopefully long list of people who thought about this for a minute, and press the red button.
There are five commonwealths in the US. I live in one of them. Power to the people!
And no public health scheme. Madness. Commonwealths in name only.
You have a duty to press red and work to convince others to press red as well.
That only works if we can communicate with one another before pressing the buttons — and we can successfully communicate with all people who could potentially press the buttons and convince them to do so.
Those who think about it for more than a minute will see that pressing the red button is committing murder, while pressing the blue button is not.
One is rational only if one can recognise when not to follow the rule.
It’s not, because if everyone pushes red then everyone survives.
We can draw a distinction between morality and supermorality and between bravery and foolishness.
Not running into a burning building to save a life isnt immoral. It’s just not supermoral or heroic.
Jumping off a 100 foot bridge to save someone who is drowning isn’t moral. It’s foolish.
I place pushing the blue button somewhere in there between super moral and foolish.
But going back to my first pragmatic response. We typically help people by showing them the better way, not just by passive intervention that we hope helps.
Look at it from the perspective of each of the three main approaches to ethics.
On a deontological view, one ought to act on the basis that one’s actions be universalized. On that basis, one can will that everyone press the blue button, but not that everyone press the red.
Virtue ethics would chastise the cowardly, parasitic free-riding on the sacrifice of others in pressing the red button.
A consequentialist cannot make a decision here.
Indeed, the setup might be best seen as showing the paucity of consequentialism.
Not going to happen. Pressing red is the wilful killing of innocents.
That’s not going to help in this case, since they will be dead.
Why? I’m telling them not to smoke, to wear their seatbelt, and to push red.
How do you reach that conclusion? From the post above:
A deadly virus has been released that will kill everyone who has not been vaccinated.
Anyone who pushes the red button receives the vaccine. Anyone who pushes the blue button receives the vaccine only if the majority of the population push the blue button. There are enough vaccines for everyone.
Me choosing to take a vaccine for myself is not me “wilfully killing the innocent”. I’m under no obligation to risk my life to try to save those who are foolish enough to push the blue button.
Read the scenario again. No virus is involved.
This is a contrived scenario designed to direct the reader to seek the ‘right’ action, and then by analogy justify what they see as being the ‘right’ action in the original scenario.
The scenario is: everyone who pushes the red button survives, and those who push the blue button survive only if more than half push the blue button.
Nowhere does it specify what causes the deaths (or survivals). My example with the virus and the vaccine is consistent with the OP.