Go forth with a machete and guarantee that other machete-wielding killers won’t kill you — I still haven’t seen you actually justify how this isn’t equivalent to pressing red.
I’m estimating the odds a majority presses one button over another at 50%. Do you think that wildly off?
With this logic, if 50% plus one person presses Blue, everyone lives, while if 50% plus one person presses Red, 50% minus one person dies.
This is a probability question based upon knowledge you have versus what you predict.
If you have 100 people and you know 49 have pressed blue and 50 red, morally you must press blue.
If you know 51 pressed red, morally, you must press red.
If you know only you live among red pushers, you must push red. If blue, blue.
If you know zero about your population, I’d say you’ve got to go with red. I say that because if all you know is what you’ll do, that’s all the information you have.
Going with blue in that scenario doesn’t make you more moral. It just says you have greater trust in others, which isn’t necessarily a virtue.
Again, so many “if”'s as to render the calculation meaningless.
Consequentialism does not help here. If this thread shows anything, it’s the poverty of consequentialist approaches to vicious ethical problems.
You’re reading something into the OP that strictly speaking isn’t there. This appears to be your line of reasoning:
A1. If most vote red then only red voters survive
A2. If most vote blue then everyone survives
A3. Therefore, if I vote red than I am voting for only reds to survive
The conclusion doesn’t follow, as shown with my example with the virus and the vaccine:
B1. Anyone who votes red is choosing to take the vaccine
B2. Anyone who votes blue is choosing to take the vaccine only if most vote blue
A1. Therefore, if most vote red then only red voters survive
A2. Therefore, if most vote blue then everyone survives
Note that (A1) and (A2) follow from (B1) and (B2) but (A3) does not follow from (B1) and (B2), and so does not follow from (A1) and (A2).
You might have a case if the scenario were explicitly this:
C1. Anyone who votes red is voting to execute anyone who votes blue
C2. Anyone who votes blue is voting to not execute anyone
A1. Therefore, if most vote red then only red voters survive
A2. Therefore, if most vote blue then everyone survives
C3. Therefore, if I vote red than I am voting for only reds to survive
But it’s not. As it stands the OP is agnostic as to whether we’re in a scenario like (B) or a scenario like (C), and it might be that the correct answer depends on which scenario we’re in, i.e. that it’s unethical to vote red in (C) but not unethical to vote red in (B) (and indeed foolish to vote blue in (B)).
The next question is: what if we don’t know whether we’re in scenario (B) or scenario (C), and only that (A1) and (A2) are true? Given that all we know is that red voters always survive and that blue voters survive only if most vote blue, we can only make the rational choice to ensure our own survival and hope that everyone else is smart enough to make the same choice — and it’s not unethical to do so.
I tend to agree with @T_Clark’s common sense response.
But to add to it, if not in a trivial way.
What causes this “everyone in the world HAS to do something” situation in the first place? It’s not normal, it’s not organic, therefore, something extreme must have happened in order for this situation to have even occurred in the first place. Most likely a terrible war and subjugation of humanity that makes people question whether life itself is worth living. So that’s one point I feel would be neglected and may suggest a large amount of people pressing red who in this current world and society would not, if one were to answer realistically (if not facetiously).
Assuming that never happened, or at least we live in a society where “everyone is forced to take a vote” is normal, there are still concerns some may dismiss. Sure, people tend to like to be alive. But this world is full of suffering, those who perhaps are not well off or live in a society that is not the so-called “first world” (where the classic fears and pains of life are an everyday reality and not something we read books or watch horror movies to experience) are commonplace. That’s another factor. If you know the world is miserable, vindictive, and seeking death, it might be logical to press the red button, no?
I think the real unasked question would be: Why would you want to live in a world where most people press the red button? Bitter, vindictive people who hold their fellow man in such poor regard they would surely stab you in the back at the slightest opportunity for wealth or benefit. It’s a good question. Something fairly unique and new, I suppose.
1 Like
Not quite. The argument, so far as it goes, is
A1. If most vote red then only red survive.
A2. If most vote blue then everyone survives
A3. Therefore I ought vote blue
Voting blue achieves the best outcome.
Again, your vaccine example is not the one given in the OP.
It’s not necessarily based on utility. We have duties to protect our own children that exceed the protection of other’s children for example.
A mother saves her own child from a fire first.
There can be a recognized hierarchy of moral duty based upon relationship that can result in a higher duty of protection of your own life than that of a stranger as well.
In the scenario given, there is no option as to who is saved. So this is not relevant.
But in addition, giving primacy to one’s own relations is stepping outside universalisation. Kant would prima facie insist you treat all children as of equal worth. Special duties to self or family do not override the universal duty not to free-ride on the sacrifice of others.
You assert that as if there is nothing further to analyze - everyone must agree.
On some analyses, pressing either button or neither isn’t even a moral act.
What makes an act moral is intent and consent and knowledge.
As with the trolley problem, the designer of the scenario is the only real moral actor involved. We are supposed to just skip over that guy, and play along as he is hanging axes over the world’s head to spring a pop quiz on everyone.
I just thought it was a dark, logical game. What would ChatGPT do? Would the answer make ChatGPT a hero or a murderer?
There is no serious moral question here for the blue or red people just trying to make their way through button world.
A better reading is as a take-down of consequentialism.
For those who have reconsidered their reply, you can change your vote.
Click the “Vote” button under the graph in the OP.
There is an option as to who is saved: yourself. My point was that there is a higher duty to protect your own life than that of strangers.
To the extent Kant says a mother must divide her time equally among all children, both hers and all nearby, I disagree with him. But I don’t think he says that. I think he’d allow differing duties based upon prior commitments, and I think he’d allow one to protect their own self agency.
Regardless of how closely this tracks Kant is less significant than that it is structured around duty as opposed to utility.
That’s against universalisation. So you re stepping away from deontology. Yes, you do seem to be disagreeing with Kant. That’s not a bad thing.
Prerssing red is placing self-interest over universalisation.
But I don’t think Kant is committed to a suggestion a mother has an equal duty to all children.
I don’t see it as just a matter of prioritizing ones loved ones over the lives of strangers. For me it’s a question of whether to choose the low odds of benefiting a group over the much higher odds of losing the life of a single person. Imagine a related scenario. You are a single parent with two children. One is at home and the other is with a large group stranded in shark infested waters. You know two things. First, you have been told if enough people volunteer to come to the aid of the stranded group, it is guaranteed that this will scare away the sharks.
Second, you estimate that the odds that enough people will volunteer are no more than 50%. Therefore, your volunteering will raise the odds your child and the rest of the group will survive only by a tiny fraction, and your deciding not to volunteer will lower those odds by just as tiny a fraction. Therefore, the odds you will die trying to rescue your child are 50%. Is it ethical for you to take this chance, knowing that your other child at home will be orphaned if you die trying to save the stranded child, especially considering that your contribution will change the odds of rescue only slightly but will put you at 50% risk of death?
If one takes Kant’s ethics and modifies them to assume an imperfect world (i.e., in this case, no matter what you do some people will press red and some people will press blue) the only universalizable ethical behavior is to press blue because unless 50% of people plus one hold out everyone will live whereas pressing red cannot be universalized because some people will die if most people do so (as it is impossible to convince everyone to go along with you).
Righto. I don’t much care what Kant thought.
I think a real issue here is in explaining why pushing the red button feels instinctive. Is it simply selfishness or is there an underlying morality to it. To those who argue its moral, is it just dissonance? We do commonly protect those closest to us more than others, and no one is closer to us than ourselves. Is the self preservation instinct really just the unsophisticated selfishness of archaic man? That seems wrong to me in a naive sanctimonious way, but I’ve already granted that dissonance might be impossibly clouding my view.
To those insisting upon blue, are they the enlightened, not burdened by primitive Darwinian instincts or has their spirit been so crushed by modernity that they can’t even justify their own self preservation, now infinitely subservient?
(Reminds me of some Dylan lyrics: “I’ve heard you say many times
That you’re better than no one
And no one is better than you
If you really believe that
You know you have
Nothing to win and nothing to lose”).
If I actually lived in the dystopia of the OP, my immediate instinct would be to push red and contact my immediate family and insist they do the same. I’d circle the wagons, protect those closest to me and extend little trust that there were benevolent forces looking after me.
This isn’t because I’m paranoid. It’s because my sense of duty is as it is. That feels honorable, loyal, protective, not at all evil as suggested by blues.