The Moral Debate Dividing The Internet. Red Button Vs Blue Button

Hey, this is Prewalker. The red button, blue button game has taken the internet by storm, sparking many philosophical discussions. Everyone in the world privately presses a red button or a blue button. What happens depends on what you press and what everyone else presses. If 50% of the world or more press a blue button, then everyone in the world survives. If instead more than 50% of people press a red button, then only the people who press a red button will survive. Everyone who pressed a blue button will not survive. The question is, how would you play the game? Would you press the red button or blue button? So upon hearing this game, many people instinctively think that the correct choice is to press the blue button. After all, if enough people press the blue button, then everyone in the world will live. But upon further thought, you might worry that a lot of people are going to press the red button. So wouldn't it make sense for you to press the red button so you'd be assured that you would survive? This is the dilemma that people face when thinking about this game. So what is the best way to play? What is the mathematically correct choice? One way to analyze the game is to use the lens of game theory. We will first consider your decision based on what everyone else is doing. What is your best response to what everyone else is doing? The logic here is that you can't control the action of anyone else, but you can yourself. So let's take you as one person and separate it from the decisions of everyone else. We will consider your choice relative to what everyone else is doing. So suppose that 50% of the world or more is selecting the blue button even after your choice has been made. Do you select the red button or the blue button? Well, if you select the red button, then you will have voted red, but at least 50% of the world will already have pressed blue. So, in this case, everyone will survive, including you. If instead you press the blue button, then you will be joining at least 50% of the world. So again, everyone survives. In this case, the game is easy to analyze. It doesn't matter whether you select the red button or the blue button. Everyone in the world is going to survive including you. So either choice is a best response in this situation. Next consider the situation where not enough people have selected blue. Even if you select blue, you will not reach a 50% threshold. So what are your choices? If you select red, you will be joining the people who have selected red and you will definitely survive. The people who have selected blue will perish. If instead you select the blue button, you will be joining the minority of people who have pressed blue. So along with the other people who have perished, you will also perish and all of you will not survive. So in this case, it's clear for your own survival that red is the only choice that makes sense. Now, at first it seems quite devious that you've selected a choice that's individually selfish, but it may not necessarily be such a nefarious thing. Imagine if everyone else in the world has selected red. What do you need to do? If you select red, you will survive and everyone in the world will survive. If instead you select blue, you will be making a foolish choice and you alone will perish. It would be like driving on the wrong side of the road. So in this case, it is definitely a good choice to select red if that's what everyone else is doing. But we now have a third scenario. Suppose we have a case where you would be the decisive vote bringing the total number of blue pressers to exactly 50%. What happens in this case? If you select a red button, then certainly everyone else who has selected a red button will survive. But everyone who has pressed a blue button will perish. But if you select the blue button and you cast your decisive vote, then everyone in the world is going to survive. So if you look at the game only from your own survival perspective, then it doesn't matter whether you press red or blue, you will survive. But no man is an island. You're not self-sufficient. So it would make sense to consider other human beings as well. And in this case, it is clear that picking the blue button

would allow you to be the hero and actually save the world. Are you going to be Thanos and having half the people not survive or are you going to be an Avenger and save humanity? Picking blue is the only rational choice in this case. So let us summarize your decision relative to what everyone else does. If sufficiently many people have picked blue, then it doesn't matter whether you pick red or blue, everyone is going to survive. But if not enough people have picked blue and even with your vote, you won't get to 50%, then the only sensible choice is to pick red. If your vote is going to be decisive to allow you to get to the 50% threshold, then picking blue is the only rational choice. So it is not a weekly dominant strategy to pick red. In this case, it would be much better to pick blue. So this is the analysis of your decision relative to what everyone else is doing. In game theory, a situation is in an equilibrium when each person is giving their best response. So not just you giving your best decision, but everyone else is giving their best decision to what everyone else is doing. So there are basically two equilibria to this game. One is where sufficiently many people pick blue. Then it doesn't matter what you do whether you pick red or blue. The other equilibrium is where not enough people have picked blue. In that case it would only make sense for you to pick red to survive. But now for it to be an equilibrium we think about the people who have picked blue. So consider this person who has picked blue. This person sees that not enough people have picked blue. So this person would also say that it's not a good choice for me to stick to my choice of blue. I would rather change my choice to red. The other person who picked blue will also think the same way. So the equilibrium happens when every single person is picking red. But in that case, everyone in the world survives. So the game has two equilibria where everyone in the world survives. So between these two choices, how is this game actually going to play out? What's more realistic? Getting complete uniformity and consensus is a near impossibility. So having everyone pick red would be delusional to think that would happen. What's more realistic is this other equilibrium where sufficiently many people select blue. This is like a public goods game where enough people contribute and pay taxes to the herd immunity and the actions of these people allow everyone in the world to survive. There is a stability to this equilibrium because even if some people pick red, the majority of people pick blue and everyone survives. And in fact, going by human psychology, this is how people actually vote. When Tim Urban did a poll with nearly 100,000 votes, about 58% of people picked blue versus 42% picking red. This equilibrium reflects a larger choice as well. While picking red is focused on your own survival, hoping that everyone else picks red as well. Picking blue will allow for other people to survive even if they've made a different choice. It's a type of empathy and a cooperative choice. We can't separate our decision from our moral upbringing. In nearly every religion and every culture, there is something of a golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It does make sense to pick the blue button because valuing life is not weakness and disregarding it is not strength. If you enjoyed the red button blue button game, then I think you'll enjoy reading more about game theory. In my book, The Joy of Game Theory and Introduction to Strategic Thinking, I share examples like this, which allow you to understand the world, make better individual decisions, and figure out how to change the game to get better outcomes for everyone. I provided a link to the book in the video description. Thanks for making us one of the best communities on YouTube. See you next episode of Mind Your Decisions, where we solve the world's problems, one video at a time.