Explaining The Red-Blue Button Problem

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:05]Let's talk about the red button, blue button thing. Even though this is the big viral discourse right now, it's not actually new. The first time the question was posted was on Reddit back in April of 2023. Here's the problem as it was presented back then. In front of you appears a red and blue button. If more than 50% of people presses the red button, everyone who pressed the blue button will die. If more than 50% of the people press the blue button, then no one dies. What button will you press? It later went viral on Twitter for the first time during August of 2023, where it was formulated as, "Everyone responding to this poll chooses a red or blue pill. If more than 50% of people take a blue pill, everyone lives. If not, red pills live and blue pills die."

[00:00:47]Also, this dude claimed that it came from his 12-year-old because people still do the from the mouths of babes [ __ ] on social media from time to time, but we're not talking about that. You guys want to know about the big one? In April of 2026, the rationalist blogger Tim Urban, otherwise known by his online name, Wait, But why, posted a slightly altered version of the question that went gigafiral, racking up nearly 100,000 votes and 26 million views as of this video. Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who press the red button survive. Which button would you press? I want to point out right away that every time this question was asked, the blue button wins out, meaning nobody dies. And it's usually around a 60 to 40 ratio. On average, 60% of people push the blue button and 40% push the red. I guess that says something for human altruism.

[00:01:44]In fact, Mr. Beast reposted it and he got basically the same results. Yeah, some people blamed him for stealing it, even though he actually got permission from Tim, which is kind of funny. Also, a common argument against these sort of thought experiments is that no one's actually dying, so it's very easy to just say whatever the [ __ ] you want. So, Ella ran a similar experiment of her own. She ran the poll on Glosso, a small social media site she helps manage, where the death penalty, if the blue button loses, is replaced with permabans from the site. So, it's not dying, but there's at least some small stakes to it. and she got the same results with a couple of thousand participants around 60 blue 40 red. So it seems like this is relatively constant. And you know what?

[00:02:23]I actually find this really interesting.

[00:02:24]So let's discuss what it actually means.

[00:02:26]Someone on Twitter made this handy chart and it's an okay place to start. Here's what happens if you press blue. If the majority of people press blue, no one dies. If everyone, all 8 billion humans press blue, no one dies. If the minority of people press blue, you die. And if you press red, if the majority of people press red, you survive. If everyone presses red, you survive. And if the minority of people press red, you survive. At first glance, there really seems to be no reason at all to press blue. Is there? The level one argument put forward by a few people during this discourse was basically press blue because dying is bad, either because they're [ __ ] or they didn't read the thought experiment through or they didn't understand it. The prompt as written provides no downside to pressing red. The blue button is risk possible death if enough people don't push blue.

[00:03:11]However, there's no equivalent cost attached to pushing red. In fact, you can reformulate the problem without the red button and the issue becomes even more obvious. Imagine there's a blue button and you push it to kill yourself, but it doesn't work if 4 billion other people also push it. This is functionally the same as the red blue button question. Since the red button doesn't actually do anything except at a point towards the blue button triggering, it might as well not even exist. The level two argument is therefore something like press red because there's literally no reason to press blue. And a lot of people made this argument. I don't blame them. It's completely rational. This isn't some you wouldn't risk your life to help others you coward type of scenario because on the surface of it, there's literally no reason to push the blue button. You might as well press red and ensure your own survival rather than press blue and gamble on the stupidity of others. Hell, even my friend Rags made this argument.

[00:04:00]And of course, because it's Twitter, there were a lot of red pressers memeing on the stupidity and the self-destructiveness of the blue pressers, depicting blues as idiots, putting themselves in harm's way, and then begging the reds to save them. All the usual funny stuff. In fact, it got to the point that somebody just straight up asked, "Why would anyone ever press blue?" Which is a good question. Why would anyone press blue? Like I said, there are the idiots out there who didn't read it or didn't understand it.

[00:04:24]They might press blue. If everyone else pressed red out of a sense of self-preservation, then these idiots would die. At least in part because you chose red. And maybe you're okay with a few idiots dying due to their own stupidity. That is the Darwin Awards after all. But it's not just the idiots if you think about it. Remember the prompt said every person. Tim confirmed that every human on the planet is teleported into a room alone and must pick one of two buttons. even babies who just randomly mash whatever buttons in front of them or young children who can't understand the question or old people who are confused. The level two argument might say there's no rational reason to pick blue, which is true, but there will be people making irrational choices in this situation and sometimes that's just not their fault. If you're a rational person who is inclined to personally push the red button, but at the same time you're also a parent of a newborn child who randomly hit the blue button with their arm, what are you going to pick now? Will you press blue, add your life to the pile, and hope enough other people do the same to save your kid? Are you just going to say, "Well, [ __ ] my child, dude. I'm choosing red." There will never actually be a world where all humans choose red or blue. There will always be at least a few on either side. So, when you're choosing red, what you're actually saying is, "I'm willing to ensure my own survival at the expense of everyone who chooses blue because I could have also chosen blue, but I didn't." And maybe you're willing to just make that trade.

[00:05:43]But would you be willing to if included in the blue group is your friends or your partner or your parents or your children? Will you sacrifice all of them for your own survival too? Personally, I believe that a lot of people would suddenly be rethinking that blue option if they knew who was going to die if they didn't choose it. Once you understand this aspect of it, the choice does become harder. Which is why the level three argument is press blue.

[00:06:06]because you will never actually get a world where everyone chooses red and you want to save as many lives as possible, especially if those close to you also picked blue. And you know what? Maybe those level two guys didn't think this far ahead, which is fair. However, that's also the same criticism they had for the level one guys who they mocked mercilessly for. So, in my opinion, they don't get that much slack. And of course, there were the memes from the blue crowd as well, making fun of the red pushers for willing to sacrifice people they apparently care about to ensure their own safety. The red response to this was once again suicidal empathy. This is why people were comparing this to the moral heat maps thing from a year ago. The red button pushers as a group ended up broadly consisting of these rationally self-interested individual freedom broadly right-wing quasi libertarian types who viewed blue button pushers as naive, stupid, suicidally empathetic towards people they don't even know.

[00:06:56]Progressive leftist types who didn't live in reality. Even to the point that the Reds mocked the Blues every time the Blues won a poll, which was almost every time, even though that's still a good outcome, which shows that at least some of them are motivated by spite.

[00:07:08]Meanwhile, the Blues ended up consisting of these progressive got to save everyone no matter what types willing to put their own lives up for gamble on the chance that they help the naive or the stupid or the 5-year-old innocent kid who pushes blue and doesn't know why, which is on some level, you know, kind of heroic. But then I got to thinking, suicidal empathy, right? Right-wingers use that term to describe how left-wingers have an undue amount of empathy towards the out group, like for example, the immigrant who comes to the west and hates his new home and is violent and all this sort of stuff, and how some leftists will excuse the crimes of that immigrant by saying it was institutional racism or whatever.

[00:07:42]There's problems with this view, but it is absolutely a thing that happens at least sometimes. When a right-winger says suicidal empathy, they're saying the leftist who takes the side of the criminal migrant over his own countrymen is so empathetic with the other that they're willing to destroy their own society to appease him. Now, some leftists cry racist at this, and some rightists are just being racist, sure, but there is more to it than that. A lot of third world countries are frankly dysfunctional [ __ ] holes with crumbling institutions, stagnant economies, religious or political extremism, and extreme lack of human rights. These are what people call lowrust societies. You know what I mean? Places where you can't actually trust your neighbor to not break into your house when you leave.

[00:08:20]The guy walking down the street might just [ __ ] mug you for no reason.

[00:08:24]There's no guarantee any laws will be upheld or warranties honored. Nobody's word is actually any good. Right-wingers talk a lot about how immigration from lowrust societies is helping to transform the West from a high trust society into a low trust one. And there is some evidence of this. So when Tim said that every human is transported into a room and must choose between the two buttons, that means all 8 billion of them, including every Nigerian scam emailer, every Indian scam caller, every Somali fraudster or pirate, every Chinese data thief, every gypsy or Slav or Amish person, or anyone with an extreme enough inroup preference to say, "Fuck outsiders." There's a decent chance those people are pressing red.

[00:09:04]Every time this thought experiment was run, it was only in English-speaking parts of the internet. Do I trust 4 billion other people to press blue, given that a lot of them, frankly, have low IQ and the majority of them are coming from low trust societies? I'm uh I'm not sure I do, dude. The level four argument is press red because Western liberal capitalist democracies are walled gardens of advanced civilization and the rest of the world is full of people who would throw you under the [ __ ] bus to get ahead. And there is at least some truth to that. But then there's the final argument, level five.

[00:09:37]What would it be like to live in that world where only a bunch of low trust, self-interested [ __ ] survive the button apocalypse because all the blues have died off? Yeah, a lot of idiots would be gone as well as a lot of people you probably care about, but also so would anyone with any sense of responsibility towards others, any sense of community, any sense of honor towards public service, anyone with any heroism.

[00:09:57]Frankly, the only people left would be lowrust thirdworld trogs and hyperindividualistic libertarian [ __ ] who only care about themselves.

[00:10:07]And that would frankly be a hellish world to live in. The level five argument is you press blue because most of the people who actually make society tolerable are also pressing blue. And without them, the world would be a dystopia. And of course, the ultimate irony is the right-wing red pushers who spend their days crying about suicidal empathy also cry about immigrants turning the West into a low trust society. While at least some of them have revealed themselves to have the exact same toxic mindset as those same third worlders coming in. The low trust [ __ ] society mindset, which to me is pretty funny. And speaking of me, what would I push? Frankly, probably red. And I'm not going to sit here and call the blue pushers stupid or anything like that. I obviously understand why people want to push blue. I think I'm just not as good of a person as they are. And I'm happy to admit that. It sounds harsh, but I really, really don't want to die to the point that I might actually be able to live with myself pushing red, even if it was a disaster. Maybe, maybe not. But part of my brain is saying right now, it's better to live the rest of your life guiltridden in ancap hellhole than it is to be dead. However, this is why I think the thought experiment is actually a measurement of how much you care about negative externalities. Just so we're on the same page, a negative externality is an economics term. It's the cost imposed on a third party who is not involved with the production or consumption of a commodity. For example, let's say there's a factory producing widgets. I buy widgets from the factory. They produce. I consume. The factory and I are the two parties in the exchange. But the factory has to pollute the river to make the widgets. Now, I don't care about this because I don't live downstream. Same with the factory workers and owners. But there are people downstream who are a third party to the exchange and they have to live with the negative effects. When economic activity has a negative externality such that the rational self-interest of all involved parties is not enough to motivate any change in behavior. This is actually a good place for government regulation. In this case, the state forces the factory to clean itself up. The facto's choice to produce the widget cheaply at the expense of the environment is the correct choice for the factory in the short term as well as for me the buyer in the short term on an individual level. But it's the wrong choice for everyone else on a social level. That is what the red and blue button actually is. What's good for you might be bad for others, depending on what everyone else is doing. The people who push the red button are essentially free riders.

[00:12:15]They're gaining the advantages of a system without actually doing anything to contribute to it. They're buying the widget and not caring about the pollution. It's good for you to do, but it's not good for society that you do it. And these are two interests that have to be balanced, even if libertarians don't like hearing that.

[00:12:29]Another aspect of this is just how much the wording of the problem matters. The previous example of rewarding it with only one button is a good way to show just how much this is a framing thing.

[00:12:38]But there were others. For example, one guy said it like this. Every human stands in front of a massive wood chipper. You have the option to jump in or not. However, the wood chipper has a design flaw such that people only die if less than half of humanity jumps into it. Wording it in this way, he got way more red button pushers than blue. 86% to 14. Tim himself offered two rewardings. The first, there is only a blue button. If you push it, you die.

[00:13:04]Unless more than 50% also pushes it. The second, there's only the red button. If more than 50% of people push it, those who didn't push it die. In both cases, people chose to do nothing. Even though these are actually opposite answers. Fun fact, he also said the best way to piss off both the blue because I'm moral and red because I'm smart crowds is to admit you pushed red because you're a coward, which is literally what I did in this video. So, enlightened centism pissing everyone off once again. Also, some pollsters ran this question, like the professional polling guys who collect data for American elections. Yeah, they decided to ask this question instead of something more important like who you'd vote for. And it turned out that blue won by an even more overwhelming margin, even among right-wingers. However, why the [ __ ] did you color code the red button guys' blue in your graph? What kind of graphic design is this? Anyway, while this has all been good fun, I did notice one strange phenomenon. The red button pushers were in fact much more likely to rub their supposed smarts in the faces of the Blues than the Blues acted morally superior to the reds.

[00:14:05]Though there were definitely at least a few moral grand sinners among the Blues.

[00:14:08]Even when the Reds lost the polls, which they did overwhelmingly, they still threw these tantrums about how superior they actually are and how the plebs just don't get it. They constantly said [ __ ] like, "If everyone just voted red, then no one would have to die." And that immediately triggered a core memory for me. There was this old Tumblr account from a decade ago that fought with communists. Their name has long since been lost to time. But they made one post that has been reposted over and over for years. Everyone will not just.

[00:14:36]If your solution to a problem relies on if everyone would just, then you don't have a solution because everyone is not going to do what you want. This was in the context of debates versus communists which ultimately boiled down to the individual's desire to own their own stuff in an exclusive non-collective manner to run their own businesses and engage with or disconnect from society as they see fit. The collectivization of communism requires that everyone buys into it for it to even have a shot at working and there will always be people who don't want to do that. Therefore, any intellectually honest communist eventually reaches the point where they have to say, "If everyone would just do it, then communism wouldn't fail." And of course, everyone is not just going to do it. And you know what? It struck me that the red button pushers, again, despite being broadly right-leaning, are using the same sort of communist utopian logic. If everyone would just push red, it would work. It's kind of fitting it's a red button now, actually. But you know what? Everyone is not just going to push red. The people who were screaming that red is the right choice and you're just too dumb to see it do not have an answer to the question of what if large crowds of people that you like also push blue anyway. If the answer is they'd sacrifice them, that is a catastrophic loss to civilization. But if the answer is they'd go blue, well then they're not red button pushers. I'm sure there's something in here about the right-wing morphing into a crazy revolutionary authoritarian unrealistic political faction over the past few years, much the same way the communists are. But you know what? This isn't that kind of video. And we're all out of time, so oh