You Should Press The Blue Button

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:01]Let me ask you a simple question. You're given a choice, a red button and a blue button. Press red and you're guaranteed to live. Press blue and everyone lives, but only if more than half the world chooses blue. If blue fails, everyone who picked blue dies. So, what do you choose? Now, if your instinct was red, I don't think you're evil. But I do think that answer says something about you and not in the way you think. This very thought experiment was posted on Twitter and blew up over the weekend and of course I had my take. This hypothetical caused me to get in some very heated debates with those that chose red, mainly because I characterized the reds as selfish and the reds were incapable of understanding why anyone would choose blue given the rules. My main argument was that the Reds aren't reading the prompt carefully and are failing to grasp that this question isn't asking you to survive, but is asking what kind of person are you when survival is uncertain. In other words, it's a morality test, one the reds are failing miserably. Let's define something real quick. According to the DSM5, the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals published by the American Psychiatric Association, traits associated with antisocial personality disorder include lack of empathy, disregard for the rights and safety of others, and willingness to harm others for personal gain. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying everyone who picks red is clinically diagnosible, but the behavior aligns. Psychologists like Robert D.

[00:01:44]hair who developed the psychopathy checklist identify callousness and lack of empathy as core markers of psychopathy. So when someone says I'm picking red, I'm not risking my life for strangers, what they're really saying is, I am willing to accept the deaths of billions for my own certainty. That's a calculated disregard for others. And let's say the red crowd wins. Let's say blue doesn't hit the requisite 51% and falls somewhere in the 49% range. That means at minimum billions of people die.

[00:02:18]Yeah, that's civilizational collapse.

[00:02:21]We're talking about food supply chains gone, power grids failing, medical systems collapsing, and entire industries wiped out overnight. You don't get to just live after that. You inherit a broken world. And here's the twist nobody was talking about. The only people left are other red voters. People who also chose themselves over everyone else. So now you're not just living in a decimated world with basically zero functioning infrastructure. You're living in a world populated exclusively by people who have already demonstrated if it's me or you, I choose me. Good luck building trust in that kind of society. Good luck rebuilding anything.

[00:03:01]Here's the part that in my opinion completely destroys the red is logical argument. The premise says everyone on Earth must vote.

[00:03:11]everyone. That includes children, babies, the elderly with cognitive decline, people with disabilities, people who don't understand the scenario, people who panic, people who misclick because they're colorblind. The world isn't a population of perfectly rational actors. This isn't a clean game theory model. It's reality. And reality is messy. So when you choose red, you are knowingly saying if those people don't vote my way, they die. And I'm okay with that. And not because they made a calculated decision, but because they couldn't. A baby can't rationally decide here. A person with the chromatopsia sees no color at all. So [ __ ] them. Am I right? A person who didn't understand the question or couldn't even discern the colors deserves to die. A lot of people try to frame this as game theory, but they're applying idealized models to a non idealized world. Classic game theory assumes rational actors, perfect understanding, and predictable incentives. But behavioral economics pioneered by people like Daniel Conorman has shown repeatedly that humans are irrational, biased, and inconsistent.

[00:04:22]Which means the everyone should just pick red argument collapses instantly because everyone doesn't behave like that. So the moment you accept this reality, blue becomes the only defensible choice. Let's strip all the math away. Let's remove the strategy.

[00:04:39]What this really comes down to is one question. Are you willing to risk yourself so that others don't die?

[00:04:46]Because it's almost a statistical certainty that someone in your family will choose the blue button because they answer the question that I just asked with a yes because they care about you.

[00:04:58]A mother of a one-year-old child is going to press the blue button for her child. Not only because she would definitely sacrifice herself for her baby, but because the baby has to choose two and they have a 50% chance of choosing blue. If only one person chooses blue, it is the morally correct position to choose blue to try to save that person. Because choosing blue says, "I believe enough people care about each other to make this work." Choosing red says, "I don't trust anyone and I'm not willing to try." One is rooted in collective survival. The other is rooted in fear. And here's the irony. If enough people think like the red voters, they create the very outcome they were afraid of. People frame red as the safe option, but it's not safe. It's just selfserving. And that's why I call the red selfish on Twitter because the safety inherent in choosing red depends on ignoring the consequences for others and themselves. By definition, red is a short-sighted position. Philosophers have wrestled with this for centuries.

[00:06:03]Utilitarian thinkers like John Stewart Mill argued that moral actions are those that maximize overall well-being.

[00:06:10]Blue does that. Red explicitly does not.

[00:06:15]Red says my outcome matters more than everyone else's. And when billions of people adopt that mindset, you get societal collapse. So let's come back to the question. Red or blue? Because this isn't just a hypothetical. It's a mirror. It shows how you think about risk, responsibility, and other people, and whether when it really counts, you see humanity as something worth betting on or something to protect yourself from. So, yeah, you can choose red. No one's stopping you, man. But just understand what that choice represents.

[00:06:49]Because in a scenario where billions of lives are on the line, choosing blue isn't naive or low IQ. It's human. And risking death to protect other humans is the most human thing you can do. This has been your friendly neighborhood birdman, and I just gave you something to talk about.

[00:07:18]Yeah, hey, hey, hey.

[00:07:45]Hey hey hey