In what way does the analogy not fit? You either choose blue to try to protect everyone else choosing blue, or you choose red to not be in danger in the first place.
Imagine you’re with 2 other people. You don’t get to discuss or know the choices of the other 2. Do you stand on the tracks and hope one of them is with you, or do you hope they’re all smart enough to not needlessly put themselves in danger.
The other people only need to stand on the tracks if you’re foolishly standing on the tracks in the first place! And if they chose train, you’re the one putting blood on their hands, so to speak.
The philosophical question is “are you morally responsible for someone else’s bad decision?”
In your analogy, there is no options for saving the people on tracks. They are simply deciding to die, and your decisions to be on the train has no impact on their survival.
That’s not how the button problem works. You either press blue and save everyone…or you press red and only save yourself. And your decision to press red, is what kills actually everyone else.
The moral dilemma in the button problem is, “are you willing to risk your own safety so that everyone survives…or are you going to choose your own survival at the expense of other people’s lives?”
To reiterate and clarify my train analogy, the train stops if there aren’t too many people on it (as in, less than 50% picking “red”), so no one dies.
No one dies if everyone picks red. Only blue choosers die unless enough of them are willing to die to change the state of every blue choice to be as if they picked red in the first place. It’s literally choosing red for everyone but with a substantial risk of failure.
But after rereading the original post, I can see that I am bringing my own assumption to the table: that everyone understands the question and is making a willful choice. Are babies choosing at random? That hardly seems like a choice, so it really puts half of all babies randomly assigned to blue and not willfully choosing blue, but then yes, you really should be on team save half of all babies, even if it means risking your life.
In what way does the analogy not fit? You either choose blue to try to protect everyone else choosing blue, or you choose red to not be in danger in the first place.
Imagine you’re with 2 other people. You don’t get to discuss or know the choices of the other 2. Do you stand on the tracks and hope one of them is with you, or do you hope they’re all smart enough to not needlessly put themselves in danger.
The other people only need to stand on the tracks if you’re foolishly standing on the tracks in the first place! And if they chose train, you’re the one putting blood on their hands, so to speak.
The philosophical question is “are you morally responsible for someone else’s bad decision?”
In your analogy, there is no options for saving the people on tracks. They are simply deciding to die, and your decisions to be on the train has no impact on their survival.
That’s not how the button problem works. You either press blue and save everyone…or you press red and only save yourself. And your decision to press red, is what kills actually everyone else.
The moral dilemma in the button problem is, “are you willing to risk your own safety so that everyone survives…or are you going to choose your own survival at the expense of other people’s lives?”
To reiterate and clarify my train analogy, the train stops if there aren’t too many people on it (as in, less than 50% picking “red”), so no one dies.
No one dies if everyone picks red. Only blue choosers die unless enough of them are willing to die to change the state of every blue choice to be as if they picked red in the first place. It’s literally choosing red for everyone but with a substantial risk of failure.
But after rereading the original post, I can see that I am bringing my own assumption to the table: that everyone understands the question and is making a willful choice. Are babies choosing at random? That hardly seems like a choice, so it really puts half of all babies randomly assigned to blue and not willfully choosing blue, but then yes, you really should be on team save half of all babies, even if it means risking your life.