We Carried Out the Red/Blue Button Experiment with Life or Death Stakes

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We Carried Out the Red/Blue Button Experiment with Life or Death Stakes<br>Results from an n=1000 study<br>May 05, 2026

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All that anyone wants to talk about these days is the red/blue button thought experiment. Unfortunately, a twitter poll isn’t a great proxy for life or death stakes. As many observers have noted, it’s easy enough to press the blue button when there’s nothing on the line, but we don’t know what would happen if this were actually performed, in real life, with terrifying outcomes.

It’s easy to dismiss this thought experiment as irrelevant to the largest challenges facing humanity, but with the rise of powerful AI systems1 and drone warfare,2 this scenario could be implemented by a totalitarian government or a rogue actor with devastating consequences. Thus, we received a lightning grant from a private funding agency to quickly carry out this experiment. A peer-reviewed publication is forthcoming, but we received permission to disseminate our findings on preprint servers and here on Substack.<br>Working with researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the National Institutes of Health, we were able to rapidly conduct the Red/Blue Button Experiment (RBBE) under real world conditions.<br>In mice of course.<br>This presented several challenges. First, mice exhibit strong preferences for blue over red, since they lack red-sensitive cones.3 As mice are functionally red-green colorblind, we simply substituted red for green. Henceforth, when “red” is used in this report, you can be sure we are referring to “green” operationally.<br>Second, there’s evidence that mice are unable to comprehend concepts such as fractions or irreversible decisions.4 Our experimental design, which will be explained in greater detail later in this report, attempts to overcome this, utilizing best practices suggested by leading animal testing researchers from domestic and foreign institutions.5<br>Third, there are ethical concerns6 with the euthanasia of high volumes of mice; our experimental design utilized a sample size of n=1000, meaning that up to 499 mice could potentially require culling. To alleviate these concerns, we worked with mice taken from recently-concluded experiments.<br>Fourth, there are conspiracy theorists that claim that results in mice don’t always carry over for humans, particularly in the social sciences. We think this is misguided; mice are great proxies for humans and the consensus of the scientific community is strong in this regard.7 Mouse models are essential tools for the modern researcher.<br>Methods

Animals: Adult C57BL/6J mice (Jackson Laboratory, n = 1000, 500 male / 500 female, ages 2–22 months) were obtained from the surplus animal pool of recently-concluded protocols at the participating institutions and were due for euthanasia within 48 hours. Mice were group-housed (4 per cage) under a 12:12 light:dark cycle at 22 ± 1°C and 40–60% relative humidity, with ad libitum access to standard chow and water until 6 hours prior to testing.<br>Apparatus: An eight foot tall, ten-layered plexiglass enclosure, with space for 100 mice in each stratum, was constructed within a temperature and humidity-controlled warehouse. The mice were arranged in individual, 10” wide chambers, laid out on each layer in a hollow cylinder. The floors and ceiling of each layer were opaque, as were the walls between chambers and the outer walls. The inner walls were transparent and overlooked a large central chamber, visible to all the mice.<br>Demonstration Phase: Within this central chamber, for six hours, repeated demonstrations were held using a set of twelve mice. These mice were each provided with the option to proceed through a blue or red tunnel by depressing one of two colored levers and remaining in place for several seconds. This would trigger the opening of a small door. Each of the mice would proceed down the tunnel, where they would be separated into the group selecting blue and the group selecting red.<br>In situations where a majority of the mice selected blue, all the mice would be released into a tertiary enclosure with water and food. In situations where a minority of the mice selected blue, the mice that went through the red tunnel would be released into the tertiary enclosure and the mice that selected the blue tunnel would undergo a simulated euthanasia by guillotine, where researchers would, in full view of the other mice, inject the mice with a paralyzing anesthetic and use a rodent guillotine contrived to contain fake blood and plastic mouse-heads.8<br>This simulated experiment was repeated, using fresh sets of dozen mice, for six hours, for a total of eight completed runs. In three of these runs, the blue-selecting mice constituted a minority and underwent a simulated execution, and in the other five runs (including one 6-6 tie), all the mice survived. Researchers...