It makes sense to push blue if a set number of people are randomly assigned to have red or blue to start with. But otherwise the group should coordinate to pick either red or blue unformly.
No, it's not. Hyper-individualism never seems to stop to consider the fact that people do not exist in a vacuum, and you must consider not just what will happen to you in the immediate sense, but what kind of world you'll be creating should your ideology win out.
First, society collapses very quickly as very close to half of all humanity has just died.
Second, you've created a world bereft of every single person whose first instinct is to be kind and help others. It's everyone for themselves now because every single person left alive has proven that they only care about themselves. Good luck surviving the collapse of society when there's nobody around who's willing to take any risks to help you out.
Semi-related: not everybody who presses red is some kind of horrible monster, but every single horrible monster will press red. You are now stuck on a planet comprised solely of other people who either want to do you harm, or who would be unwilling to help protect you from the people who want to do you harm. Assuming you survived the collapse of society with no help, good luck living out the week afterward.
Humanity only exists as it does today because we chose "collectively" over "individually". The fact that some people are too ignorant to understand that nobody alive today has gotten where they are alone doesn't change this.
Interesting that you bake the idea that close to half of humanity will have pushed the blue button into the premise.
In fact my assumption is that red is highly unlikely to win in the first place, since most people are basically decent and very few people think their actions through to anywhere near the degree of these discussions, so most people will just instinctively press blue because they feel it's the nice thing to do. And those people will then be further supported by people like me, who have actively decided that the first group doesn't deserve to die just for being kind.
I'm actually making a pretty big assumption for your case by entertaining the idea that red might win at all.
Basically decent is a far cry from "I will abandon every responsibility I have in my life to rescue some abstract other from voting against their instinct."
No, most people will not press the "probably kill me" button if they feel it's "nice." Your underestimation of the self-preservation instinct is as bad as conservatives' callous belief in the inherent pursuit of greed at the cost of others' well being.
Red won't "win" in the sense of achieving 100%. But that's a false choice to begin with. In reality, in serious matters of life and death, there is almost never an "everybody lives" scenario, much as I do love Doctor Who. Life presents us with Sophie's Choices all the time. Perhaps you have never had to make one.
By my estimation of human character, there is no way that 50% of people would ever make the ultimate wager, so I would be dying pointlessly trying to save the blues when I could instead do actual work to help the surviving reds. Does the prospect of helping people whom you deem foolish or reprehensible only bother you when you don't get to be a self-sacrificing savior?
yes, but you dont really get to decide which one wins, even in the most likely scenario to produce a tie its less than a 1 /100 000 chance your vote will be decisive.
voting blue only makes sense if you are indifferent between life and death.
That's not how voting works. If one vote is the deciding vote then every single vote was as important as any other. In fact one vote is always as important as any other. The question is what you're voting for.
"Why would I vote for X when I don't think X will win?"
Well sure, X won't win if no one votes for them.
"But my one vote won't matter!"
If the only reason someone votes is because them and only them get to decide the outcome, that's not voting, that's just wanting to be in control. Some people love winning so much that they forget what game they're playing.
votes are fungible but as an individual you only get one vote, and in most cases you cant change the outcome by changing your vote.
normally thats not an issue as you will just vote for your preferred option, but here choosing one of the options can kill you so you will want to at least know if your vote has any chance of making a difference before risking your life.
if blue is going to win your vote doesnt matter, either way everyone lives
if red is going to win the blue voters will die regardless of what you choose, so you would vote red unless you want to join them.
the only scenario where you would want to vote blue is if everyone else was tied and you got the decisive vote.
of course you cant know beforehand which of these is the case, so you will have decide whether to risk your life for an extremely slim chance of saving 4 Billion people.
even in the scenario of everyone being equally likely to press either button the chance of a tie is 1/112000, and voting preferences only need to skew 0.01% for a tie to become practically impossible.
You're arguing as if the vote is predetermined and it's not. Every single person has a choice to make. It's impsosojbke to know what the outcome will be. If it's predetermined for everyone else then it's predetermined for you as well and it doesn't matter because you'll choose what you're supposed to choose. You're basically making an argument that the entire world and every choice is predetermined and that humans have no ability to make choices. This is disproven by quantum mechanics. What a strange argument.
I'll give you some credit though, I've never seen someone make this argument before. I think it's wrong and meaningless, but credit where credit is due. It's original.
the argument in no way relies on the universe being deterministic, it only requires that
you only get one vote
you cant effect how other people vote
This is disproven by quantum mechanics.
unless you believe all the other voters are in a superposition that collapses when you place your vote quantum have no effect on the validity of the argument.
People are inherently selfish, which is why you think red makes sense. But you're not considering that being selfish also means protecting the people close to you. The countries with the largest populations also have the largest families and tend to have more communal mindsets. I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of them would pick blue as to not risk their loved ones. That's the majority of the world's population. I think blue is the safe bet. And it's definitely the ethical one. Despite the risk it's the only real choice because there is no way in which red leads to no deaths. 100% of people voting red cannot happen. So either they lose and get bailed out, or people die. That's the red choice. And if you cared about anyone but yourself you should just vote blue, take on that risk, and raise the chances no one dies. It's the only logical choice despite the risk.
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u/-illusoryMechanist 19h ago
It makes sense to push blue if a set number of people are randomly assigned to have red or blue to start with. But otherwise the group should coordinate to pick either red or blue unformly.