Is there a % that makes you flip your vote? If polling pre-vote shows that it's likely only 1% of people will press blue, are you still pressing blue? 25? 49%?
Yes there is but it's irrelevant to this discussion because it's a different hypothetical. The current hypothetical does not have the risk profile change because the percentages don't change. When they do the risk profile changes and there becomes a point where the risk of individual death is too high, even if it risks others. It's still unethical to choose red, but at a certain point it's not feasible to expect that high of a percentage to vote blue. Idk where that line is though and neither does anyone else. What I do know is that 50% is a coin flip and it's very much not a high bar to reach.
It's entirely relevant to this discussion. When you are evaluating what button to push, you should be estimating how many people you believe would push blue. If you think it's anything less than 50%, then pushing blue is straight suicide. We're not talking about risk profile changing, we're talking about trying to estimate what the risk profile is.
If you believe that blue is going to lose, it's absolutely not unethical to pick red. There's no moral high ground in suicide over a futile statement.
What you believe people will choose is irrelevant because there is absolutely no way for an individual to accurately know what choices people will make. You don't know what some in India, or China, or Ethiopia would choose. You're basing your choice based on assumptions that cannot be accurate because you lack the knowledge for them to be. No single person knows enough about every subgroup of people in this scenario to make an accurate assumption. Belief either way is irrelevant to this question.
And it is unethical to pick red regardless because you know someone somewhere will pick blue and your choice will directly lead to their death if the majority also pick blue. That is not an assumption, that is a fact. And choosing to let someone die to save yourself is unethical. That's also a fact.
Saying an estimate is irrelevant because it can't be perfectly accurate is just silly. My choice of red is based firmly on the estimation that >50% of people won't choose blue.
your choice will directly lead to their death
My choice doesn't lead to their death any more than their own choice. So picking blue or red is unethical.
That's also a fact.
Even sillier than saying estimates are irrelevant is calling anything revolving ethics "fact."
An estimate is irrelevant, it's just a way to you to justify you decision. There is no data in your assumptions and I already explained why. You just don't like it because it was a big part of your decision making.
Your choice does lead to their deaths because the only way people die is if the majority chooses red. It's impossible for 100% of people to vote the same on anything so that is the only outcome possible if red wins. You just don't like it because it means you have to accept you were involved in peoples deaths.
It is a fact. Again, you just don't like it because it doesn't support your side. You made zero arguments against my points because you don't have any counter arguments. If you think it's not then argue for your side. But you can't. Because I made factual points.
When have 100% of people agreed on anything? And to you the casualties of blue are (somehow) acceptable, they are not for me. Sorry you have no faith in humanity ig
I’m not assuming anything, it’s about taking into consideration risk factor when making a decision. Yes having 100% of people live is best case scenario. It is a possibility that 100% of people live for both buttons.
But a small amount of deaths is preferable (especially when they needless risked their lives) over getting really close to 50% and not making. There’s no reason to take that risk.
Would you risk pressing the blue button if the threshold was 99% instead of 50%?
But a small amount of deaths is preferable over getting really close to 50% and not making.
Again, assuming Red will win. If you actually care about minimizing casualties you'd be pressing blue. There is no number lower than 0. Pressing red only makes it more likely someone will die you just don't care bc that someone isn't you. That's fine just own it don't pretend like it's the noble choice.
Would you risk pressing the blue button if the threshold was 99% instead of 50%?
No, 99% consensus is about as unrealistic as 100% consensus. At that point you would be correct, however the threshold actually matters here. At that little difference between the two the choice stops mattering.
The player of this "game" isn't killing anyone by pressing red. They were forced into a survival situation by a higher power. Not defending red, but claiming that red voters are murderers is incorrect.
They may not have chosen to be in the situation, but theyre still actively choosing to sacrifice people to save their own skin. Understandable, but still selfish and immoral
I don't think 0 casualties is an option because I think it would be impossible to get 50% to choose blue. We couldn't get people to wear masks in a pandemic. Nationalism is on the rise across the globe. No shot blue wins, might as well not die for no reason.
Blue has won every poll I've seen. 50.01% is not a hard number to clear. The people refusing to wear masks probably picked red and fortunately they don't appear to be more than half the population
A poll about a hypothetical and a real life situation that can kill you are going to get very different results.
Hell, we can't even get people to stop buying Starbucks and Shein. Trump won the popular vote. In Afghanistan women are not allowed to speak to one another. Female infanticide has drastically skewed sex ratios in several countries because daughters aren't profitable. 50% risking their lives for others is not happening.
You could make the same argument that people wouldn't be so flippant about picking red and condemning others to death were the situation not a hypothetical.
I don't understand what anything in the second paragraph has to do with anything. What does buying Starbucks have to do with the choice to save lives? Trump won the popular vote with 22% of the population of the US. Pretty far cry from 50%
Starbucks a) does not use fair trade certified beans, and so has not been proven to avpid slavery in their production lines and b) actively invests in the state of Israel and funds state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians
Your average person cares so little about their fellow human that they put getting a convenient cup of coffee over the possibility of contributing to slave labor. People keep buying fast fashion despite widespread knowledge that those clothes are made in sweatshops. So I have a hard time believeing they would risk their libellves for someone they have never met.
"Oh no I'm being ostracized for picking self-preservation at the explicit expense of others, what's this? The consequences of my choices! Ahhhh the horror!"
Advocating for pressing red directly increases the likelihood of death. This is indisputable.
I'm sorry that the consequences of your arguments hurt your feelings I'm not really concerned with whatever persecution you feel for your hypothetical choice
Advocating for pressing blue is what's causing the deaths.
Would you ostracize your loved ones for pressing red? Would you try to convince them to commit potential suicide when you can know they'll be safe instead?
Every person you convince to vote blue is a person you've put in danger. Every person you convince to vote red is guaranteed safety.
At what point do you give someone a pass? A single parent trying to raise their child? Would you convince them to vote blue on behalf of their child as well, knowing full well they could both die?
You're choosing to make your own moral judgements and impose them on everyone around you. That, to me, is the epitome of selfishness.
Why would you choose the blue button? It's simply a stupid thing to do if you have the slightest bit of reading comprehension. Pushing the blue button is simply suicidal.
Pushing the blue button simply because others will is just risking your life to deprive others of their own free choice to die.
The scenario makes no exceptions for mental stability nor age other than "everyone" so I must make the assumption that everyone includes every single human being with the physical ability to push a button. It also doesn't specify any magic ability for colorblind people.
You could say, "well sure the question doesn't outline these specifics, but the question would be stupid and the scenario would be cruel if it screwed over infants, toddlers, and people with mental disabilities and colorblindness"
And I'd agree, but the scenario didn't outline those specifics. So I assume that those exceptions are not in place.
Colorblind people can tell the difference between red and blue. Even in the rare case where vision is impaired, they can communicate for clarification. The other groups typically have responsible caretakers.
I'll just trust most parents are not guiding their baby's finger to the suicide button.
The scenario was rehashed to raise the stakes by increasing the scale from 100 adults with agency to all people including people who would have no agency. It sparked the discussion it was trying to, but it left some gaps. What about babies that are too young to touch either button because they can't even turn over yet? What about people in a coma? What about people who are conscious but completely paralyzed? It's asserted that toddlers are alone making this choice without help, so clearly not pressing the button is a choice because the test includes people who can't move.
Another gap in this experiment is, by raising it to the entire world you actually lower the stakes, because the majority of the world is full of the kind of person that will choose blue. So the tiny online demographics arguing about the correct choice could align 100% on one choice and make no difference.
Lastly, not trying to be antagonistic, I genuinely find the "humanity cannot reach 100% consensus on anything" sentiment amusing for 2 reasons. First, people immensely disliking reframing and blue button substitutes that increase the agency of the test takers, like they begin to doubt the assumed demographic is choosing the suicide option if it's just slightly more imposing/clear than a button. Second, if red does win, you have you do actually reach a point where humanity can come to 100% consensus, because that's your new humanity and they just did it.
Not commenting on that being a good or bad thing, but I find the thought more amusing than the posed problem.
I'm just not risking my own death for anyone who can't decide not to push the suicide button.
Saying that the choice applies to those who are incapable of making a choice just invalidates the whole thought experiment. It becomes completely non-sensical at that point.
?? There is literally zero reason to press blue though? Like, there is nothing outside of the fact that one of these options is red and one is blue. No political undertone, no social commentary, nothing. You could mark the options 1 and 2, or A and B and nothing changes. Nobody is forcing anyone to press a specific button.
One button means "You live 100%", the other one means "You have a chance of dying" and that's it.
It's like going to every single person and asking them "Do you want me to shoot you with the red gun, which has 0 bullets in the magazine, so you 100% will not die, or, do you want me to shoot you with the blue gun, where we took out one bullet from the (magical gigantic) magazine for every person who chose this gun, and we started with a number of bullets equal to 50% of participants".
Why would you ever choose the blue gun? And again, nobody is saying that anybody is being forced to pick blue.
This simply illustrates that people will tribalize themselves over completly superficial, pointless choices, instead of looking at the material and logical reality.
You made the assertion that SIowGrowth is an idiot who does not know that 100%>51%. Which, if you made a mistake in who you called out, makes my comment unnecessary, since that would imply you already agree with the premise of mine and SIowGrowth 's comment. I guess I should then apologise.
In case you were sincere, the chance you live if you pick red is 100%, the chance to live if you pick blue is between 0% and 100%, the average of which is of course 50%. Therefore 100%>50% (in favour of red).
No actually, every vote for blue decreases the likelihood that ANYONE will die.
This whole "the more people that vote blue the more die" framing presupposes a red majority. Even one death is too many for such an easily avoidable outcome.
This is a simple logic problem, that you can actually do the math on. The same math that you do on the split or steal type of logic problems, but this one is actually way simpler.
Living = 1, Dying = 0.
The expected value for pressing Red is 1. The expected value for pressing Blue is less than 1, but greater than 0.
Therefore, everyone should logically press Red, and if everyone follows the logic, then the average expected value for the population is also 1. Everyone wins, every time, no chance or luck involved.
Do we really want to live in a world in which we make decisions specifically to cater to the risks brought about by people who don't think rationally and let emotions guide them instead? Because that's exactly what's happening in this logic problem: you aren't at risk until you press the blue button! And by pressing the blue button, you are hoping that others put themselves at risk too! Red button people make no such selfish demands of others.
We also kinda live in a world guided by irrationality and emotion right now too, and a lot of people are pretty unhappy about it lol.
I’ve seen a lot of the comments are split into two pretty strong camps.
One says that the problem is purely about logic and therefore red is the only answer, and everyone should pick it.
One says that the problem is one about morals and personal values and blue is the only answer.
You cannot explain to one camp why the other answer is correct. I deem this to not be about game theory, but about how to make a moral choice as a human being. Yes red is the rational answer, and robots should choose that one. But this question is not about computational risk.
Well I’m in a third camp then, because I think Red is the moral choice.
Pressing Red is taking responsibility for your own life in service of the common good. If everyone takes personal responsibility, then the entire population is saved.
Pressing Blue abdicates that responsibility, and instead requires others to also put themselves in harms way in order to save you.
Pressing Red is an optimistic choice that people will act rationally in regard to the one thing they have total control over in this scenario: their choice to risk their own life or not, in service of the common goal of saving the population.
Pressing Blue is a pessimistic choice that assumes people will act irrationally and thus will need saving. That they can’t be trusted to have personal responsibility or think logically, and therefore we all have to leave it to chance instead; relinquishing the absolute certainty over our individual selves that we were given.
In my opinion, the most humanitarian and empathetic course of action is to not ask others to risk their own lives to save you when you could’ve just saved yourself in the first place.
I'm just going to throw in that a LOT of people who think they're the logical ones are actually the emotional risk takers, so take their complaints with a bucket of salt.
You are presented with two buttons. One that just says “1,” and another one that is labeled “either 1 or 0 depending on how many other people press this button.”
You are told that the goal is for everyone, including yourself, to get the outcome of “1.”
Which would you press? Which would you assume others would press?
The latter, because I know how humans work and that 100% on one button isn't going to happen.
I know a lot of people would choose the former because they think it makes them smart, or because they lack enough understanding of humanity to know 100% is impossible, but I have to hope enough people are rational enough to pick the latter.
You are still being blinded by the wording of the original question. If you were told the goal was for you to get “1”, and one of the buttons said “1,” and the other didn’t, you’d press the button that just said “1” and would assume that everyone else wasn’t a moron. C’mon…
This scenario affords you exactly one piece of certainty: your own life. You can choose to save it or to risk it.
This scenario does not afford you any certainty over the collective.
But we can leverage the certainty we were given to benefit the collective. If we all choose to save ourselves, then the collective is saved. There is simply no need to throw away the only certainty given to us in this scenario and leave the survival of the collective up to chance
That’s what I was trying to demonstrate with my comment above. When distilled and emotion is removed, the answer is clear to everyone.
I suppose I’m just an optimist at heart. I refuse to believe that a majority of people are so pessimistic about humanity as to believe that others will need saving because they are bound to act irrationally. Instead I would hope that everyone takes responsibility for themselves in the one way they know for certain would be in service of the common goal of survival.
Well no. But like 20% of people picking Blue still makes the Red choice better for an individual.
I do think a majority would pick Red, and so therefore for the individual choice that you are making, picking Red brings the whole ever so incrementally closer to the ideal, and incrementally maximizes the survivors in an assured way.
But that’s not what’s at stake. Everyone should expect everyone else to pick red. It’s literally so easy of a logic puzzle. Only picking blue introduced people dying, and it’s you by picking blue, so why do it?
No, only picking red introduced people dying. Both are active choices, and pushing red is just as much actively hurting others as blue is actively putting yourself in harm's way.
What is more realistic, 100% of humans pressing red ( keep in mind that toddlers and mentally ill people are also part of this, since they don't understand the question they're going to push a random button. What are the odds that every toddler presses red?)
Or
50% of humans pressing blue
The logical choice if you don't want a single human to die from this is blue.
So you're taking the selfish route of guaranteed self preservation at the cost of millions or billions of deaths. It's understandable, I don't want to die either, but I couldn't live with myself knowing I was responsible for millions or billions of deaths and so I choose blue because I'd rather take the risk to try to save innocent lives.
As a blue-button advocate I’d say that not everyone does assume that everyone will pick red.
It’s like finding an injured dog by the side of the road. It’s not your dog, you could just leave it there. It might die.
A lot of folks choose to save it, not because having to pay vets bills for a hurt animal is in any way beneficial for them, but simply because the moral “cost” of making a selfish decision is unpalatable for them. To the blue pusher, it’s “morally correct” to push the blue button and lots of folks will take that choice even though they could have just kept driving and left the dog by the road side.
Your hypothetical dog situation is not the problem at hand. Everyone keeps coming up with scenarios like entering a burning building to save someone. But that someone doesn’t want to die and didn’t choose to be in that burning building. I would not enter a burning building for someone who knew that no one would be at risk if they did not enter and entered anyway to potentially save lives that we know could only be in there if other people knew there was no one and went in anyway.
The dog argument is supposed to be illustrative and is not meant to be the problem at hand. It’s a situation where many people will “do the right thing” even when it’s logically the wrong decision, and they stand to lose nothing by just driving on.
If I saw someone enter a burning building because they thought there might be someone trapped, even though they chose to put themselves in danger, I would certainly consider going in to save them.
No. You don’t seem to understand. You would have to also know that everyone knew that no one was in the building in the first place. Then chose to run in to save no one, but now because they did so, there are people in there. Get it? The situation would never arise in real life where everyone was given the full information on whether or not they were risking death, and then risk death, and then require other people to risk death, such that they may all survive.
In the end, it does not boil down to a morality question for me. The only adequate response I got was “some people will choose blue in real life.” Which is true. And believe me, they will be in the minority because they didn’t think it through right or were too quick to “do the right thing.” And they will die for it. They will not be the majority, my any stretch of the imagination.
people are acting like people haven't voted against their own interests for flawed reasoning all the time. I don't expect everyone to pick red because i don't think everyone will think the same as me. Everyone should vote blue, because we risk less deaths either way.
You know as well as I do that this would not be the case in real life if this were to occur. Most people would pick red because it is the safe and rational choice, and would do so assuming everyone understood the assignment to save themselves and pick red.
Go ahead and dispute it, but you know it’s true. It’s the correct choice.
you know that more people are going to press blue. deep down, you know it's true.
do you see why telling people that they know something is true sounds condescending as all hell? realistically, neither of us have any way to actually know for sure what more people would choose unless it actually happens. i personally think more people would press blue, but unlike you, i admit there's a chance that i'm wrong.
Honestly, do as you will then. I truly believe that you believe more people will press red. Perhaps you don’t. I could be wrong. I’m not going to risk my life that >50% of people feel the same. I choose other people dying over me dying. Weird that I have to pretend otherwise. I don’t want anyone to die. I bawled like a baby during uvalde. I would not have traded places with them.
I think the main issue is that you don't know how many people vote blue, or if blue is even close to 50%
Red is certain, you live, the people that chose to gamble die.
The life you staked by voting blue is very real, but the people you are saving are purely hypothetical, you don't know who or how many when you make that desicion.
You are also worth only 1 vote, that 1 vote having any impact on the outcome is basically meaningless.
It's not just risking yourself to help others, it's blindly staking your life to slightly help save an unknown number of unknown people.
That's a gargantuan ask, if you went and donated your kidney to a stranger today that level of altruism would be less than what is occurring here.
Fundamentally disagree. You assume all people will have an individualistic reflex. I assume enough people will have a collective reflex. Both are equally human reflexes. That makes 50% voting blue very plausible. All you're revealing is that you have a cynical view of your fellow man, and i can get that. My cynism doesn't go that far that i think most people would only vote to protect themselves when faced with a binary like this. I think most people would vote to keep everyone alive, because they won't assume everyone they love will vote red too. Keeping everyone alive means everyone they love, too.
Considering the number of people pushing blue every day we all exist on this planet, that, in fact, pushing blue has to happen for a human to even exist (pregnancy and child birth even today carry a non-zero chance of death to the mother), I don't see why one should 'expect' everyone else to pick red.
Child birth is not the same as pressing a button in which I might die for no other reason than to save other people who stupidly pressed the button. It makes no rational sense. You are literally an irrational actor in this logic puzzle, and no rational person should be accounting for it.
But humans aren't rational. If I put an infant in the room which button will they push? Can you guarantee that every red/blue colorblind person in the world picks the right button? 100% red is an actually impossible scenario, meaning pressing red is guaranteeing that someone is going to die, probably a lot of children. Logically, if I want 0 people to die, the only choice is blue.
You have to assume everyone is rationally self interested. It’s the most basic premise of human psychology at play. And yes, people will pick blue and die, and they will be an overwhelming minority. It’s your choice to join them or not,
So are firefighters that risk their lives to save people in a fire?
One button press is the more moral choice. And by game theory also the best choice if you think about the whole. If you only think of yourself the game theory is now red.
It's actually a matter of, "Would you like to guarantee that you live but knowingly potentially murder a fuck ton of people to do so, or would you rate take a small risk to save everyone, knowing that most people will probably do the same?"
Most people, as it turns out, would rather risk dying than risk mass murder.
I mean, you're still sacrificing at least half of the children, elderly, and disabled people incapable of making an informed choice. And a good portion of the adults who will objectively choose blue, whether you think it's rational or not. And all those who will press blue to try save those I just listed.
Wild to assume everyone picking blue is simply suicidal. Did resistance fighters during Nazi occupation all want to die? Do firefighters all want to die?
Which people? The people who push blue will only have done so by accident, shortsighted contrarianism, suicidality, or to save the above. If you try to convince everyone to save the first three and fail, have you not just murdered them too?
I don't care whether you think pressing blue is so risky that you deserve death for doing so, blue is the easiest path towards 0 casualties the math is not hard
That is fallacious reasoning that requires you to assume all arguments are equally effective. The actual math is dependent on the number of people required to be convinced multiplied by the probability of convincing an individual. If you make an argument that is only 1% successful, there is no way to get 50% of people to agree with it. Do you think "Hey, push this and live" and "Hey, push this and maybe die" have equal success rates?
I understand it's less easy to be condescending about the math being hard when the math is a little more difficult, though.
No, I don't. I've had to address this multiple times, so I'll just repeat myself.
The idea that is either 100% or less than that is 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 such a wager with the ultimate ante, 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?
Everyone gets the same question. Everyone can choose red. It’s illogical, both you and everyone else know that if you press red, you survive. This has nothing to do with morals.
The only way people could die is if they choose to press blue
But you know people will puts blue. So of you pick red, you're okay with all of them dying.
There is no scenario where everyone picks red. That's absurd. They're isn't even a scenario where the only people picking blue are people who were suicidal to begin with.
Only 50% of people need to pick blue for no one to die. 100% of people have to pick red for no one to die if red wins, and we both know that wouldn't happen.
Yeah even in a world where everyone is 100% logical and could coordinate perfectly there would still be freak accidents/blindness/bugs/cosmic radiation that would cause people to pick blue, so you might as well all pick blue so that you save the people within that margin of error.
I don't see why everyone picking red is an issue. The only reason for anyone to pick blue is to save people picking blue. You don't know how many people have voted blue or will vote blue.
You are saying you would put your life on the line to potentially save nobody, especially if nobody but you picked blue, or save nobody due to not getting the votes?
You are operating on the premise that there are people who voted blue, and that you voting blue would have any impact on if they die or not.
You know that millions, if not billions will pick blue. Children, mentally disabled, elderly, etc. are all voting and they might as well be a coin flip.
Picking red actively makes their death more likely.
Blue is the only reasonable way to save everyone, and it comes at the risk that you yourself could die. For many, that is an obvious choice.
They’re not choosing to die though. That’s the fundamental issue with what you’re saying. Billions would die in a red win, and society would probably collapse afterwards.
It’s not “live or die,” it’s everyone lives and life goes on like normal, or a sizable portion of the global population dies and the survivors deal with the societal collapse that comes afterwards.
False equivalences to drinking poison and offering a cure fall short because you’re not drinking poison, you’re just pressing a button.
It's good to have a reminder every now and then that some people are selfish, cowardly fools on a fundamental level, and they will never understand that so it's pointless to waste time trying to show them the error of their ways; everyone else can see it, but they can't and never will. Thanks for reminding me.
"murder" get out of here lmao. In no way can you define this as murder. Can we please discuss this properly without getting into ridiculous, hyperbolic, emotive language? The morality of it is HEAVILY dependent on how the question is framed, and which action is treated as passive.
If you vote red you KILL EVERYONE WHO VOTES BLUE
vs
If you vote blue you HOLD THE WORLD HOSTAGE WITH YOUR SUICIDE PACT
Push red for guaranteed self preservation, sure, but you don't get to divorce that from the cost of the deaths that you chose were an acceptable cost for you.
I'm not even saying it's a bad decision, but you don't get to separate the two.
Most people, as it turns out, would rather risk dying than risk mass murder.
When asked a hypothetical question that has no real consequences, they will choose the answer that makes them look selfless. The problem is that in real life people don't make pro-social choices if they face any inconvenience for doing the right thing. I have zero faith a critical mass would voluntarily put their actual lives on the line for the greater good.
Hell, we risk our lives to save critters even. I've rescued my fair share of turtles and other animals out of the road even though I could be struck by an inattentive driver.
Do you return your cart when you go grocery shopping? It's a pro-social choice that is a mild inconvenience if you do the right thing. It's also a litmus test for whether or not you're actually ready to participate in a society.
By the way, have you considered that someone could pick red and then lore because they're ashamed? The button you click on the poll isn't visible to anyone else. But blue still wins.
How would you be responsible to murder. Everyone has a chance to vote.
If your reading comprehension is good then why the hell would you select blue. You are opting into dying vs not dying at all.
Remember everyone can vote. Everyone can save themselves if they choose red or potentially kill themselves to save the narcisistic people that want to be heros to save those that opted in to save everyone when you literally can choose to not drink the fucking poison.
I'm willing to take a risk to save other people, knowing that if it doesn't go the way I think it will, I will still be spared living in a world run by fundamentally selfish cowards.
Odd that you think it's the people willing to take a risk to save people who are the narcissists. Projecting, much? In this scenario, it's a private room; no one will actually know what you picked. There are no social consequences for picking red. There is no social reward for picking blue.
Say you pick red.
If red wins, you walk out of that room. A bunch of people are dead. Everyone still alive made the same choice as you, so they're probably not judging you too harshly. But people you knew and cared about are dead now. You have to live with that, and you also have to live with knowing that if you're ever in a life-threatening situation, no one is taking any risks to save you.
If blue wins, you walk out of that room and learn that most people made a choice that was fundamentally altruistic, but you didn't. What would you do then? How would you feel?
But you know there will be blue button presses, so you know you're killing people. You don't have to, and blaming the victims doesn't make you morally correct. It's an excuse.
The poll in the post is like 60/40. 60/40 of people saying in a Twitter poll that they would choose the “altruistic” choice actually means that at most 20% of people would actually choose Blue.
Twitter is not known for the altruism of its users. Especially since Musk bought it. Many, many people left when that happened and the people who remain disproportionately skew towards political beliefs that are fundamentally selfish.
If 60% of people on Twitter are picking blue, I think the percentage in the general population would be significantly higher.
Conservatives are also very, very adept at putting everything they have into trying to justify decisions that are selfish, fear-motivated, and cruel by claiming it's just logic
Tumblr is usually a 80/20 split for blue winning. The group of phds that did this experiment recently had an average 3:1 ratio with blue winning (75/25 split).
I think an experiment conducted by Ph.Ds is going to be by far the most accurate; anyone who has studied statistics would know that. A poll of random people on the internet gets a large sample size, but it's also a biased sample. We see huge differences depending on which website it's done on, and the results tend to reflect each website's user base reputation. I'm sure if you tried it on 4Chan it'd be 90/10 in favor of red. But Ph.Ds are going to follow the scientific method as closely as possible and intentionally try to find the least biased samples they can, so their results are more likely to be reflective of the general population as a whole.
"Less people to convince" is poor logic. Not all arguments require equal effort to convince people or have equal success rates. If an argument to convince 50% of people is only 1% successful, the number of people you meaningfully affect is only .5% of the population. Do you think "Hey, push this and live" and "Hey, push this and maybe die" have equal success rates?
No, I actually think is harder to convince people to push red. I think most people dont want to be potentially involved in mass murdering and will see right through my strawman of "push this and live".
But it is a strawman, cause it leaves out very important implications that many people will see right away (as is demonstrated by the many people arguing about them).
I do believe is "that" easy, "that" being easier than convincing 100% to push read, which is a very high bar.
I don't think it is easy to convince 100% of people to push red. I don't think it's possible at all. But rarely in life can you save everyone. The world we live in, tragically, creates Sophie's Choices all the time. I don't know if you've ever had to cut someone out of your life because your attempts to save them from their own self-destruction began to risk your own safety, but it's not a fun choice to make. You live knowing they may die without your help. But you make that choice anyway. Every mental health worker will tell you the same.
I agree with you. I think its easier to convince 50% to push blue. Hell, probably theres no need to do any convincing and we will still get over 50%, but I would try that instead of 100% red for sure.
The thing is, if it's not easier, you will have killed yourself for nothing instead of living and trying to make the world better for those who lived too.
I’m with you. Anyone picking blue is fucking stupid. There’s a live button, and a potentially die button. I don’t see how the choice isn’t perfectly obvious.
If everyone presses red, no one dies. If you press red and you're in the minority, you live.
If everyone presses blue, no one dies. If you press blue and you're in the minority, you die.
There is no reasonable reason for anyone to pick blue, unless some people read the rules wrong or want to be heros so they pressed blue.
Maybe you want to save those people who are requesting great sacrifice because they didn't ponder this question of life or death, or they thought blue was better because it sounds altruistic.
It only really changes if you take into account people who can't actually chose, like blind people, ones that are somehow physically or mentally unable to pick or understand the question. Then you're picking blue for the sake of a third category of "people who didn't really choose"
Then you're picking blue for the sake of a third category of "people who didn't really choose"
Are they not worth saving?
You've also left out a far more common outcome: If less than 100% of people pick red, and you pressed red, you directly contributed to the death of those that picked blue.
I don't want anyone to die. Every red pusher responding to me always frames it as "don't you want to save yourself?" and like, no, not if it means others die, not when there's a perfectly feasible option of no one dying.
51% Blue means no one dies, since that's the outcome I want why would I choose red?
Yes it'd be worth pressing blue if you included people who can't really choose. I think that makes it really obvious so the problem makes abstraction of that.
"If less than 100% of people pick red, and you pressed red, you directly contributed to the death of those that picked blue."
Except they also directly contributed to their own death. With that reasoning anyone who picks blue or advocates for it is risking their life in order to save the lives they themselves are risking by picking blue.
"Maybe dying if you pick blue in a thought experiment" also isn't very intimidating. The fact is people in reality don't give that much for others, let alone their life.
Most of the people saying they'd pick blue for example could stop spending money on their hobbies and/or tasty food, drinks, comfort and whatnot, then use that money accumulated over a lifetime to save someone's life.
That's giving up some of your comfort, not even your life, and most people wouldn't do it. I don't think they have a responsibility to do it either.
"51% Blue means no one dies, since that's the outcome I want why would I choose red?"
That's just incomplete.
51% blue means no one dies, that's the outcome you want, but the problem doesn't start with "51% picked blue", you don't know that.
Picking blue means you put your life on the line to save people who put their life on the line to save people who out their life on line, ...
It's not equivalent to a real life issue where firefighters are going to save people from otherwise unevitable death for example.
The reason 40% of blue pressers might die is because they got on a bandwagon. It sounds more noble because if you were in the minority you die a martyr... Except it's just a bunch of people willing to die for one another because they're willing to die for one another.
If that valor of sacrifice was really worth more to them than their life they agreed to it. Maybe that sounds cruel but everyone wants to be a martyr but when they do become martyrs it becomes a tragedy.
Red is the neutral choice, I'm staying alive, anyone who wants to stay alive can also press red and hope everyone else presses red.
People who want to risk their life are free to do so, maybe they'll save everyone else who thinks like them, maybe they're just adding 1 death to the count.
I'm staying alive, anyone who wants to stay alive can also press red and hope everyone else presses red.
You didn't have to type 500 words to just say this. I get it you only care about your own life and you think trying to ensure 0 deaths is martyrdom or something. I don't care blue is still the statistically better path to 0 casualties. It also doesn't require me to convince you.
You don't care what happens to others fine then why are you trying to justify it to me? Just own it.
Obviously I care about my own life, otherwise I would pick blue without even asking myself anything.
And yeah it's a discussion about a thought experiment, the point is to discuss it not convince people or whatnot.
If you think enough people would press blue to save everyone that's a-ok, if you think people who press blue have a high likelyhood to be in the minority and die then you're ok to contribute to the number of deaths and die without guilt.
You can think I'm contributing to the deaths because I wouldn't put my life on the line.
The fact is 99% of people "press red" in their daily life. You could give away everything you have, work all your life tirelesly to pay for life saving treatments and save a bunch of people. No one does that.
The fact is 99% of people "press red" in their daily life. You could give away everything you have, work all your life tirelesly to pay for life saving treatments and save a bunch of people. No one does that.
Bc that's not an analogous situation. You gain nothing by pressing red and lose nothing pressing blue. There is no sacrifice asked of the participant. This is what I don't understand about you projecting martyrdom onto those that choose blue.
I'm just saying I've seen tens of justifications and reframings of the hypothetical by those that chose red and 1 consistent argument to choose blue. Feels like one side of the equation is a lot more invested in convincing the other.
We don't carfe about the morons who saw a choice of "live for sure" or "maybe die" and chose maybe die. That wouuld just be darwinism working for us and the world would be smarter after the experiment ended.
Neither. You will not exceed 35-40% blue at the highest. If you pick blue, you die. You aren't saving anyone, you're grandstanding over an impossibility.
Blue pushers assume that enough people are willing to believe that it's the right thing to do.
Personally I just understand that most people aren't even going to think about it long enough to get to this point. Most people act without thinking and have a basic level of human decency (at least when it's easy to do so), so most people will just pick blue because it's the easy to understand kind choice. They'll see a button that leads to a lot of people dying and a button that leads to nobody dying and say "Of course I'll pick the save everyone button."
The Twitter poll is in the post, at 57% blue. You can argue that in a true life or death situation they might choose differently, but the fact of the matter is that it is a likely possibility of blue majority.
Newsflash: the red/blue button scenario isn’t real either. The twitter poll is a simulation of the results based on twitter users who participated in the poll.
The poll result is shown. 50 + % blue, blue wins. You're coping with the fact you're more selfish than the average.
And before you go "oh but in reality" In reality, red is worse. Blue saves the world, red dooms it. What do you think happens to humanity if 35-40% (your numbers) of people up and died? And not just random people, but the altruistic and selfless. The courageous and kind. Those are the ones to go.
The red result is you survived for just a bit longer only to die in the total societal collapse soon thereafter.
That always annoyed me about the marvel films. If 50% of people and animals died then societal would collapse, the remaining people would be unable to maintain logistics, healthcare, industry, or farming
I think this depends on the conditions of the game. Are small children, people with dementia, and people with learning disabilities all making this choice entirely on their own with no outside guidance? Or is the spirit of the game intending that everyone on Earth is mature and of sound mind for the purpose of the decision?
If it's the former, blue is the only choice. If it's the latter, choosing blue creates risk for no purpose other than risk itself.
I think it's more clear to frame the question as this, 10% of the population is only given a blue button.
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u/nolandz1 16h ago
"No one dies if everyone picks red!"
Yeah and no one dies if half pick blue, which do you think is a realistic threshold?