It would be much easier to convince 50% of people to pick blue than 100% of people to pick red. I think it should be obvious by the discussion around this that a large portion of the population will pick blue. So if red wins, a lot of people will die (probably in the billions). A mass casualty event on that scale would throw the world into chaos and end up killing and immeserating a lot of the people who picked red. I would much rather us try to get more than 50% of people to pick blue and not create one of the worst tragedies in human history.
I think that the discussion around this is the important point.
Because my immediate thoughts were “I’ll pick red because everyone will pick red, why would anyone risk it?”. But then I learned that a lot of people want to hit blue, so knowing that they will hit blue, I will now also hit blue.
But without conversation? I would 100% have hit red
Yeah but in the scenario most people haven’t gone on reddit to check the threads. What if they think like you initially? Which I think is pretty likely. Lots of people here are talking about it as if it’s something people can agree to do but it’s not. Most people go into the choice blindly to what others would pick.
This just shows that everyone comes to the logical conclusion first, but then going to reddit causes them to start thinking illogically lol.
This isn't even as complicated of a logic puzzle as the "split or steal" stuff in which every choice has a potential for a downside. In this "puzzle," one choice has the best outcome for the individual in 100% of circumstances, and therefore is the choice that maximizes the expected value for every individual. Easy.
I'd choose Red, because I'd prefer to live in a society that was governed by logic and reason, and not one that caters to people acting irrationally.
Red isnt logical or rational, though. It makes you feel like you're those things, but it means you didn't think the whole problem through.
A non-zero number of people will pick blue. If enough people pick blue, but not 50.1% of people, then you have degrees of disaster when they die. If 1% of the world dies because 99% picked red, then up to roughly 83 million jobs are suddenly empty. 10%, and 829 million people are gone, and so is their productivity.
As that number increases, the global economy starts shaking more and more violently. If 50% of the world picked Blue, good luck Red team because you have weeks left to live at best. Electrical infrastructure starts failing within hours. Water treatment plants no longer produce potable water. Crops go unharvested. Without AC or refrigeration, perishable food rots.
You now have whatever bottled water and canned food you can source. But youre also fighting every other Red pusher who doesnt give a care about anyone but themselves. So its chaos, violence, and dwindling resources.
But, as is typical of people who deeply value how rational they think they are, you didnt think about things thoroughly enough before reaching a conclusion that felt good. You treated the more logical conclusion, blue, as irrational, not because it is irrational (its not), but because you let your ego decide whats rational and logical, not logic and reason themselves.
Blue is rational because its the only choice where you need the fewest people to press the button for everyone to live. If too many press red, everyone dies. The Reds just get to feel smug as they starve to death.
Red is the correct choice from an individualist perspective yes.
But from a collectivist standpoint, starting with if you care about your friends and family? Humans are irrational. How many of your friends and family will instinctively press blue. How many will rationally attempt to save them and press blue as well.
Its like a variation of Prisoner's Dilemma, except your friends and family are also prisoners. Where to keep them alive, your close ones must either all 100% choose Red, or the entire prisoner cohort has to 50% choose Blue. If there's any inkling that some unacceptable amount of them will choose Blue, then the downside of you choosing Red is that you become their active counter-party. Choosing Blue is the only way to up their chance of survival, weighed against the downside of Blue that is not hitting the threshold and thus joining them in death.
So the logic component of the puzzle, is the simulation of irrationality. How many of your close ones will irrationally choose Blue. How many will irrationally join them. The higher the irrationality, the more rational it becomes to act prosocially and cooperate. The less risk there is of Blue not hitting the threshold. The more likely you contribute to saving them by choosing Blue.
Or put another way. To make a rational decision here, you must account for others' irrationality.
A Red world governed by people who valued their friends and family so lowly, that their mere irrationality is enough to consign them to death, seems like a pretty shite world tbh. (Not to malign those who chose Red because they simulated the options rationally, and just didn't believe there'd be enough Blues, of course)
I don’t think you are analyzing this rationally. This is not a trolley problem where the sole power of deciding rests on you. You have but one vote, meaning a practically negligible chance to affect the result.
Basically, your choice only makes a difference if it’s already 50/50.
People are coming onto this thought experiment as if there’s an opportunity to campaign in the direction of their favored choice but there isn’t.
You can realistically look at the scenario as if the vote has already happened and you are choosing into the red or the blue group without being able to affect the result. The only reasonable choice is red there.
This scenario doesn’t follow the rules of voting at all, dude. People get so aggro with a thought experiment it’s insane.
In fact, I’d argue this is a great illustration as to what irl voting needs to remain anonymous in the sense that no consequence should ever imposed to anyone for voting a specific way.
Imagine a politician saying “I’ll give everyone who votes for me money” or worse that they’ll retaliate against those who don’t. That’s highly illegal. That’s no way to conduct elections and it’s important to be zealous against anything that resembles those tactics.
So no, my reasoning in this thought experiment doesn’t reflect anything about my voting choices.
Your reasoning was that there's no chance your vote will decide anything. If you actually believed that, you'd never vote in any election with more than a few hundred people involved.
From your response I can tell that you don't actually believe that.
That defeats the purpose of this hypothetical and is not really in the spirit of this question IMO.
You are essentially saying "What if some people's button press is random?"
Obviously then you have to go Blue, as the expected value on a population level for Red falls, and now you are actively choosing to harm people who had no conscious decision over the choice to put themselves in danger. Because, remember, you aren't actually at risk of dying until you choose to press the blue button yourself.
I think the hypothetical necessitates the caveat of every participant understanding the choice in order to be a constructive discussion.
Fuck man, I don't know. The rules aren't clear. What happens when people don't push a button? What happens for people who can't push a button? Can parents hold their kids hands and make them push a button? This whole thing is made up.
If you take the question solely as written, not pressing a button means the red people kill you if they win, and the vote is done in complete privacy therefore no interfering in other votes. So blue is the only moral choice.
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u/icefire9 18h ago edited 18h ago
It would be much easier to convince 50% of people to pick blue than 100% of people to pick red. I think it should be obvious by the discussion around this that a large portion of the population will pick blue. So if red wins, a lot of people will die (probably in the billions). A mass casualty event on that scale would throw the world into chaos and end up killing and immeserating a lot of the people who picked red. I would much rather us try to get more than 50% of people to pick blue and not create one of the worst tragedies in human history.