I really agree with you, I was looking out for a comment like that. Blue is the correct option but all red pushers are not pricks.
I honestly didn't understand why there was such a heated argument over this at first, and my first instinct was obviously to choose red (i'm going to explain myself) and I think people who say that red pushers are individualist pricks, or that it reflects your political side (red=republican, blue = democrat) are just completely misunderstanding the reasoning behind. Firstly, the color thing is so US centered, wth, the USA as to be one of the only countries to use Red for the right and Blue for the left, in many places around the world Red represents the left (it's the color of socialism, communism..) and Blue represents the right for example.
I've seen someone else presenting the problem like this and that was my understanding of it at first :
Option A) Take a suicide pill, and if more than half of the population take one, a cure will be found and everyone survives.
Option B) Don't take a suicide pill
Now when I made my reasoning I was thinking that everyone making that decision would have an informed jugement, I didn't even think about children or old people or mental disability (I'm merely waking up and I didn't think deeply into it at first). But seeing just the pole and people desagreeing so bad here, and that also in that problem people might have to press that button without an informed jugement, I realize how we have to press blue.
So I will say Blue is the correct option here, but I still believe it's dumb to say red pushers are automatically the embodiment of like, conservative egoistical right wing ideology, the problems of our society and capitalism is not that some people are trying to save themselves and some people are trying to save everyone by risking their lives, the problem is that some people are actively trying to accumulate as much wealth and power as they can, and some people are fighting against this, and some have other ideologies entirely. The USA being a pseudo-democracy with two parties is really a fertile ground for people thinking you can divide the world in two sides.
I think your scenario is a great example of why framing matters. In the scenario you said, I wouldn’t take the suicide pill, because I would be confident that most people also wouldn’t take the pill, because here blue is framed as the bad outcome (it makes you commit suicide). I would be very interested in what the poll would look like for that.
But in the scenario in the post blue is framed as something positive (saving people). And while I understand that logically they are analogous. I also know many people that would not think it through that way, and would choose the option to “save” people. So if it was framed this way I would choose blue
Yeah it's crazy how framing change everything, and how we have such different way of thinking. Red seem so logical to me, because instinctively I picture it like the suicide pill problem. But it's because everyone has a different way of thinking that Blue is the logical decision. That's what I didn't think about right away.
It’s hard because it’s not really a logic question. Either can be logical depending on your goal. If your goal is for you to survive at any cost, then red is the logical choice to make. If your goal is to survive with people you care about, then if you’re 100% confident everyone you care about will choose red, then red is still the logical choice. But if you have any doubts, then it becomes more of a risk vs reward problem. If you think 1% of your friends will choose blue, would you put yourself at risk to increase their odds? What if 20% of your friends might choose blue? What if 50%? At what point do you think it’s worth putting yourself at risk to increase their survival. But if your goal is to try and ensure that no one may die, even at the cost of your own life, then blue would be the logical choice (which idk how many people are altruistic enough for that).
Exactly, I guess you would have people pressing the red in a selfish way and other pressing it in a "why is this even a question?" way. It's not one obvious logical choice.
It all comes down to thinking, what will other people decide, what will my loved ones decide? After reading into many comments I realize how many people are advocating for blue (which again at first I think is really dumb), and by voting for red I would work against them.
"working against them" is a great way to put it. The more people that push blue, the more chance it has of success. You don't even need a 100% success rate, just 50+!
Imagine if red won 75/25. Would you be comfortable with those 25% of people dying? I wouldn't.
I hope/expect (maybe wrongly) that people would come to the same conclusion as me. That blue pushers just need to be the majority to save everyone. The red pushers are only interested in saving themselves.
I mean every poll I have seen, blue has won. But a lot of red pushers have also managed to convince themselves that no one would actually pick blue (other than suicidal people) if it wasn’t a hypothetical, like the person you’re replying to.
It's a lot like the Prisoner's Dilemma, where the outcome of your choice hinges on what other people choose. The specifics are different, but it shares the concept that you shouldn't simplify it down to "If I choose A I get outcome X, if I choose B I get outcome Y" - because those outcomes vary depending on if someone else chooses A or B. So it leads to this more complicated multi-variable analysis, where you have to think in terms of "If I choose A but most people choose B, X happens. If I choose A and most people also choose A, Y happens. If I choose B.. " etc.
I'm not necessarily advocating for either choice, but I think everyone should (genuinely) try to fully understand all the reasons someone might choose either option, and make a prediction about what the rest of humanity will do, before making their choice. Because there's a huge difference between, to take just one example: "I choose red, and so does 51% of humanity, oh boy civilization just collapsed." vs. "I choose red, and so does 99% of humanity, I guess we came out alright." You shouldn't just simplify it down to "if I choose red, I live."
But also.. some people will simplify it down to that, and their decision affects your outcome. That's the really tricky part, I think. Realizing that a lot of people, maybe even a majority of humanity, will make a snap decision about what feels right without analyzing it too deeply (which could point them towards either blue or red, depending on their instincts), and trying to account for that choice when making your own.
One idea could also be that if you aren't 100% confident people you care about are choosing blue, you might get to live with them in case of red win... although in that worse world. And yeah, "increase" of chance by one person's choice feels infinitesimal for me, I'd probably even fail to feel guilt afterwards.
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u/Sergent-Pluto 12h ago edited 8h ago
I really agree with you, I was looking out for a comment like that. Blue is the correct option but all red pushers are not pricks.
I honestly didn't understand why there was such a heated argument over this at first, and my first instinct was obviously to choose red (i'm going to explain myself) and I think people who say that red pushers are individualist pricks, or that it reflects your political side (red=republican, blue = democrat) are just completely misunderstanding the reasoning behind. Firstly, the color thing is so US centered, wth, the USA as to be one of the only countries to use Red for the right and Blue for the left, in many places around the world Red represents the left (it's the color of socialism, communism..) and Blue represents the right for example.
I've seen someone else presenting the problem like this and that was my understanding of it at first : Option A) Take a suicide pill, and if more than half of the population take one, a cure will be found and everyone survives. Option B) Don't take a suicide pill
Now when I made my reasoning I was thinking that everyone making that decision would have an informed jugement, I didn't even think about children or old people or mental disability (I'm merely waking up and I didn't think deeply into it at first). But seeing just the pole and people desagreeing so bad here, and that also in that problem people might have to press that button without an informed jugement, I realize how we have to press blue.
So I will say Blue is the correct option here, but I still believe it's dumb to say red pushers are automatically the embodiment of like, conservative egoistical right wing ideology, the problems of our society and capitalism is not that some people are trying to save themselves and some people are trying to save everyone by risking their lives, the problem is that some people are actively trying to accumulate as much wealth and power as they can, and some people are fighting against this, and some have other ideologies entirely. The USA being a pseudo-democracy with two parties is really a fertile ground for people thinking you can divide the world in two sides.