Question stolen from Twitter:
Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?
my choice and rationale
Blue button because it’s the superior moral choice. Moreover, the red button world becomes shithole tier hell with all of the genuinely cooperative people eliminated. High trust is gone and you have global izzat chicanery. May God have mercy on red buttoners.
my choice and rationale
@BowsacNoodle
Exactly. I don't care about "being completely safe". I really don't want people to die. The blue is literally the only good choice.
But man, do I wish the red pressers the world they would get.
re: my choice and rationale
re: my choice and rationale
@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
> If an absurd hypothetical, that literally never happened....
But it didn't happen, and you knew it won't. So, pressinng red is the selfish option, and you knew it would be.
re: my choice and rationale
re: my choice and rationale
@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
Do you understand the concept of world existing outside of your "everyone agrees with me" framework?
@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
Pressing red assumes that everyone is as selfish as you, or that people are not worth saving.
Pressing blue is hoping that at least 50% of people are good people.
@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
There is no potential bad outcome, if everyone pushes blue either.
Do you seriously not see, that you wrote a tautology?
You wrote a "there is no bad outcome in 0.001% of cases" while I said that there is no bad outcome if just 50% of people are good.
@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
And yes, I know, that the entire question is a framing issue, but a truly interesting one.
Literally everyone should press the red button. There should be ad campaigns about how much the red button ought to be the one you press. Pamphlets. Planes in the sky should write messages. Because every red button is a choice to live.
"My people would press the blue button because it makes us better people!" Great, but your community is in the minority and will not win the vote.
The only reason to press the blue button is you think someone else is stupid enough to press the blue button and you want to try to protect them from themselves, but then you become one of them. God sent you a speedboat, a helicopter, and a ship and you chose to drown.
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@sj_zero
A society can only work in a world, where half of people are willing to press the blue button, knowing that they can rely on others pressing it too.
Imagine if 51% of people vote red? That’s the end of the world. If blue wins that’s a feel-good moral victory, but we have a perfect solution.
If the titanic is sinking, but we have enough lifeboats for everyone, why doesn’t everyone just get in a lifeboat? No one has to be left behind or risk anything.
@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
And that worst outcome is exactly, where your thought process lead us to though :D
@LukeAlmighty the red button is objectively the right answer. if you click the red button you live no matter what. if everyone presses the red button nobody dies. if you're too dumb to realize this maybe you deserve the blue button.
@beardalaxy
Every single scenario that begins with "if everyone" is about as useful as information that if all atoms aligned, you can pass through objects.
if 80% of people vote red, that’s the end of the world. Blue would partly be made up of suicidal/people doing it for the lolz, but the majority would be people who feel morally bad about contributing to the death of others. Humanity would be worse off without those people. In a big way.
We live in a society full of people who press the blue button assuming everyone else will bail them out for their choice and thus be dragged down with them.
To live in a society of red button pressers is to live in a society where individuals take responsibility for their own well-being first and foremost, and more importantly not burden others with the risk of their existence. It's selfish to demand others put themselves at risk to validate you, when everyone could be just fine if they just make the obvious choice and protect themselves.
Morally speaking, forcing others to consider pressing blue and potentially dying just to save you is a sort of moral vanity. You press blue because it feels nice to press blue, but insodoing you perpetuate a potentially lethal plague, for no other reason than you think others might too.
But there are entire continents with billions of people who would laugh at the concept of pressing blue as well. You don't outnumber them, they won't press blue. That's the whole scenario in the west right now, when you think about it.
We know what people *here* would press, but what did the Twitter thread look like?
@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @Griffith @BowsacNoodle
Better survivor rate then here.
An idiot who has no morality just presses red. A careful mathematician also estimates that everyone else is a rational actor and observes that red is the Nash Equilibrium in this game - hoping that everyone else is as smart as him and also presses red.
I do not understand the psychology of someone who picks blue and then rationalizes it for a lengthy period of time afterwards.
@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @Griffith @BowsacNoodle
Well, you could call me midwhit if that is a sufficient explanation, but I simply do not expect everyone to act rational. Where did that ever happen in hystory?
Nah. I want to go for the option, that ends up with noone dying. Simple as that. And we both know, that there will be many people who will try to save everyone, and that knowledge itself turns the red button from "obvious" to a selfish one.
@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @Griffith @BowsacNoodle
Don't you think that expecting people to act "fully rationally" is the peak midwhitery though?
I press blue expecting that at least 50% of people will either be stupid, or willing to ensure the good outcome for everyone, since anyone without a robotic thinking will know that there are people in the blue category.
1. if there's no personal downside to pressing the red button, everyone's going to press it.
2. there are too many people in the world anyway.
Downstream effects like "red button-pushers are selfish and will create a selective bias toward sociopathy" is real, but the point is that we're already in a democratic hellscape completely beyond our control.
Blue buttoners are "noble losers" predictably taking the worse choice because it's a "moral victory." They like to pretend the high-mindedness of a few hundred million is going to outweigh the natural inclination of 3B Indians and Chinese, plus everyone who sees the choice for what it is.
@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @Griffith @BowsacNoodle
And obviously, in here, it is 30x easier to press blue then in real life.
The real threat to life would overwtire everyone's real logic into pressing red anyway. Therefore, this thread is just a funny post to me anyway.
Please, I hope noone takes it too seriously. :D
aka human cattle
@monsterislandcolonizer @sj_zero
YES!
In safe society, a kid can play outside unsurpervised, since you know others will be willing to sacrefice themselves to help if anything happened to them.
In an unsafe society where everyone saves themselves, a kid cannot go outside alone.
That is the difference. (BTW, I had no idea just how bad of a place America was, until I learned, that "just walking outside" is considered suspicious)
Pressing blue is just suicide. I expect any adult to realize this. I expect any adult to be able to explain this to their children - and I assume that in this situation, even if the votes are secret, the parents have the ability to explain this to their kids before they vote.
If there's a lengthy amount of time before the vote, then the rationale for pressing red can be made to everyone. Mathematicians around the world will shriek to the populace, "I am pressing red, and for the love of all that is holy you must as well."
Reminds me of the fun standoff clip I saw from the show “Golden Ball“. I wish I could find it.
@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @Griffith @BowsacNoodle
This reminds me of the Covid vax debate, where some "smart" people got truly pissed off, when they said: The best option is if everyone get's vaxed. The 2nd best is when noone gets vaxed. But the worst one is when half of population gets the vax, because then the virus can adapt.
Me: And since you know that half the population will refuse, you will give it up, right?
Them: So, why cannot these idiots just get vaxed????
All their IQ didn't allow them to see, that they chose the worst option just on principle of the best one not being possible.
@karna @Griffith @LukeAlmighty @BowsacNoodle @ceo_of_monoeye_dating Here's the court session
It’s only selfish if your life is worth nothing, and there’s nothing lost by pressing the red button. Blue button people are essentially killing themselves on the basis of a useless principle.
If there was a single downside to everyone pressing red, I would flip, but there’s not, so the argument boils down to “risk your life, because some people can’t read instructions.”
Total (((game theorist))) death...
Also, there are many "unsafe" societies where children still go outside alone so "can kids play outside unsupervised" isn't a useful metric.
@monsterislandcolonizer @Griffith @BowsacNoodle @ceo_of_monoeye_dating
Yes, obviously the revealed preferences would be everyone pressing the red, since it would turn a philosophical/mathematical discussion into a real life danger.
Sure the assumptions of Game Theory do not apply 100% of the time, but they absolutely do apply here and we should use tools that apply without crying that they don't always apply.
no and that's the problem...already in this thread people told you their "utility" is not I live or I die...
There's 7-8 billion people in the world. Your vote does not matter in any meaningful way. Either most people will press blue or most people will press red.
If you press red, then either nobody dies or everyone who pressed blue dies. If you press blue, then either nobody dies or everyone who pressed blue *plus you* dies.
Your choices are functionally "maybe I die" or "I definitely don't die." Yes, each square is going to have varying utility for each person, but you have two choices, and there is only one difference between the two choices. Game theory applies unless you want to account for the astronomically small probability that your vote mattered.
another way to look at it...game theorists not avoiding constructing a falsifiable theory difficulty...
There are not.
and there you concede my point...for you it's meaningless how you come to live in this game so long as you live...for others it matters how they and others chose...creating nuance in the outcomes...
very good....now you are adding a utilitarian ethic on top of individual cardinal utility...still not further away from religion...if anything closer...
but I ask...which humans???
again this is not falsifiable...
and now we need a theory of risk...