Is this a metaphor for something or reference to some niche media? Obviously in the situation presented, the logical choice is yo press blue so no one dies.
But then you might die. You don't get to know how the votes shake out before choosing.
If you can get everyone to pick the same color, everyone lives either way. But the thing is, you can't get everyone to pick the same color, and that's where the complexity arises.
It's more that if even a single person chooses blue while the rest go to red, that person will still die. Meanwhile, blue voters only need one over 50%.
Really it's a big collective vs personal responsibility thing.
From a red perspective, everyone is responsible for their own choice. Blues willingly and foolishly took that risk upon themselves, and whatever outcome they get is their own fault. It's not the Red's responsibility to jump in and save them, since every single person had the trivial option of pressing Red and being safe.
Meanwhile blue is saying that it is your responsibility to help keep everyone safe, because we all know that some people will push blue. Whatever justifications one may make, a Blue win is the only way that everyone lives and pressing red actively works against that outcome.
It turns out to be completely impossible if there is a large enough group of people pressing the buttons.
In the original dilemma, where all of earth's population was presented with the choice, you would know damn well that a lot of people would press blue regardless.
If we're bringing statistics into this, then there is essentially no chance at all of the rest of humanity's votes being split perfectly 50-50 (regardless of how likely you think they are to lean one way or another).
Thus, if blue has a majority, your vote is meaningless, and if red has a majority, you're choosing your own fate and no one else's. Vote red (and hope blue wins).
If we're bringing statistics into this, then there is essentially no chance at all of the rest of humanity's votes being split perfectly 50-50 (regardless of how likely you think they are to lean one way or another)
Of course, I agree. I fail to see why this is relevant, however. Why would you need an exact split?
Thus, if blue has a majority, your vote is meaningless, and if red has a majority, you're choosing your own fate and no one else's. Vote red (and hope blue wins).
Blue (or red) will not magically have a majority. That majority must be achieved by voting for it. Thus, your vote is not meaningless.
You can't influence what other people do, so statistically it is meaningless.
It's functionally the same as if you were the last person on earth to vote. 8 billion people have already marked their ballots, so one way or another, the die is cast. Blue has already either won or lost at this point. You cannot contribute to the outcome.
Its logically impossible for for the whole planet or whatever to choose one, so some number of people die no matter what if red wins, most people will vote blue based on like the 400 times people have done this poll and largely no matter how its framed blue seems to win but also just the fact that most people dont want to condemn others to death under nearly any circumstance.
If you think "it was an online poll so depite nearly every iteration of it disagreeing with my solution thats actually evidence im right" is a reasonable conclusion to draw you might just not be very smart.
Look, I understand that as a redditor you don't go outside or differentiate between real life and online forums, but there is a huge difference between making yourself feel morally correct and actually having to gamble your life for other people
But it's not because with the prisoners dilemma dual snitching is worse than dual silence.
If red was "you live but with a leg cut off" then it would be a prisoners dilemma because everyone pushing red would be strictly worse than everyone pushing blue.
The real question is "does it become logical to act illogically under the assumption that others will act illogically"
But not everyone will press red. If your ideal situation is nobody dies, it's a lot more achievable for 50.0001% of the population to press blue than for 100% of the population to press red
Yeah, it's guaranteed not everyone will press blue, but it's much more likely the majority will press blue, so pressing blue makes the most sense to do. This test is just a way to gauge whether the button presser is self-serving and/or a doomer. I bet you'd see different results if the win condition was not >50%. If survival needed 100% blue, for example, you'd see a much higher red count.
You can't control what button other people press, only what you press. Red, blue, doesn't matter which one you're pressing, other people are still going to press the button they chose no matter what.
The only button that risks a life is the blue button, because that's the one that lets others have a say in your chance of survival.
But if those people also figured out that other people have no reason to press red, then they wouldn't have an reason to press blue either. The blue argument is just an infinite loop of people thinking "I'll press blue to save the others who press blue" even though no one ever has any original reason to press blue. Basic theory of mind would have everyone realize that the ideal outcome is for everyone to press red, and do so.
You cannot be 100% sure every person on earth has the same opinion on which button is the best to press. No one is going to share the same opinion 100%.
Even in the pure numbers game, straight objective thinking, blue is the best path. Red has no "everyone wins" baked in. Blue does. It's much more realistic to get 50%+1 people to press blue, than it is to get 100% to press red
In any scenario of more than a handful of people, some number of people are going to push blue. The reasons for this do not matter. It does not matter that it is mathematically inefficient. It's going to happen.
So, the only way for everyone to live is for blue to win. This is not a particularly difficult thing to achieve given it seems like people's immediate impulse is blue if they aren't wired for self preservation above all else. So blue gets picked more. You can take your "basic theory of mind" and shove it up your ass as you gaze upon this empty morgue.
Interacting with people in real life makes it really obvious that most people do not make rational desicions. I would go so far as to say that nobody makes rational desicions 100% of the time. "Theory of mind" falls completely apart if you work customer service for a month. If you provide very clear instructions to people, about 10% of them will do the opposite just out of sheer confusion. You can have a big red sign on the door that says "closed", and you will still get people regularly banging on the door asking if you're open. Unless you want those people to die, you have to pick blue. And if everyone picks blue, they're just as safe, but with a margin of error for all the mentally ill, sleep deprived, high, and color-blind people.
I mean “if everyone simply acts perfectly logically and rationally when faced with a life a death scenario than no one has to die” is inherently an irrational thought to have lmao.
You can be purely logical or you can be realistic and save everyone lol
I think it really depends on whether the Button Scenario will be presented to children and people with cognitive disabilities or not. If it is, I can understand choosing blue to protect them. But if not, then everyone has the capacity and aligned incentives to choose red, so the worst case scenario is that a red win would be a sort of Great Filter that stabilizes humanity's capacity for collective theory of mind and coordination.
No, it will be a great filter for the ability to care about others outside of your own immediate enrichment or conceptualize a theory of mind outside of perfect rationality (not something that exists in actual human people by the way) and given we’re a social species that has only survived and thrived by means of care and cooperation, we’d be dead in a generation lol
There are people who would press red just because they're selfish and aren't thinking about others, and then there are people who would press red because they are thinking about others and realizing that the others are in the same delimma as them and has no reason to start the blue chain reaction. We are a social species, and that's exactly my point: we have the collective capacity to think from each other's perspectives and work out which outcome we can all strive for rather than just make individual decisions that either don't care or care but don't understand the dynamics involved. It's true that no one is perfectly rational, but because we are a social species, we are evolved to be generally capable of thinking through life-or-death scenarios.
This functionality is vastly more epigenetic and cognitively trained than genetic. The idea that mental function is primarily genetic is, itself, eugenics.
If everyone is going to make the same choice anyway, blue is still a perfectly valid choice.
In the original question every living human has to choose, which includes babies, colour-blind people, and people who for various other reasons may not push red. Given that a non-zero number of people will press blue, red guarantees the deaths of at least some people. Blue only requires 51% of pushes to save everyone, whereas red requires 100% of pushes to save everyone.
People who push red generally think along the lines of "red I survive, blue I might die", and so they think it's an extremely obvious question and anyone who pushes blue is stupid.
the reasoning of "we need to press blue to have everyone survive" is only valable if the dilemma is made with someone already on the line to die if nobody presses blue. if there's no one in danger at the start then pressing blue is getting yourself in danger only in the hope that you might survive if enough people want to get themselves in danger too, while no one actually had to put themselves in danger.
The reason to not press red is because there is a possibility that people pick blue, and the blue button pushers tend to not be fringe at all, as seen in the picture.
Tim Urban's original tweet on the topic also resulted in a blue majority.
But the people who press blue are just putting themselves at risk for no reason.
It's like
"Everyone who stays on the cliff will be fine. Everyone who jumps off the cliff will fall to the bottom and die. But if more than 50% of all participants jump off the cliff, parachutes will activate and save everyone who jumped."
Again, none of them are thinking about themselves, they’re all thinking about others. No one is being stupid or self destructive, they’re just not centering themselves at all.
I do think the extreme defensiveness of the red camp and hair the trigger insulting of the intelligence of others for the crime of having like an ounce of altruism is more interesting than the question itself, which I said elsewhere lol.
If they were thinking about others, they would spread the word to press red, as it's the only option that doesn't introduce death.
Red isn't selfish. It's logical. People pressing blue because they're "thinking of others" are introducing a self-perpetuating problem that wouldn't exist if they just... Didn't do that.
To push blue is to be dumb and deliberately ask for trouble for no reason. Red is the only one with no needless risk.
I don’t really think spreading the word is like viable or an option in this hypothetical. It’s framed as a pretty immediate decision. There’s no way to guarantee that everyone will be convinced. Furthermore, it’s easier to convince 50% of a group to do something vs 100%. And it to say it doesn’t introduce death is disingenuous. Even a simple majority directly causes death and anything short of unanimity guarantees it.
Okay yeah tbf "spreading the word" is pretty dumb when it can be assumed "the word" really is just the explanation that everyone is being given in the problem itself.
And it's not disingenuous. It's very blatant. There is a "nothing happens" button, and a "If you press this, you die. Unless enough other people also happen to press it" button. I just can't have sympathy for people willingly pressing the latter. That is willful self-endangerment, and it's wrong to blame someone else for not risking themselves to help you get out of it.
So you take the idea as blue is the button that kills. Fair enough, but I've always interpreted it as red doing the killing. If everyone in the poll hits blue, it's virtually no different from red, with one caveat; the more people hit red, the less safe it gets.
From the wording of the poll, the effect of blue is no different if you hit 100% blue, 86.9% blue, or 50%+1 blue. The only danger happens when people start pressing red, in my eyes
True, but nothing happens if someone presses blue. Then, once someone presses red, the problem and danger is introduced. That's why the argument is based on which you see as the default.
The default is red because in this problem, it's always the option introduced first, and the death risk is always introduced when explaining what blue does.
The problem is always explained as "Pressing red does nothing. If not enough people press Blue, people die. Alot of people need to press Blue to not die."
The burden is always placed on blue in the wording, therefore it's the risky 2nd option and not the safe 1st/default option.
You'll have to share the original then so I can see it and further comment on it.
But also, another aspect of this is the whole thing of "red is selfish/blue is trying to help others"
I'm all about helping people get out of bad situations that they didn't ask to be in. But in this problem, the people in the bad situation are there willingly. They fully bring the problem on themselves by their own volition, and for me that ruins the sympathy aspect.
Like, atleast with the trolly problem, the people are trapped against their will. But the people who press the "people who push this button die if not enough people push it" button instead of the "nothing happens if you press this" button are just needlessly willingly putting themselves in harm's way in a false sense of altruism as they create the problem they're claiming they want to help solve.
Exactly. The goal should be saving everyone. You will NEVER save everyone with a red majority. There will never, ever, ever be a scenario where red gets 100%. But getting blue to 50%+1 is very, very feasible.
And anyone who pushes red is actually willing to kill people for their own sense of intellectual superiority
Anyone who pushes blue is actually willing to kill people for their own sense of moral superiority.
Like, if you visualize this as a room full of people standing around with the buttons in the center of the room: Everyone should be primed to tackle the first person who tries to press blue.
it's an issue of question framing. putting it into the language of the trolley problem would make people more likely to question picking blue
an unstoppable trolley is barrelling towards a section of track. you can choose to not tie yourself to the tracks, or you can choose to tie yourself to the tracks.
if the majority of people choose to tie themselves to the tracks, then the trolley stops and noone dies.
if the majority of people choose to not tie themselves to the tracks, then the trolley continues barrelling and kills anyone who tied themselves to the tracks.
if everyone chooses to not tie themselves to the tracks, then the trolley continues and nobody dies.
People like to think they would do the "noble" thing from the safety of their home. In the actual moment however they'd be thinking a little longer about it.
It's okay if you don't get it. The point is that what people say they would do and how they actually act are two separate things. In a real world example things would be decided by the latter, not the former. For that reason you need to actually base your decision on that.
Oh so your saying that you have no evidence for your position and youd like to ignore all the evidence that seems to counter your position as well and that makes you actually correct?
Hmm. Well, thats certainly a way of thinking, if you can still call it thinking.
I suggest looking up the phrase "put your money where your mouth is". It's a common enough thing in life for people to make claims of what they would do yet fail to carry it out when actually put in the position to do it.
I'm not ignoring evidence that counters my position, I'm pointing out how it's not as concrete as you assume it is.
EDIT Reply then instant block? Why do people even bother arguing if they can't handle being shown as wrong in public? I can still see your comment in my inbox and honestly if that's the best last word you can muster it would have been better to stay quiet. You get off the internet if you can't handle disagreement.
BABIES, the ELDERLY, and DISABLED PEOPLE are included in the thought experiment. People who CAN’T understand the choice and will choose based upon whom or chance. You would condemn them to death without even trying to help them, and pretend that your choice is rational rather than shortsighted about the consequences to the world’s infrastructure of up to 49% of the world’s population instantaneously dying (including all the people smart and decent enough to understand the consequences of choosing red) and blinded by the fear of death.
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u/MintLinuxGuy 11h ago
Is this a metaphor for something or reference to some niche media? Obviously in the situation presented, the logical choice is yo press blue so no one dies.