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If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

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Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

#101

Post by empthought »

troglodytetrain wrote: post #98
empthought wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, when you completely rephrase the problem you will have different sentiments. The thought experiment demands that the phrasing that was used actually be used, and you don’t get a chance to show the dumb blue people how smart you are before they pick their button.

The problem isn't rephrased. Option Red = 0% chance of death, Option Blue = chance of death but maybe you can be the hero and save everyone. So we all choose option Red and you, the hero, chose Blue. Congratulations, we will write some nice words on your tombstone.

It is rephrased. Any phrasing besides the original exists only in your head and not in anyone else’s.

The only reason I’m in my tomb is because you and people like you voted to kill me instead of voting to do nothing. Luckily for me, I’m dead and don’t care.

Congratulations! Enjoy your life with people who think like you.

Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

#102

Post by enoint »

gus_massa wrote: post #64
jonkho wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dilemma is that there are some people who are not smart enough to understand this and will press blue.

There is no dilemma, just a bad model. In this model, everyone press red and survive. Solved in 10 seconds. If you want a dilemma, it must be inside the model, for example: a 10% of the buttons are miss wired, and the system register the oposite color So if red wins, at least 10% die. If blue wins, everyone survives. Now you have a dilemma. Which button would you press? PS: If a country has 20 cities and one of them…

Crosstabbing the results into a state-by-state table would be interesting.

Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

#103

Post by enoint »

aldanor wrote: post #40
wavemode wrote: post #11

This is like a prisoner's dilemma, but with no payoff for the risky option. In a prisoner's dilemma, you can choose a risky option (stay quiet), but the potential reward is that if the other prisoner also stays quiet then you both go completely free. But if one prisoner instead speaks up and accuses the other prisoner, the accuser gets a short sentence and the one who stayed quiet gets a max sentence. But in this sce…

Exactly, if choosing blue would allow you to wear a blue badge which would raise your happiness level or otherwise affect your utility function, then it might make sense. Otherwise it just doesn't.

The variation I like is: regardless of the outcome, red choosers are forbidden from performing manual labor. You can tell a lot about someone who chooses that button.

Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

#104

Post by empthought »

bennettnate5 wrote: post #97
ertgbnm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside of redding is that some portion of the world probably dies and you now have to live in that worse world that if you and 50% of the rest of the world has just blued, would not have happened.

I'm wondering if it's really the framing of the problem that's inflating the number of individuals responding with blue (similar to certain confusingly-worded ballot measures). Suppose the problem were worded in a more concrete way: "I have a large container ship that I'm draining the ballasts out of tomorrow. If less than 50% of get on the ship, it will capsize and everyone who chose to get on it will die. You can c…

Of course the framing affects how people vote. The thought experiment demands we use the framing as given. Some people might reason themselves into your analogy, others won’t.

Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

#105

Post by troglodytetrain »

empthought wrote: post #101
troglodytetrain wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't rephrased. Option Red = 0% chance of death, Option Blue = chance of death but maybe you can be the hero and save everyone. So we all choose option Red and you, the hero, chose Blue. Congratulations, we will write some nice words on your tombstone.

It is rephrased. Any phrasing besides the original exists only in your head and not in anyone else’s. The only reason I’m in my tomb is because you and people like you voted to kill me instead of voting to do nothing. Luckily for me, I’m dead and don’t care. Congratulations! Enjoy your life with people who think like you.

Well, that is one way to rationalize, as I guess there is an infinite number of ways to do so.

The point remains, only one singular choice guarantees your own safety. And another has a Chance of death. Take the stupid choice because you think everyone else is also stupid? Thats your choice.

Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

#106

Post by gnfargbl »

userbinator wrote: post #42
gnfargbl wrote: post #14

Is there actually a real-world version of this game, that the author is alluding to buy not explicitly mentioning? Otherwise all I'm taking away from this article is that people don't think deeply about survey questions before answering them.

Thinly veiled political post.

As a political post the formulation in the article is crass in the extreme, misrepresenting both the motivations of red and blue voters and also the and the long-term consequences of those parties' policies. There's no progress to be made in a conversation held so close to the surface.

Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

#107

Post by empthought »

zahlman wrote: post #3
giardini wrote: post #2

Silly. Everyone will press the red button and everyone will survive.

Yes, that's (overly reductively stated) the point of TFA. Except for the part where it was highlighting a survey result to the contrary, and explaining why this is irrational and doesn't likely reflect what people would actually do. The idea behind claiming you'd choose the blue button is to appear noble and altruistic, I suppose; but I struggle to even understand that instinct. Risking one's own life to possibly sav…

> this is irrational and doesn’t likely reflect what people would actually do

People are irrational. I guarantee it’s likely that a lot of people would actually do it.

> The idea behind claiming you’d choose the blue button is to appear noble and altruistic.

Not at all. If the majority of people can’t be bothered to press the button that says “nobody dies as long as half of the other people say nobody dies” rather than “you don’t die,” I’m happier not being around. It’s purely selfish and blue is a win-win.

Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

#108

Post by ItsMonkk »

blululu wrote: post #32
rbren wrote: post #9

Considerations: * many people (at least toddlers, people with dementia) are going to press blue roughly by accident. See the lizardman constant * other people will not want to be responsible for any deaths and will press blue out of a sense of moral imperative * many other people are going to take this into account and vote blue out of hopes we can save everyone You should vote blue.

The first point is interesting. You could fork the question over this and have a few variants: 1.) The pure form where the button presses and restricted to legal agents (i.e. people with credible legal standing over their choices). 2.) The mixed form with the caveat listed here inclusive of all humans whether they are even physically capable of pushing a button. 3.) you could also go for a more expansive scenario tha…

You don't even have to go that far from the original question. If instead of the entire world being a single game, if you have hundreds of millions of sub-games where 9 random people are placed within, what should you do?

Surely some of those groups are going to be filled with selfish red pickers. Should the kind coordinating players still go blue? All the red pickers are going to lie that blue is sensible. I suspect that more coordinators will die in this way than the always blue pickers if every coordinating player went red.

So now the full-world version only has the law of large numbers on their side, but they have no way of knowing just what percentage of the population is a selfish red picker. Going for team blue is the much riskier option that can yield catastrophe.

Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

#109

Post by enoint »

blululu wrote: post #46
bialpio wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you also forcing children to press a button or not? Because the answer to this question changes things *a lot*.

What if you entertain the variant of the question where a percentage of red votes die in the event of a blue win? It makes pressing red less advantageous, but also it totally changes the moral balance depending on the percentage.

I think this is already baked in. A world of red pressers must know they’ll adapt to a shortage of things produced by blue pressers. Many red pressers won’t survive.

Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

#110

Post by cindyllm »

swed420 wrote: post #88
owenpalmer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it worse? Wouldn't the red people end up with more like-minded red people?

Yes, the selfish-minded would end up with more selfish-minded people, and they'd be confused why their "low trust society" became even more low trust overnight.

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