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

shankwiler.com

121–130 of 333 posts

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

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why do you think that?

Since if a rational actor would understand that the group can avoid ever dying to this game by simply choosing blue. There is no consequence for choosing blue - but there is a consequence for choosing red. Also, regardless of these specific consequences, people who are rational/ethical will by default choose blue because it is a good color. See also, people by default choose blue at 5x the rate as red, really putting…

> There is no consequence for choosing blue

there are consequences in both cases.

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

#122

This question has multiple layers of thinking: 1. People who can't read pick randomly. 2. People who can read, but are too dumb to model or care about other people pick red. 3. People with enough intelligence for basic cognitive empathy pick blue. 4. People a little smarter and think through game theory overall pick red, and think they are smart for doing so. 5. People smarter than #4 and capable of seeing the big pi…

You have two buttons. If you press that one, you might die. If you press the other one, you won't die. Which one do you press?

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

#123
post #54

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…

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.

But why would those pick blue? They have the same incentive to just pick red.

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

#124
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think most of the people who pick blue would be empathic, loving people that are just kind of bad at game theory. I don't think I want to live in a world in which they all died out.

> I don't think I want to live in a world in which they all died out.

So the blue side would also include the people who are good at game theory...

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me rephrase that for you: red is for people who live in this world and accept it, blue is for people with white knight syndrome. OR. Red is for people who understand statistics, blue is for people who like to gamble.

> red is for people who live in this world and accept it Red is for people who don't think beyond the end of their nose. Okay, you're very smart and understand statistics, but what about the following groups: friends, family, spouses? If they don't pick red, and they die, would you say life is completely fine because there's less "dumb" people or would you possibly think: "hmm, it kinda sucks that they died, maybe I…

> If they don't pick red

Why wouldn't they?

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

#127
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think most of the people who pick blue would be empathic, loving people that are just kind of bad at game theory. I don't think I want to live in a world in which they all died out.

There’s no bad outcome for choosing red. The empathetic option is to convince everyone to vote red and that choosing blue is dumb.

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

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So is your general take on the problem that because the way it's worded (blue => "everyone survives", red => "only those who press red survive"), enough people would choose blue that therefore the empathetic/moral thing to do would be to also choose blue to save them? I can get on board with that line of reasoning

Yes! There is an excellent video on the subject, though it is in french (https://youtu.be/lo7iJnq_U9M?si=FFz6iHI_W4lz9V8D)

He did extensive polling with different framings to see how these affect the outcome.

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

#129

This question has multiple layers of thinking: 1. People who can't read pick randomly. 2. People who can read, but are too dumb to model or care about other people pick red. 3. People with enough intelligence for basic cognitive empathy pick blue. 4. People a little smarter and think through game theory overall pick red, and think they are smart for doing so. 5. People smarter than #4 and capable of seeing the big pi…

You have two buttons. If you press that one, you might die. If you press the other one, you won't die. Which one do you press?

You have two buttons. If you press one, you're more likely to die. If you press the other, you might murder millions of people.

Am I talking about the game, or a preemptive nuclear strike that has a good chance of knocking out the enemies ability to ever launch?

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

#130
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but why would anybody choose blue? there is no moral benefit to doing so. If you altered the game to say that only some fraction of the population get the choice, and everyone who doesn't get the choice is assumed blue (or, is killed if less than 50% of voters choose blue) then there's some question to be explored here. But at it stands there is literally no reason to choose blue.

There’s a moral benefit to choosing blue if you think there’s a chance that the end result will be split 50-50 and you’ll be the deciding vote between a blue majority and a red majority.

I think it would be hard to prove you, individually, were the deciding vote to blue.

Everyone who voted blue in such a case could think they were the one vote. And they could be right.

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