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

shankwiler.com

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

#151

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…

People's "by default" behavior will never define what is rational. You don't do polling to choose rationality.

If there is a game in which you choose between two buttons, you know everyone will get this same choice, and one button says that you definitely live and the other button says that there's a chance that you will die, adding more rules to the "maybe death button" can not make it a more rational choice.

This is actually an experiment that I would get behind doing in real life. I will pick the red button. We could do it every morning.

There are enough collective action problems with real and obvious benefits leading to catastrophe without the need to create more unnecessarily, or to have any confidence in in a world full of strangers' collective ability to solve them. Campaigning for blue is actually murder; you've encouraged a situation that may result in the deaths of 49% of the population.

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

#152
post #17

Hello, Blue Presser here. We learn something about humanity based on the results of the poll. It's naive to think that 100% of people will press the red button. Some people will die if red wins. I think pressing red is selfish and violent, in that it can result in the death of human life by their own unwillingness to cooperate. If we are not willing to work together in order to protect each other then I have a very p…

>Some people will die if red wins.

Why? The logical conclusion of this game is that everyone presses red. There is no reason to press blue and leave it to chance. The article talks about it, but without further rules it would be absolutely nonsensical to press blue.

Like if there was some additional rule like "oh and if more than 90% press red, everyone dies" or something, it gets more interesting. But as is everyone answering blue is virtue signalling.

>I think pressing red is selfish and violent

Most of humanity is pressing the red button every single day, again and again. From every culture, creed, religion, loads of red button presses.

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

#153

The arguments made about wanting to protect the children/babies and those with cognitive impairments are well meaning, but I think misguided. The bottom line is that the world has been put in a shit situation and you can't fix it. Encouraging blue is encouraging an increase in the likelihood that all the truly nice and wonderful people that would would actually follow through on a blue vote for altruistic reasons win…

You literally can fix it, you just need at least half the word to press blue to fix it.

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

#154
post #18
post #8

So a 100% presses red and everyone survives too.

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

Yes the inclusion of children does change things, in that it makes choosing red even more obvious.

The problem is posed to the world. You have children, and they ask you what they should do. You tell them to pick red because you're their parent you can't bring yourself to have them risk their lives for some noble purpose.

According to blue buttoners, this parent is an evil person, right?

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

#156
I love this thought experiment.

If you pick red you survive.

If you pick blue and at least 50% of people picked blue, you survive, otherwise you die.

There's 0 advantage to picking blue, none what so ever, the only reason you'd pick blue is because you assume there's some subset of people that is so unbelievably stupid that they'll pick blue. You're sacrificing yourself in the hope of saving them.

IMO, the reality is that everyone you think would pick blue would actually pick red. Very few people are that stupid, and even if they are they probably also have access to someone not as stupid who will tell them to press red.

The only people you'd be saving are other suicidal white knights that pick blue to save those imaginary "blue pressers", and the outcome of that, since that blue pressing base doesn't actually exist, is that you're all just committing collective suicide for absolutely no reason.

What "blue pressers vs red pressers" says about our society is best left to philosophers.

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

#157
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.

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

Same as with the original dilemma. Most people are not sociopaths and will choose to cooperate with empathy for everyone else. That's just how species survive and adapt. (1) Alternatively, some people believe that sustained cooperation is in itself a sustained equilibrium. (2)

Most of the world is not as individualistic as Silicon Valley engineers believe in their own ivory towers after decades of reading Ayn Rand.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolut...

(2) https://www.optimallyirrational.com/p/the-true-story-of-the-...

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

#158
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its an interesting psychological test. Because, no, I don't agree, red is the moral choice and also the most rational. Those who think the population is too stupid to behave in regards to their own self preservation might choose blue in an attempt to 'save everyone' and kill themselves. Only one singular choice has zero risk of death, and its red. Everyone chooses red and we all survive.

Red does have risk: you’d be left in a world without things produced by the blue pressers. I suspect that’s red's food, water and shelter. edit: specified who

If you think most farmers, construction workers, factory workers, and so on would press blue then you might want to actually get to know some of them and put them to this test. I don’t think many of them would willingly risk death on something so trivial as a button press. I’ve seen guys get rescued from falling off roofs but as written I don’t think many of the guys running to get their buddy out of his harness and on the ground are going to pick blue if you present it in a really clinical sense.
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