Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

shankwiler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 333 posts

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

#231

Post by [deleted] »

troglodytetrain wrote: post #53
tristanj wrote: post #29

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…

Your entire logical chain, and your self importance, well, it explains why I'm always picking red. If you win and most pick blue, I'm safe, otherwise, I'm also safe. You get to feel intellectually superior choosing the only option that can lead you to die. The simple answer is everyone should pick red.

[deleted]

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

#232

Post by card_zero »

empthought wrote: post #181
bot403 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not have been completely avoidable though. What if the maximum number of people who would ever vote for blue is 30% If that's the case then it's truly impossible to save them. Your assumption is there is more than 50% of people who will vote blue or could be convinced to do so. It's a terrifying thought that there could be such a deficit of empathetic people. But without any evidence you're just hoping based o…

Then I’d say you either really deserve the world you get when red wins, or you don’t really deserve the world you get when blue wins.

I notice that this thing you and others call empathy doesn't extend to the outgroup: if anybody doesn't subscribe to it, fuck 'em, is the general sentiment.

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

#233

Post by blargey »

troglodytetrain wrote: post #75
DetroitThrow wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The simple answer is everyone should pick red. The simplest answer is that everyone should pick blue, actually. This is because choosing blue results in no consequences, but choosing red does result in consequences. Why not choose the simple option? It's literally the "no consequences" button. Seems like these reds are overcomplicating a simple question.

Please explain. Red guarantees safety. Why wouldn't everyone pick red? The only option that leads to a statistical chance of death is blue?

The framing leads many people to pick blue for its altruistic framing. Enough, in fact, that 50% quorum is honestly not difficult. A lot of red-advocates seem to have a False Consensus Effect going where they're convinced way more people than in reality will interpret this "dilemma" as "do you step in the human grinder in hopes of jamming it", and act accordingly.

A 70% or 90% requirement, or just explicitly framing it as "do you step into the human grinder" would make it vastly easier to aim for 100% red, but we're dealing with the literal words of the "everyone lives button" here.

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

#234

Post by card_zero »

swed420 wrote: post #95
owenpalmer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps red is selfish, but blue is most certainly foolish.

Or blue doesn't want to live in the world where only selfish/cynical people remain.

Confusingly, though, as you are of course a nice person, if you vote red you'd demonstrate that some red voters are nice, and then the choice is less severe. Then voting red is like "I embrace humanity, warts and all", while voting blue is like "I cannot tolerate sharing the planet with anyone even slightly impure".

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

#235

Post by card_zero »

hx8 wrote: post #200
meeton wrote: post #186

One extra consideration I haven't seen flagged: if you pick Red and the blue pressers die then everyone who's left alive definitely pressed Red. Then there will be a society-wide tacit agreement that this was a fine thing to do, blue pressers were all dumb and had it coming, and no-one needs to feel bad about it. So you won't even need to feel guilty.

First they came for the blue button pressers, and I did not speak out. Red button pressing is killing people that didn't think/act like them. You don't need to feel guilty about it, because this type of thing happens all the time.

First they came for the ones waving their hands in the air and shouting "pick me!"

Then, they stopped.

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

#238

Post by hollerith »

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.

That is true in isolation, but the reason we study problems like this one is to try to gain insight into our society (or our minds) and in our society, toddlers and people with dementia have guardians that make important decisions for them. Consequently, even after your comment, I'm still struggling to see how this toy problem or game sheds any light on anything I care about. Contrast that with prisoner's dilemma, Newcomb's problem or the ultimatum game, which sheds a lot of light.

But this is HN, so people are going to discuss it just because it is fun to discuss it.

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

#239

Post by empthought »

card_zero wrote: post #232
empthought wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I’d say you either really deserve the world you get when red wins, or you don’t really deserve the world you get when blue wins.

I notice that this thing you and others call empathy doesn't extend to the outgroup: if anybody doesn't subscribe to it, fuck 'em, is the general sentiment.

I have no idea what you are referring to. This isn’t a question of ingroup or outgroup.

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

#240

Post by happytoexplain »

I like this thought experiment, because it's not actually a dilemma, since the answer is obvious, but it creates the meta-thought-experiment conversation of trying to understand the reasoning of blue-pickers in the comments.

Whereas most thought experiments try to balance two things equally, which creates a lot of debate, this one pushes the options as far apart as possible without quite going fully black-and-white (which would sound like, "If you press the red button, you live; if you press the blue button, you die."). This creates less disagreement, but maximizes the size of the disagreement that remains.

Post reply on HN