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If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
311–320 of 333 posts
Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
#312This 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…
This is one of only a few analyses that really captures the big picture. The other ones make the point that it is impossible to get a group of more than three people to make a unanimous decision, so the best decision is one that takes that into account.
Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
> is almost certainly not an accidental alignment with political colors. If you are in the US, Please keep in mind that the association of colour to political wing is radically different, even the exact opposite, in other countries. > It’s telling that some folks think 100% voting one way is just as attainable as more than 50% voting a certain way. I don't see anybody arguing this. The entire point of the red strateg…
> The entire point of the red strategy is that it is not dependent on how many press red. Yes, but depending on the specifics of the actual implementation of this problem there are extended consequences. What is missed by the red POV is, in some implementations of this, you are losing collaboration/collaborative populations. Society works because of both competition and collaboration. Some people can’t see anything b…
> you are losing collaboration/collaborative populations. Society works because of both competition and collaboration. Some people can’t see anything but one side of that.
I don't follow. This would only make sense if we infer that pushing red demonstrates that a person is somehow incapable of cooperating on ordinary societal endeavours. I think that's laughably untrue. I disagree that a society without blue-pushers falls apart, because the button test is not an accurate or even reasonable proxy for whether someone is "collaborative". I parse it as more like a proxy of whether someone is "suicidal".
Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the world where Well, no; in this world you pressed red too . Therefore, what you "know" is that nobody alive would be so foolish as to risk their own life for a mere chance at saving you when you're suicidal, given no clear incentive and no consequences for staying alive beyond... what they've already chosen. For that matter, one can argue that only in the world where blues get the slimmest possible 50%+1 major…
And what's your point? That I don't realize that a bunch of assholes who don't care about the people who aren't clever enough to figure out Prisoner Dilemma style puzzzles have no problem knowing the rest of the world are assholes just like them? And that the only opposite to "asshole" is "hero"? Do you also think that any male opposed to sexism is a white knight expecting to get sex out of it? And that anyone who do…
>And what's your point?
My point is what I said, no more, no less.
> That I don't realize that a bunch of assholes who don't care about the people who aren't clever enough to figure out Prisoner Dilemma style puzzzles have no problem knowing the rest of the world are assholes just like them? And that the only opposite to "asshole" is "hero"?
None of this even vaguely resembles what I wrote, nor any reasonable conclusion therefrom. Also, this is not a "prisoner dilemma style puzzle". The game theory involved isn't remotely as interesting; we're only talking about it because people impute moral consequences to the choice.
> Do you also think that any male opposed to sexism is a white knight expecting to get sex out of it? And that anyone who doesn't agree with your logic is being politically correct?
... I legitimately have no idea how it even occurred to you to ask these questions, especially on a site like Hacker News, and am not interested in attempting to answer them.
I will say, however, that "opposed to sexism" objectively does not mean the same thing as "feminist"; because my only vague remote wild guesses as to how you could come up with these questions, entail falsely believing in such an equivalence. I hope I could educate you today.
Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
This doesn't seem to be a game that tries to be particularly clever--one button could kill you, the other certainly won't. Trusting that nearly everyone will avoid pressing the button that could kill them seems a reasonable assumption, and it's not necessarily an indication of a lack of altruism.
One button means you almost certainly contributed to homicide, since the odds of everyone pressing red is essentially 0%. The other one does not contribute to homicide. The right answer, by the way, is to not press either button. "The only winning move is not to play."
"Homicide" requires direct causation. The entire concept of "contributed to homicide" is incoherent.
Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
> If the majority of people can’t be bothered to press the button
It is not a matter of "can't be bothered". This is blatantly dishonest framing.
> It’s purely selfish
It costs nobody else anything. Literally all they have to do is also push red.
I said the idea is to appear noble and altruistic. Writing off alternative options as "selfish" is, inherently, doing exactly that.
Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 th…
> If the majority of people can’t be bothered to press the button It is not a matter of "can't be bothered". This is blatantly dishonest framing. > It’s purely selfish It costs nobody else anything. Literally all they have to do is also push red. I said the idea is to appear noble and altruistic. Writing off alternative options as "selfish" is, inherently, doing exactly that.
You didn’t even bother reading what I wrote.
For me, blue is the purely selfish choice. Because I have no interest in living in a world where red wins a majority on this one. It’s not even a tough call.
Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's naive to think that 100% of people will press the red button. Those who press the blue button are trying to save those who press the blue button. If they weren't trying to save each other, they wouldn't have to.
No, some of those who press the blue button are trying to save people who press the blue button for other reasons.
What other reasons?
Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
#319This 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…
This question is genius like the way secret hitler is a genius game.
All the different ways to frame it and think about it, and the balance between them all.
Saying "I would press blue" is different than actually pressing blue. Many people have insisted if I strike it rich, I'm going to give all my money away, and then... they don't.
Oh and the amount of ways you can ask it differently "If more than 50% vote for Trump/Kamala everyone lives, but if less than 50% all Trump/Kamala voters die" - and then seeing how the responses change. And the way the whole calculus changes depending on what other parameters could be added/presumed.
Once again just such a good rage-bait question.
Though I can't for the life of me figure out why people get so mad at people's answers, unless it's like in secret hitler where someone accuses of me being a fascist, and we get all mad, but we all laugh at the end because it's just a silly game, like this silly but fun question.
Re: If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
#320it's a neat test to find out how many people around us are fine with genocide.
(when you strip the story to the fundamentals, the question posed is about acceptability of mass murder)
Even this subjective interpretation shows why the question is so good. Someone on the other side would say the fundamentals are completely different.
It is meant to point out how many people say they would be willing to sacrifice even their very lives for a stranger, but in reality they only sacrifice if they already know others had to sacrifice and now they're forced to.
Like if you took the combined wealth of every person who thinks we should tax people more to help the less fortunate - do they give anything freely? They want others to sacrifice first. I'll believe people would actually press blue in a majority, when I see people who claim we should pay more taxes, voluntarily paying more themselves.
I'd love to live in a world where I was confident a vast majority of people would press blue. But I've literally seen people say they would press blue - then go on to say that in a communist revolution certainly we will have to end the lives of all the bourgeois.
I would most definitely press red, because I don't believe anywhere near half the population are actually that good, and don't think I'm a good enough person to actually think I'd risk pressing blue. (Trump won the popular vote in America, and so based on the rhetoric I hear from my left leaning acquaintances, neither would they)
Sad world really. Also why this question is so good.