If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by rbits » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

llm_nerd wrote: post #152

hx8 wrote: 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…

If you think that you can somehow get EVERYONE to press red... then surely you could get EVERYONE to vote blue. The outcome would be the same. And guess what... it's a lot easier to get 51% of people to vote blue than it is to get 100% of people to vote red.

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

#332

Post by rbits » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

bastawhiz wrote: post #188

The only reason to pick blue is to try to do the "morally correct" thing to "save" the other people who picked blue. If you're the first person in line to vote, picking blue is neither logical nor moral. There are no other blue choosers who you need to support. "But there will be people who vote after me" well that's their decision to make. "People will vote randomly" okay well if they can't take living or dying seri…

Going to just copy and paste rbren's comment from above:

> Some people seem to be convinced by logical reframings, like "if you jump into a woodchipper you die, but if 50% of people jump into the woodchipper they all survive"

> A logical reframing is not equivalent though! We know everyone else gets the same frame, and most of the problem is predicting what other people will do when presented with this particular two-button frame.

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

#333

Post by jquery » Sun, May 03, 2026, 8:18 AM UTC

sirwhinesalot wrote: post #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…

Well said, this is what I came around to in the end. There would be a few "blue button true believers" very surprised to find out how lonely it is in blue button heaven.