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

71–80 of 333 posts

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

#71

Post by DetroitThrow »

allajfjwbwkwja wrote: post #67
DetroitThrow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Left alone, everyone rational would pick blue, actually.

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 a dent in "red==rational" conjecture: https://www.joehallock.com/edu/COM498/media/graphs/fav-color...

I hope this makes sense!

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

#72

Post by troglodytetrain »

I would describe it like this. We are all standing on the edge of a cliff. You can choose the 'Red' option. That option means you don't jump off the cliff. Or you can choose the 'Blue' option. You jump off the cliff. If 50% of individuals choose also the 'Blue' option then there will be a net to catch you so you don't all die.

So, now we agree? Red option it is every time.

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

#73

Post by astrocat »

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 wind up dead. And that doesn't seem like an altruistic position? It seems more like self-martyring. Well meaning, but actually making the likelihood of a bad outcome worse.

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

#74

Post by halter73 »

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…

> 6. People who realize the game theory optimal strategy is to announce you're pressing blue and convince everyone else to press blue, but privately press red.

A lot of this analysis depends on accurately guessing how people will react, so it's probably hard to say any strategy is game theory optimal without a lot of unrealistic simplifying assumptions.

In a world where you're able to convince a lot of people anything, it might better to convince everyone to press red. If it looks like 99.99% of people will press red without your influence, you're probably best off spending your time convincing the .01% who might press blue not to do so.

It also has the upside of not making you a dirty liar. I wonder, what would Kant think about this hypothetical?

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

#75

Post by troglodytetrain »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #61
troglodytetrain wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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?

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

#76

Post by cg5280 »

troglodytetrain wrote: post #58

If red pressers always survive then everyone should pick red. Its incredibly and obviously so and I'm concerned by the fact that so many commenters aren't aware of this.

Red is the obvious choice from a self-preservation perspective but not a moral one. You're seeing here in these comments that there are lots of blue pressers; they would all die. This creates a snowballing incentive to push blue: people dying is bad.

There's several reasons why someone might make the "wrong" choice, and reaching 50% + 1 on blue is way easier than reaching 100% on red. And sure enough, the polls I've seen have shown blue with a majority every time.

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

#77

Post by wavemode »

vmg12 wrote: post #26
wavemode wrote: post #11

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 dilemma is that a lot of people will press blue so if red gets above 50% a large number of selfless but not game-theory aware people will die.

That's still not really a dilemma. It would be a dilemma if it were up to me to save those people who choose blue. But it's not up to me - it's up to a massive gamble that over 50% of people (over 4 BILLION people) will vote with me as well. Like... huh? Are we being serious here? We want to play poker with the lives of billions?

Maybe if the required percentage was lower this would compute better in my brain lol

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

#78

Post by owenpalmer »

ertgbnm wrote: post #54
wavemode wrote: post #11

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.

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

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

#79

Post by allajfjwbwkwja »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #71
allajfjwbwkwja wrote: post #67

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…

Only irrational people will pick blue. Let's say that's ~3% of the population. Trying to get another 47% of the population to pick blue risks losing all of them as well. That's not ethical.

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

#80

Post by xenocratus »

cg5280 wrote: post #48
wavemode wrote: post #11

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…

Red is optimal from a self preservation perspective but is also the antisocial option. Picking blue saves everyone.

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.

Post reply on HN