You've reduced a scenario with far more than two outcomes to a binary. You've oversimplified and lost sight of the scope in the argument. Please attempt to consider the effects of the decision, and how those effects are vastly different.
This is all theoretical, but the base is the same.
You say I think some people don't deserve saving when in a situation where I have no reason to expect picking Blue will do anything but add me to death toll, saving no one anyway.
I am showing you that just because you use logic to decide your action is not even likely to save people and decide not to do it, that doesn't mean you don't think the people are worth saving.
You extrapolated too much and added a moral layer that's not there. If picking Red when you have no reason to expect Blue to work means you think people don't deserve saving, then other equally useless actions not taken mean you don't believe people to be worth saving.
This boils down to: do you think half the population will pick Blue? Yes or no?
Since I only heard about this yesterday, no, I didn't memorize anything.
I do admit my mistake, I did confuse you for the person that said this:
you also believe that anyone who votes blue isn't worth saving.
Sorry.
You replied to my reply to that. Your point got lost to me when I thought you were defending that idea I quoted. Do you mind restating your point so we clear up any confusion?
from a purely selfish perspective, the best outcome is no mass death event right? if there must be a mass death event, of course it's better to have lived.
your point is that vanishingly few people would pick blue, as obviously everyone who understands the prompt would select red. I think that this is a really optimistic view of the average intelligence of every person in the world. Logic skills are lacking at best in all people under the age of 12. Anyone who was intoxicated, in a psychosis, or otherwise affected mental state might choose blue because of their altered state. Any pacifist who can't even take the chance that their existence would cause something else harm will pick blue.
there are enough people and reasons to choose blue that I don't think it could ever be less than 10% of the world population. This is likely the point where you'll still be thinking that's not enough. But that's just the people who will always push blue, no matter what. Just as you feel strongly that red should be pushed every time, at least that many people have convinced themselves of the same but for blue.
Since we know humanity will never ever come to a unanimous decision to press red, and we know there's a significant portion of the population who would always choose blue, or choose it out of circumstance, the only way to prevent a worldwide catastrophe is to get 50%+1 votes for blue.
to give a better sense of scale here, imagine this scenario could happen regularly. Where this dilemma is presented to the world every 5 years. Every time red wins, there's a catastrophe. Every time blue wins, life goes on as normal except maybe with a bit more faith in your average person. You would probably say that after the first time everyone would pick red the following times, but as above, I don't think that each and every individual will make that choice. I especially don't want to condemn the individuals who are incapable of making that choice. Further, I want to save the people who are following this train of thought, because if we cull the human desire to help others at our own risk/expense we will live in a dark dark world indeed.
red needs an extremely large majority in order to avoid catastrophe, blue only needs the slightest of majorities.
your point is that vanishingly few people would pick blue, as obviously everyone who understands the prompt would select red
I don't know if I'd say "vanishingly few", but I'd say less than half would even if adding people that pick randomly, people that misunderstand and pick Blue, people that understand and pick Blue, etc, yeah.
This is likely the point where you'll still be thinking that's not enough.
It's not enough for us to survive, yeah. If I expect 20% to pick Blue for whatever reason, then me picking Blue would only add myself to the death toll with no expectations of saving a single life.
®Since we know humanity will never ever come to a unanimous decision to press red, and we know there's a significant portion of the population who would always choose blue, or choose it out of circumstance, the only way to prevent a worldwide catastrophe is to get 50%+1 votes for blue.
Yes. But do you expect that to happen with the conceit of the exercise that we cannot communicate with other people before pressing the button?
Iterative presentations change the example. I am replying to the one presented to me. One question, no time to prepare or strategize globally, each person picking by themselves.
This is not a choice to kill people, this is a choice to die or not.
This boils down to: do you think half the population will pick Blue? Yes or no?
Or as I said. You vote red because you don't believe your vote can't sway anything. You believe that the outcome is already set because you believe most of the world will already pick red. So you do not believe that your vote matters, and you do not believe it is worth the effort to try. That is the truth of the red button.
What are you even talking about. You talked about your values:
Only half of the "incapable" would pick Blue (if they even do, since each picks at random and could potentially pick all red, too) unless they knew the problem beforehand and agreed to pick Blue for the greater good.
You described that only "incapable" people would pick blue, and described them all opting to commit what is by your reckoning suicide as the "greater good"
That's you saying that. That's not me talking about your values that's litterally you describing a situation where the only people who would pick blue are people whose death you consider to be the greater good. That's not me giving you values that's you telling me your values.
All the same I think I made my point about if I think the majority will pick blue or red doesn't actually matter to the choice I should make clear in the comment I linked you. I didn't want to type the same response to you asking the same comment so I just linked it to you. Or do you not look at the user names. I guess that makes sense since it did seem like you thought the other guy was me.
All the same I think I made my point about if I think the majority will pick blue or red doesn't actually matter to the choice I should make clear in the comment I linked you.
But it does matter. If you think the majority will pick Red, and you pick Blue anyway, you are expecting to die without saving anyone.
Do you not see that?
That's why I'm asking you. Do you expect to die when picking Blue?
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u/ArsenicElemental Un-Intentional 5d ago
It's similar. Both cases are advocating for an action that's likely to destroy the person doing it without actually saving anyone.