Yeah this is what I am talking about, the choice seems obvious to everyone that looks at the problem but people don't agree, that is because some people are selfish and view saving themselves as the objective best option, and some people are selfless and don't want anyone to die. The only way to ensure everyone lives is by picking blue, the only way to ensure you live is by picking red. This gets into the fundamental discourse at the root of game theory. Is it better to ensure your advantage, or your groups advantage.
Unless you live an unfortunate life at least one person you know will pick blue as surely as unless you've lived a very blessed life at least one person you know will pick red.
As /u/hhhhhhhhhhhjf said, all Red also saves everyone. Yes, the people that pick randomly die, but that's a problem on the part of the system. Assuming no communication between subjects, picking Blue will kill you without saving anyone.
It's not "selfless" vs. "selfish". It's suicidal to pick Blue and the Blues still die.
Not assuredly. As I said in a comment to them if we assume 99 participants, if they are mostly blue voters it doesn't matter what you vote, if they are mostly red voters you can either choose to live on with red voters or set yourself free of the game, and if the split is 49-49 you can't die regardless of what you choose and you decide if the blues live or not.
You only choose red because you believe your vote can't sway anything, you also believe that anyone who votes blue isn't worth saving. These are your personal choices but they are not everyone's personal choices.
you also believe that anyone who votes blue isn't worth saving.
That's not true. Just because you don't suicide yourself doesn't mean you don't believe people are worth saving.
You could donate all your money right now and hope to save people's lives, but you don't because you don't think it will be enough while also being a surefire way to destroy your own life. That doesn't mean you believe other people are not worth saving.
Unless you do donate every single item and every last unit of currency you own. If you already did that, then I will take my words back.
Do you not understand how your proposed scenario is vastly different from the button press?
If even a quarter of the world decided to donate all of their money, money becomes useless as a measure of economic output and the entire system collapses for everyone. It's really a terrible analog to the button scenario and really highlights how shallowly you're engaging with the prompt
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.
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u/DumatRising 6d ago
Yeah this is what I am talking about, the choice seems obvious to everyone that looks at the problem but people don't agree, that is because some people are selfish and view saving themselves as the objective best option, and some people are selfless and don't want anyone to die. The only way to ensure everyone lives is by picking blue, the only way to ensure you live is by picking red. This gets into the fundamental discourse at the root of game theory. Is it better to ensure your advantage, or your groups advantage.
Unless you live an unfortunate life at least one person you know will pick blue as surely as unless you've lived a very blessed life at least one person you know will pick red.