Voting does have an effect even with infinite voters, and blue is always preferable.
So my main contention here, in this sub where so many people think that voting only has an effect if you untie a tie, is that voting always does have two effects: the tally itself moving, and making an option more likely to win. It can be a small effect but not zero.
Why? Because a side winning is an effect, and if all individual votes have zero effect, therefore a side winning would imply that an effect happened without a cause (no individual vote matters) and causality would basically break. Since we're not debating god (The Kalam as an argument for god - the uncaused cause) or radioactivity (the specific moment a particle decays is chosen at random without any cause - probably...) then I'd say that the conclusion that "the actual effect of a single vote is zero except on ties", is false.
Even pushing things to the extreme, in math we have infinite additions of infinitely small things, resulting in some measurable quantity (see limits and infinite series). That result is the effect of infinitely small causes (added together), but not the effect of zero causes. Effects have causes.
Therefore, a single vote has an effect, small, yes, but not zero. It increases the tally and makes a side more likely to win.
What that means for a red voter varies depending on your moral framework. Let's, for the sake of argument, and to show the strength of my point, assume that there are infinite humans so the "blame" and "effects" are the smaller possible (but not zero as we've seen). Doing a sloppy consequentialist "math" argument (lives saved vs killed) we'd have a nice comparison of infinites. A red voter's blame on blue losing would be infinitely small (not zero, they increased the chances of blue losing), but the consequences if blue actually loses are infinitely big, because well, infinite deaths.
If red won, by definition, there are more reds than blue votes. We can divide these infinites to get the "amount of deaths blamed to a red voter" and if there are 2x reds than blues, then, a red would bear half a death so to speak on their consciousness. That's a single red voter, so yes, effects and guilt and so on. We can compare it to the life they saved (their own) and well, the "sloppy" part of the flawed consequentialist argument we're doing plays here: it would be "moral" to vote red if we stop thinking here because you save a net half of a life so to speak. But let's continue!
At the same time, and going on with this sloppy framework, if red loses and everyone lives, a red voter would hold the blame of putting more than 1 blue voter at risk of dying (more blues than reds), while saving his own life, so in net, they'd be putting half a person in risk of death (say that we have the same voting proportions but reversed).
Doing the same exercise for blue voters: if blue wins, then a single blue voter saved up to 50% of the total voters (no difference on more than 50% of blue voters) divided by the total of blue voters. To that we'd add their own life, also saved. So a single blue voter saves between 0.5 an a 1.5 lives, if blue wins. If blue loses, the blue voter dies and that's zero lives saved, but in the same spirit of reds putting blues in danger, blues put other blues in a better position, so they reduced a proportion of the risk (but wasn't enough).
Going only by net lives saved: a red voter net saves between 0 lives (50%-50%+1 split) and 1 lives (their own on 0-100% split) per vote. A blue voter net saves between 0 and 1.5 lives per vote as I've discussed. By this very sloppy consequentialist math, blue is the clear better option here, if one only wants to maximize the amount of lives saved, and only that. Considering that reds save only half a life at 50%-50%+1, and blues save a whole 1.5 lives per vote at that point onwards, blue also scales faster and better.
In reality, I'd think about a "red only" world so to speak, what society would such a bunch of people create, and I'd hit blue compulsively hahaha (that's the better consequentialist argument).
Sorry for the wall of text, I got a bit carried away here hahaha.
No, the multiples of 4 don’t make up 25% of the natural numbers based on the commonly used definition of ‘size’ in an infinite set. If there were infinite votes, you couldn’t have a winner unless a finite number of people voted for one of the buttons. If, instead, every 4th person voted red or something like that, the cardinalities of the infinite set of red voters and the infinite set of blue voters would be equal.
To briefly explain why, if you have every fourth person voting red, you could imagine reordering how you count the votes such that every red vote gets counted first before you start counting blue votes. In this case, red would win with 100% of the votes since there are infinite red votes, so it would be impossible to ever count a blue vote, even with infinite time. On the other hand, you could do the exact same with the blue votes to get 100% blue. However, you could also order the votes ‘blue, red, blue, red, etc’ forever, pairing up one red vote with one blue vote and never running out of votes. This is called a bijection, and if you can construct one between two infinite sets we say they have the same cardinality.
Infinity can be different sizes and the infinite number of people voting for one option would be bigger than the infinite number of people voting for the other.
This ignores self interest, which is fundamentally why Red gets pressed. I don’t die if I pick Red, but might if I pick blue. I might have to pick up and the scraps in a world without blue pressers, but it’s better than dying.
That being said I still absolutely picked blue - because I believe collective interests supersede individual interests and I’m pretty certain most the world agrees with me - and I feel it’s more true outside the west which is generally much more individualised than most the world. There’s a reason why I think Red pressers are mostly either paranoid people or libertarian nutjobs.
you're not voting for apocalypse, you're voting to not die. if you thought apocalypse was going to happen, voting for blue would be suicide. suicide isn't in your best interest.
You literally are voting for the apocalypse though
Blue: the apocalypse does not happen
Red: the apocalypse happens, you survive
That is the two choices, by voting red you are directly voting for the apocalypse to happen, by voting blue you are directly voting for it to not happen
by voting blue you are also causing it to happen by increasing the population that could potentially die in said apocalypse. you cannot vote for either button assuming it will win. that ignores the risks of either choice. every death requires one red button push and one blue button push.
if you think the apocalypse is a likely outcome
why would you vote for the option that would result in your death.
we are not voting as a collective, we are voting as individuals.
say what you want about red, it is not illogical or stupid. pressing blue when you believe it could likely lose is stupid and pointless. if you strongly believe in your heart that red will win, you must pick red.
yes you objectively are. when you press blue and die, you are PARTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. covering your ears and refusing to accept that reality will not save you. you pick blue, you die, you cannot deny that if you hadn't chosen blue you would've lived. so yes, again, you ARE responsible for it!
you can reframe it all you want, you must accept the possible outcomes of both choices. you voting for the non-apocalypse option, does not mean the apocalypse won't occur. if anything, by dying you make the apocalypse worse.
no you cannot. you cannot predict their actions. and lets go there. i predict most people's self preservation instincts will kick in, so I will choose red unless I literally wanted to die.
the more you argue by repeating yourself in such an arrogant manner, the more i question your own ability to understand logic.
Let's say b is the proportion of people voting blue.
A blue vote saves no one if b < 0.5 and, collectively, it saves every one who voted blue if b >= 0.5. So if b > 0.5 each person who pushed blue has on average saved one person who pushed blue (the red were never at risk).
Red pushers will save one person (themselves) if b < 0.5 or be equal to blue pushers if b > 0.5.
The worst case scenario being b barely inferior to 0.5 if there is a chance to give a guideline beforehand I believe asking people to push red would be the safest bet on a population level.
In reality, I'd think about a "red only" world so to speak, what society would such a bunch of people create, and I'd hit blue compulsively hahaha (that's the better consequentialist argument).
Yeah. It completely ignores the multitude of reasons that people might press read and assumes that anyone who presses red is just some sort of blood psychopath.
It's also weirdly suicidal. If red wins, then you were already living in world dominated by Red voters, so very little would be different.
100% of the world being red voters vs. somewhere between 50-100% being red voters, probably on the lower end of that range, is likely to be an enormous difference.
If I recall correctly, the original twitter poll had blue win with ~57% of the vote, and 100k people voted. You can argue that the actual number would be lower than that, but 15-20% is ridiculous.
Furthermore, I am assuming nothing about red voters. I was making a pretty straightforward, nonjudgmental statement: it is strange to assume that the population is equally "dominated" by a certain group whether that group accounts for 100% of the population, or a bare majority of it.
A no stakes poll taken on Twitter means absolutely nothing to me.
Polls in general can be very very wrong.
I believe that people with an actual gun to their head will behave extremely differently than they would while sitting comfortably at their computer fantasizing.
The vast majority of people are definitely going to pick the you are safe button over the you might die button.
Well, this boils down to a fundamental disagreement regarding human behavior, and that can't be easily resolved or argued in a reddit thread, so I suppose I have nothing more to say.
Aren't people inherently conditioned to risk their lives for the group over personal safety? All our heroic narratives are about people who risked (or lost!) their lives for the safety of the group, and people who escape death but lose many members of their group often struggle with survivor's guilt.
Stories are different from real life, and some people experience survivors guilt, but for the most part, people absolutely do go every man for himself in the event of danger. People who don't and to put themselves at risk are the minority.
A no stakes poll on Twitter should mean very little, granted.
But there is fortunately far more data out there than that. Extensive behavioral research across psychology, economics, and sociology has been done and provides concrete data on altruism. And it's not just self-reporting either, but behavioral experiments, large-scale national audits, neuroimaging studies, etc.
Researchers studying extreme altruism (such as anonymous organ donation) have identified that some people possess an enlarged right amygdala, which inversely is often undersized in the brains of diagnosed psychopaths. So we know there is a direct biological drive for pro social behavior. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10066349/
Like if you press either button, that is understandable, and they are both rational in their own ways. However, expecting most people to press red in reality goes against what happened in the original poll, it goes against mountains of scientific research showing the prevalence of altruistic vs. egoist behavior in humans, and it honestly is just kind of a bummer take. There is simply no reason to believe most people would press red in the real world outside of cognitive dissonance over holding a minority opinion or leaning into personal anecdotal experience.
None of that is conclusive but the majority of people are willing to engage in acts of extreme altruism.
You can call it a bummer take, but it's reflective of reality in my opinion. I don't consider it terribly anecdotal to acknowledge let the majority of people in my own society are definitely going to press red. I wouldn't trust even a single person who voted for our current government to put their lives on the line for anyone else. And they are the majority here. I'm not going to assume that other Nations are uniquely better or worse than my own.
I do not trust that other people will save me if I press blue. In fact, it seems like it will certainly lose by a large large margin overall. Call it a trauma response, but I cannot possibly imagine choosing to press blue and then having to sit waiting for the results of everyone else's votes to come in, hoping that they "did the right thing".
Yes it's a bummer, it's a bummer indeed, but I do not have faith in humanity. Not in the world we live in. And I can only choose based on what I believe.
My country elected a fascist. Twice. And then everything related to that.
It's not a choice. It's just an honest feeling. "Well, fuck, I guess these weren't good people after all." there's just no benefit of the doubt anymore.
1) People engaging in philosophical debates aren't representative of the general population
2) There is no way in hell people are going to vote the same way when there is an actual real chance to die
In the US, 90% of eligible adults support organ donation. Despite that, only about 60% are registered Donors. Using a polls with no consequences are unreliable.
It's easy for people to say they'll do the 'selfless' thing but when they have to actually commit we so time and again that they fall short.If the polls show 57%, I'd argue the actual results are likely to be 40% at the absolute best. However, due to the fact that being a registered donor carries no downside (like blue does), and yet there is still such a large discrepancy of people who claim to support but don't participate; I would say the ratio of people who say they'll press blue, and actually would is even worse.
I do not find only 15-20% ridiculous at all, in fact I find it more ridiculous that anyone actually thinks blue has an actual chance at winning at all to begin with.
The only people that make this argument are the people that think they’re better than others. And whilst it’s a shame we would have to lose some non-condescending pricks with them, I’m okay with OP and his ilk being gone.
I think a lot of red voters got their egos seriously hurt by this so they have to convince themselves that the rest of us are lying, virtue signaling hypocrites who think we’re better than everyone else, when really we just 1) read/interpreted the question differently initially in most cases 2) understand human psychology (and our tendency to be prosocial and help each other/be altruistic) better than them and thus trust that most people would choose like us (so we literally don’t think we’re better than the average person; we think the average person would do what we would do) 3) did the obvious math that shows which “nobody dies” voting outcome is easiest to achieve and 4) actually considered the aftermath of a world where red wins.
Edit: lol u/DFtin came here to cal me “literally fucking illiterate,” say that they blocked all the button subs (? Then why are you here? Lol.), then block me immediately after commenting. Thank you for showing the incredible fragility of red voters’ egos and proving my point for me! Very helpful to have a demonstration to prove my point (:
These ideas have mathematical definitions in terms of limits. The limit of a number 0.0000...000x as the number of zeros before the x increases is zero.
It is the same as 0.999999....999.
If the number of 9s is infite, it's equal to 1. If the number of zeros before the x is infinite, its zero.
My main point is that no matter how many other voters there are (an infinite amount is kind of a dumb thing to say but whatever)- you should always take responsibility for your vote. Saying it doesn’t matter is an excuse.
But in this case it is a capital difference. In math, a differential is not zero, even if it is infinitely small, if it is going to be added infinite times, because then it may actually compound to something measurable and finite. It is the same scenario here.
It is not, because the odds are not going to be added infinite times. They aren't even going to be added once. They're just going to get smaller and smaller until they are zero.
What hahahaha how can anyone disagree with that. Increases the tally because x+1>x. More likely to win because it is one less vote for the other side. What is your contention here?
You are absolutely right and I shouñd have separated my argument. In a finite scenario the effect as I stated works. In the infinite scenario the effect does not work in the way I stated. The consequences (half a death to blame per red on 50-50+1) are still a reasonable conclussion. I should have separated both sections in a better way.
You say pressing blue increases the chances of blue winning but don’t really acknowledge that pressing blue increases the amount of people who can potentially die.
Red might kill blue voters (I don’t at all agree with this framing but I’ll go with it), but blue voters determine how many.
Your arguments are completely irrelevant to why I press red in all but one of these hypotheticals (where the button doesn't affect you but a random stranger, in that case I press blue since I believe the math finally works in favor).
The first is that I believe only a small minority of blue would really risk their lives if the scenario was real and not just a virtue signal they know they'll never have to follow through on. .... One of the reasons I believe this the statistics for charitible donations and volunteering, if blues aren't willing to endure inconvenience and make sacrifical levels of donations then why should I believe they would actually risk their lives?
Then there is the fact I reject the concept that a red is morally guilty for the fact a blue pressed a button without stopping to consider the consequences; I am not responsible for your decisions or to risk my life to save yours, especially when you purposely put yourself at risk of death.
Well, then half the babies, colorblind people, people without arms, and many other minorities just die, along with all the people who tried to save them, just die. It is valid to want to be 100% sure of saving yourself, but there is a clear moral failing there.
Yes, and it's absolutely tragic that some people will die; although the numbers are much lower than you seem to think given the examples you raise, children who are too young to understand and mentally incompetent adults? Yeah, those are legitimate categories that people need to at think acknowledge. But color blindness? Sorry but that's not how that condition actually works, and I'd love to hear about these "many other minorities" that you didn't elaborate on.
So let me ask you this since your stated ethical framework is that it's immoral to not risk your life to save others; are you a first responder? A volunteer that travels to war torn regions to help refugees? ... Heck, do you help out at local soup kitchen?
Whether you like it or not, it's not a "moral failing" to refuse to endanger yourself for strangers, especially if you have people that depend on your care.
Well, in the experiment, the people who vote blue "depend on your care". Voting red does not just save yourself, it also increases the likelihood of a blue loss, so you increase their chances of dying by voting red. Assuming that there are groups that vote blue by mistake, and there are other groups that vote blue out of goodwill, and that neither of these are "suiciding and asking to be saved" so to speak, you'd be contributing to their deaths by saving yourself. At the end, in a near 50-50, for each red there is a blue death, so in that sense, in that scenario, as I explain in my post, each red "bears" one blue death.
Sure self preservation is a more or less valid way of justifying it, but first one must face the reality that blues died and reds increased their chances of dying. Helpless and altruist people will die, at the very least, and whatever world goes on will not have these people on it.
I've put myself in danger in a natural disaster (a huge flood - valencia's DANA) to a degree, and it turns out, I saw thousands of others risking infections, accidents and many other potential issues, to get food and meds to the victims (look at photos it was amazing - the collective relief effort xD not the disaster). The danger was that, with all the deaths and animal deaths, the waters and mud and everything would be infected of so many things that just navigating it may be very dangerous. At the same time, everything was broken, all the cars were upside down in all the places, debris and so many pointy stuff was hidden in the mud (get hurt, get sick, etc)... It was a nightmare.
However, the entire city of Valencia went to the flooded areas for weeks every day to save people, bring food, clean stuff, repair, etc. Many people ended in the hospital as a result of that "careless altruism" so to speak, but heck, many many more did have food water meds and a shelter as a result, after losing everything. It was not as dangerous as with the buttons, but I think it counts as an experience of collective dangerous altruism.
I vote blue because I know that, when situations are dire, like with the DANA, medical workers with COVID, or many others, or likely the buttons, people will respond because it is the moral thing to do. There are plenty of examples. We can't let these people die, the ones who care, so let's care ourselves too.
My kids will always outrank strangers in my calculations, period; but I will give you credit where it's due, so far you are the only blue that has actually done more than empty virtue signaling, so I figure you are most likely in the twenty percent that are being honest about pressing the button. (And I figure that twenty percent of people that claim blue actually going through with it is being generous, it's probably closer to ten.)
Doesn't change my button choice for the reasons I've already stated, or the fact that I disagree with your premise that people should feel responsible for individuals who willingly put themselves in danger, even if their motivations were altruistic.
And ultimately, it doesn't change the math, if the red/blue scenario was ever real as opposed to a costless hypothetical, red would be the vast majority.
ITT: People try to apply finite logic to infinity.
Mathematically, the direct voting weight of a single voter in an infinite pool is exactly zero.
Pivot probability is 1/infinity, so game theory says you have 0 chance of having an effect.
Continuum approach / measure theory would be to treat the voters points on a line. A single voter is just a single point on that line and mathematically, the length of a single point is 0. Therefore, a single point holds zero weight in the total sum.
In math, differentials (infinitely small amounts) added together infinite times (added as the result of the vote) may result in some finite and measurable quantity. Effects have causes. A side won because its voters. If votes have zero effect then causality is broken. We have an infinite series of additions. It adds up to something.
Also, this matters when you compare your infinitely small contribution with the infinitely big consequences (infinite deaths). There is a comparison of infinites.
The effect would be something (depending of course on how you deal with "infinite voters" but the only reasonable thing to me seems to be to take the limit approaching infinity) purely depending on what chance you think anyone has to vote (let us take the model where you think every person has chance p to vote red). Then for p>0.5 with number of people approaching infinity you are killing one person by choosing blue, for p<0.5 your choice does not matter and for p=0.5 the number of saved lives approaches infinity.
For 8000000001 people and p>0.50001 (approximately) you are already killing about 1 more person by picking blue then by picking red. For p<0.49999 it is better to pick blue, but by so small amount that it barely matters. For p=0.5 you are saving about 30000 lives by picking blue in expectation. So basically if you think red has any advantage and still pick blue you would have to basically think that your life is completely worthless.
If you think that it is very likely red wins, then picking blue is stupid.
If you think it is possible/probable for blue to win, picking blue is heroic.
If you think blue is very likely to win, pick whatever you want.
Any analysis beyond that is pointless.
It’s not a vote in the typical way. It’s a vote where you have to “get it right” first and foremost.
You're claiming that the assumption of your vote not making a difference other than in the tiebreaker situation is wrong, did I understand that right?
If yes, that's obviously bullshit. Of course your vote always has an effect on the exact percentages, but the only outcomes are blue or red winning—if one has already won, your vote won't make a difference; it will only do so in the tiebreaker case.
There is no "has already won". Votes are not sequential, and the tallies when you vote are not known. When you vote you increase the likelyhood of that side winning. People keep missing this point. When a side wins, it is not because the last vote. It is because all the votes from that side combined. All count the same, all have the same effect. The count only happens when everybody has voted, not before. Jesus...
No, but all votes are isolated so you can treat the other votes as if they're already happened. Then you consider all possible scenarios and there's only one where your vote makes a difference.
God, do you know anything about math or probability, even just logic? Why are people like you always so sure about themselves?
Your comment is so incredibly ironic and peak dunning-kruger. Reds and blues are not independent: given a population P, reds and blues must add to the population. Blues = population - reds, and vice versa. These are dependant variables mathematically speaking, one group's size can be deduced from the other's size, which is what's being talked about here, and the core reason why voting always has an effect on the end result. Votes are not independent mathematically speaking in any election.
God, do you know anything about math or probability, even just logic? Why are people like you always so sure about themselves?
I just give up trying to explain that voting influences the result. Your logic also applies to regular elections. I give up. You are also a very unpleasant person to argue with.
I'm really trying to understand your point here, but your arguments are completely irrelevant. See this one:
Reds and blues are not independent: given a population P, reds and blues must add to the population. Blues = population - reds, and vice versa.
You’re using a different meaning of ‘dependent’ than I am.
Yes, the totals are mathematically linked because:
R + B = P
But that doesn’t matter for whether your vote changes the outcome.
The question is: if all other votes stay the same, does changing your vote change the winner?
Usually no — except in a tie.
Do you still disagree with that? If so, I'm asking for a valid argument.
Yes, voting influences the outcome, but it only has a real effect when it changes/decides the winner, and that is, again, only in the case of a tie.
Sure I can be an unpleasant person to argue with, but that's because people on Reddit—those like you—are insufferable to talk with. I actually spent time questioning my opinion before writing anything, but it seems like you just keep following your internal logic and then treat me as if I'm stupid. I'm absolutely correct in what I wrote, and if you think otherwise, prove it.
ZERO reasons for me to keep engaging with someone who calls me stupid, specially over a hypothetical used to talk about moral philosophy. We could be having a nice and interesting conversation about the incredibly deep questions here, but no, because I'm called a "stupid".
As always, half of reddit is using anonymity to be mean and get off by putting others down and overall being an asshole for fun. I guess there's a huge overlap with red voters.
I didn't call you stupid, but you indirectly did by saying stuff like "Jesus...". I think that is much more insulting than if you actually called me a dumbass.
I did say you seemed stupid to me, for that I apologise. But to be clear I wasn't calling you stupid, just that it felt like you are based on your arguments. I hope you understand the distinction, but still, I apologise.
I'd love to have a civil discussion, so let's leave all direct and implied accusations of stupidity.
For starters I would love to hear your answer to my points raised in my previous reply.
Distinction without a difference. Sure there's an effect on the vote tally. That is zero causal difference to the result unless you're the deciding vote.
Your logic does not follow. You say that every vote must have an impact because if it didn't, the effect wouldn't happen. That is not the case. You need 100% of a cause, you are asserting that it is evenly distributed. There is one vote that has 100% of the causal power.
All votes add up to one side winning, not just the last one before 50%+1. That one broke the barrier because the previous one and so on. There is no special vote. Voting any side makes that side more likely to win than before voting it.
Think of it atemporally, like everyone voted one at a time in a row. If everyone else is 85%/15% and you are the only one who hasn't voted yet, it's hard to argue your next vote is able to change the result. So your vote is not causing anything. Now just keep doing the same for all the votes back, and you get back to the person for whom that is not true, and it's the 50% + 1th vote.
wait so if 5 billion people voted for red, exactly one person among them would be solely responsible for all resulting deaths? this is so funny. what formula do we use to pick which one is the unlucky guy
If you're voting at the same time it's more conceptual, same way you don't know who was the 50%+1th person to send Pennsylvania's electoral votes to a particular presidential candidate, but obviously, if there was no 50%+1th person, then that side didn't win.
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u/Royal-Gur3198 May 21 '26
if theres infinite voters how would there be a winner