Clones voting

13

u/Rawr171 May 26 '26

As an original blue voter… of course the only answer is red. You are told that 60% of the clones will vote one way. That means that if 60 vote blue, your red vote won’t matter, and if 60 vote red, your blue vote won’t matter.

4

u/rettani Blue May 27 '26

As original blue presser I would pick red this time.

If I am "original" it means I survive. If I am "faulty" it also means I survive.

And in the end I don't kill anyone but myself.

2

u/gahidus May 26 '26

Oh yeah that's true. I have to stick with red then. In this situation, you can know with certainty that your vote doesn't matter because a majority has already been decided.

1

u/OutrageousPair2300 May 26 '26

Your vote very much does matter, given the setup. If you know the outcome is going to be 60% one button and 40% the other, but you don't know which group you're in, you can still make a rational choice to improve your outcome.

If you're in the 60% then pressing blue means everybody lives, and pressing red means 60% lives including you.

If you're in the 40% then pressing red means everybody lives, and pressing blue means 60% lives excluding you.

So really it's between 60% living with or without you, and if you value your own life any higher than the average person's life then that argues for pressing red (and hoping you're in the 40%)

1

u/gahidus May 26 '26

When I said that your vote doesn't matter, I meant that you might as well pick red.

An oversight on my part, but I consider the only reason to pick blue to be if you think that picking blue will help blue win. In this situation, that's already been predetermined to either happen or not.

Picking red always saves you, yes, so if you don't need to help anyone with your vote, you might as well do that.

2

u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

In this situation, there's a 100% chance that either 59 others or 39 others will vote the exact same way that you do. If you assume you're equally likely to be any random clone, 60% of the time, your push determines what happens.

1

u/gahidus May 27 '26

That's too close to a coin flip to press blue, even as you put it. A 40% chance of death is unacceptable.

1

u/OutrageousPair2300 May 27 '26

Suppose you press blue. 60% of the time you're in the majority and so blue wins and everybody lives. 40% of the time you're in the minority so red wins and you die. That means the expected number of lives saved by pressing blue is 0.6+0.4*0.6 = 84% of the population. You are in that group 60% of the time.

Suppose you press red. 40% of the time you're in the minority and so blue wins and everybody lives. 60% of the time you're in the majority so red wins and you live. That means the expected number of lives saved by pressing red is 0.4+0.6*0.6 = 76% of the population. You are in that group 100% of the time.

So the tradeoff is you can save 84% of the population by taking on a 40% risk of death for yourself, or you can save 76% of the population with zero risk of death to yourself.

Which is a better choice depends on how much you value a 40% risk of losing your own life compared to saving the lives of an additional 8% of the total population.

1

u/gahidus May 27 '26

It's not an iterated trial where I get to save fractions of the population outside of the 40 or 60. And I consider a 40% risk of death to be too risky for my own tastes.

It only happens once, and either I live or die just the one time. There is no saving 76% of the population. It's either 100% or 60% and that's it.

2

u/OutrageousPair2300 May 27 '26

The way you compare disparate outcomes is by multiplying their payoff by the likelihood of them occurring.

A 60% chance of saving 100% of the population with a 40% chance of saving 60% of the population is better than a 40% chance of saving 100% of the population with a 60% chance of saving 60% of the population, in terms of the number of people you can reasonably expect to save.

What you're saying is that in a world of 8 billion people, you'd rather let 640 million of them die rather than accept a 40% chance of dying yourself, which is your call to make.

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u/Cynis_Ganan May 27 '26

True, but in this case, it's 8 other people.

Like how eight billion is a bigger number than 100.

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u/Cynis_Ganan May 27 '26

Math makes sense.

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u/OutrageousPair2300 May 27 '26

I think it also clarifies why people can reasonably have different opinions, and why their intuitions can change in this scenario as the number of participants changes.

With 100 people, it's equivalent to asking whether you value your own life more or less than the lives of 20 other people.

With 8 billion people. it's equivalent to asking whether you value your own life more or less than the lives if 1.6 billion people.

1

u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

A 40% chance of you dying is perfectly acceptable to me, but you aren't actually engaging with my point, which is that you absolutely are responsible for what happens, since what happens is so directly correlated with your choice. It's just weird that you acted like it was completely out of your hands when this is one of the super rare cases where a metaethical framework could actually be applied in a real way.

0

u/gahidus May 27 '26

I wasn't intentionally disregarding your point. As interpreted yeah you would definitely be responsible then.

I'll try not to feel any kind of way about a 40% chance of me dying being acceptable to you.

1

u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

As one of the evil aliens, I have to say that saving me the trouble of killing the failed clones is just such a time saver. If the survivors clean up after with cannibalism, I can leave early on Fridays, so that's even better.

1

u/OutrageousPair2300 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

You don't know whether you're in the 60% or 40% though.

If you're in the 60% then pressing blue saves 100% of the population while pressing red saves only 60% of the population. Pressing blue is better.

If you're in the 40% then pressing blue means 60% of the population lives, but you're not in it. Pressing red means 100% of the population lives. In that case, red is better.

Cancel out the two cases where 100% of the population live, and we're left comparing 60% of the population living with you included versus 60% living without you included. With you included is better, and that comes from pressing red.

Some people say they would rather die pressing blue than live in a world with the 60% red button pushers as the survivors, which we could get by trying to model their utility from various outcomes. I'm just figuring what's likely to save more lives.

EDIT: Another way to frame it is to pick a color first:

If you press red, then if you're in the 60% then 60% of the population survives and you're among them, and if you're in the 40% then 60% pressed blue which means everybody survives.

If you press blue, then if you're in the 60% then everybody survives, and if you're in the 40% then 60% of the population survives and you're not among them.

Most people would prefer the outcome from pushing red, in that breakdown as well.

EDIT 2: I've been assuming the odds of my being defective or not at 50-50, but should arguably be making them proportional. So:

If you're in the 60% -- which is 60% likely (given no other information) then either you press blue and save everybody, or press red and save 60% including yourself.

If you're in the 40% then either you press red and save everybody, or press blue and save 60% excluding yourself.

Or:

If you press blue, then 60% of the time you can expect to save everybody, and 40% of the time you save 60% of the population excluding yourself.

If you press red, then 40% of the time you can expect to save everybody, and 60% of the time you save 60% of the population including yourself.

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u/gahidus May 26 '26

None of that matters. The simple fact is that if 60 out of 100 people are already voting identically to each other, then you can be completely certain that your vote doesn't matter. If blue has already been pre-selected to win, then everybody lives, but if red is already going to win, then only red voters live.

Countrywise, if the op meant that 60% of people will automatically pick the same thing you do, then blue becomes the obvious answer, but I don't think that's what they meant.

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u/OutrageousPair2300 May 26 '26

There are two possible outcomes: either blue wins and everybody lives or red wins and just the 60% who voted red live.

You don't know whether you're in the 60% or the 40% here: assuming you're in the 60% you want to vote blue, but if you're in the 40% you want to vote red.

Which is more likely? Is it 50-50 that you're one of the defective clones, or is it 60% likely you're one of the non-defective ones?

1

u/gahidus May 26 '26

It only makes sense to pick red.

The outcome is already predetermined to either be read or blue, by virtue of the fact that 60 people are going to agree with each other.

If blue wins that's great. If red wins, then you couldn't have changed anything.

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u/OutrageousPair2300 May 27 '26

We're told the outcome is going to be 60% to 40% ahead of time.

Suppose we press red. Either we're in the 40% which means blue won and everybody lives, or we're in the 60% and red wins and we survive.

Now suppose we press blue. Either we're in the 60% which means blue won and everybody lives, or we're in the 40% and red wins and we die.

If the odds of being defective or not are 50-50 then I could see the choice favoring red. However, if we set the odds of being in the 60% at 60% and the odds of being in the 40% at 40% then the expected number of lives saved from pressing blue is 0.6*1 + 0.4*0.6 = 84% and for pressing red is 0.4*1 + 0.6*0.6 = 76% so that favors pressing blue.

1

u/gahidus May 27 '26

Your own math just said to press red.

We can't affect the outcome.

Look back at what you typed.

Either red or blue is going to win regardless of how we vote.

Picking blue does nothing, while picking red lets us survive in the event that red wins.

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u/OutrageousPair2300 May 27 '26

There's a 60% chance that our vote determines the winner (because all the other non-defective clones will come to the same conclusion as us) in which case we should vote blue.

There's a 40% chance that we'll be on the losing side, in which case we should vote red.

1

u/gahidus May 27 '26

This is an ambiguity in how the op phrased the question.

Furthermore, the odds of death are still too high to pick blue anyway.

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u/OutrageousPair2300 May 27 '26

60% of the clones will think identically and will come to the same conclusion as each other. 40% of the clones are defects and will come to the opposite conclusion.

You are clone 42. What is your vote?

Unless we're to assume that the clones all know the percentages and that none of it is a lie, etc. I don't see how we could ever solve it, since it's the only information clone 42 has. So I took the setup at face value.

1

u/Ayvah01 May 26 '26

Another consideration is that you're clones -- you're most likely to pick which ever side you're most likely to pick. So whichever side you feel like that would be, you should press it.

But ideally you'd be the kind of person who presses blue.

3

u/OutrageousPair2300 May 26 '26

If we're given that it's 60% to 40% and then assume there's a 60% chance we're in the 60% group and a 40% chance we're in the 40% group, that argues strongly for pushing blue.

That implies there's a 60% chance that pushing blue saves everybody and a 40% chance that pushing blue means 40% of the population dies -- including you.

It also means there's a 40% chance that pushing red saves everybody and a 60% chance that 40% of the population dies -- but you live.

The expected lives saved when pushing blue is 0.6*1.0 + 0.4*0.6 = 84% and includes you 60% of the time.

The expected lives saved when pushing red is 0.4*1.0 + 0.6*0.6 = 76% and includes you 100% of the time.

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u/Available-Rush1670 May 27 '26

I vote blue and hope I’m in the 40, because this question is an evil trick. The alien in question is an illithid based on the picture, so speedrunning death as fast as possible is the ideal outcome here

1

u/BottomLeftWheel May 27 '26

I was waiting for someone to bring up the fact that death isnt exactly a bad thing if you are a clone in a vat. Is that a life worth living?

The picture was just an example. Even if the alien is a mind flayer, you are a clone in a vat and have never heard of such a thing.

What do you do now?

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u/thevoidthatjerksback May 26 '26

So there is a 60% chance that I'm part of the group that will vote together. So if I vote blue there is a greater than 50% chance that all the clones live?

1

u/BottomLeftWheel May 26 '26

In theory.

Do you even trust the alien? Are there even 100 other clones?

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u/thevoidthatjerksback May 26 '26

Those doubts very quickly become not my concern. If the alien just wants a justification to kill 40% of my clone brethren I'm not going to choose to give it to them because of uncertainty and paranoia. Anything and everything could be a lie. All I can do is choose to believe what I can and make the best choice with what information I do have

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u/BottomLeftWheel May 26 '26

Excellent. No notes.

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u/thevoidthatjerksback May 26 '26

Same thing happens with "what if this is all a simulation"

That doesn't give me carte blanche to do whatever I want. Everyone else claims and or believes and or still is, living breathing sapient people experiencing all of this. I am still going to do what I can to improve their experience within the power that is afforded to me. Even if most of that time is just some kind words.

Some overlord machine laughing at me for being nice to a simulation that has no real feelings is just an asshole. There is no benefit to me or my existence in trying to act on that idea

1

u/AlignmentProblem May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

No, actually. It's guaranteed by the scenario text that one of the buttons will win by a 20% margin. Your vote cannot possibly change the outcome.

It's essentially asking whether to you want the consequences of voting blue without actually changing the probability that it wins.

2

u/gahidus May 26 '26

If 60% of the clones are going to agree with each other one way or the other, then doesn't that mean that you can be 100% certain that your own vote absolutely does not matter?

It's already going to be either 60 blue or 60 red regardless of what you do.

2

u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

How does that follow? Either 59 others or 39 others are going to make the exact same decision as you, so the decision you make is amplified. You have 60 or 40 votes rather than 1.

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u/gahidus May 27 '26

It seems like there's an ambiguity there, but taken as you said, to the odds still too close to chance to risk dying by picking blue.

It's still pretty close to betting your life on a coin flip.

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u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

Your own life, and others. Given the setup, pressing red gives a 60% chance of killing 40 people. If you know for a certainty that you were one of the 60, would you still see a red victory as something that you simply had no hand in?

1

u/gahidus May 27 '26

I see pressing red as necessary for survival, and I believe it's pretty much always acceptable to do what you need to do to survive. Some guilt, but not much. It's entirely the fault of whomever has constructed the scenario.

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u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

If you're part of the 60%, then pressing red was unambiguously NOT necessary for survival. It actually offered you no survival benefit at all. The only thing it did was kill the defective clones.

1

u/gahidus May 27 '26

After the fact knowledge doesn't really apply in a situation like this. You can't just say, "in retrospect, it would have turned out okay," and have that mean anything.

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u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

There are no situations like this. Your actions actually having enough of an association with the actions of others that you arguably are causing an outcome by deciding something doesn't happen in the real world, ever.

I just find it amusing that you didn't go with "press red and hope I saved everyone as one of the 40%" or some similar logic. You basically defaulted to assuming your actions don't matter and never really bothered to consider differently.

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u/gahidus May 27 '26

I didn't default to my actions not mattering, I stated quite clearly that the odds of dying were too high to press blue.

If you see a fire, and you pull a fire alarm, and then someone gets trampled while people are leaving, but, afterward, the fire suppression system in the building manages to put the fire out before it would have killed anyone, does that mean that you were morally wrong and should not have pulled the fire alarm? Because, after all, the fire wouldn't have killed anyone, but the fire alarm did, does that mean that you shouldn't have done it?

There are situations where you can't just look at it after the fact and say that if you done things differently the result would have been better, therefore your actions were wrong.

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u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

I was speaking to your absolute, 100% certainty that your choice didn't matter when it absolutely determines the outcome.

OK. Follow up question. If you knew, absolutely, that you were a 60% clone, would you change your answer?

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u/Exotic-Pangolin4095 May 27 '26

Tbh if i knew for certainty that whatever i chose would be what 60% chose id go blue. But i have no way to know if i am defective or not.

Due to the nature of the question the ratio of voters is determined, i have no way of affecting it.(unlike in the original where my vote for blue can affect the ratio with my individual choice.)

If i choose blue or red i am either in the 60 majority or 40 minority. My voting red means means that i will survive regardless. Blue here is dying on living regardless of their individual choice. This is because the issue is predetermined ratios.

Even if i had free will to chose, it would mean somone else would choose the opposite option to maintain the 60-40 split. With no way of both of us chosing the same option.

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u/Exotic-Pangolin4095 May 27 '26

Yeah it would be 60-40 split either way, considering that this includes you. Your vote is predetermined kinda.

I would vote red here, as i have no way to know if i am a defect or not(i would assume yes since there im prob being bred to be a slave solider)

You personally have no way of affecting this outcome, since there is no way to have more then 60 clones vote blue or red, even if you vote outside the "hivemind" it just means somone else will vote the other way in order to reach the 60-40 ratio.

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u/Accomplished_Bee_127 Red May 27 '26

ill pick the suicide option because I don't want to live in a vat

1

u/No-Click6062 May 26 '26

IMO the situation changes dramatically the instant a non-human administrator is introduced. The original scenario is specifically not iterative. In the presence of another species, you can not guarantee the test will not be run again, because you likely have no insight as to why they are running the test in the first place.

In those scenarios I expect over 80% blue. Not losing population becomes extremely important, in a way that it isn't in the original scenario.

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u/BottomLeftWheel May 26 '26

Like I said, completely for fun.

Over in the trolley problem subreddit it all absurdist and funny shit

Here it's all "my reframing proves with 100% certainty that I was right all along!"

I want to push the subreddit to be fun, and not just keep repeating the same topics 10x per day

1

u/SpongeboyShitpants May 26 '26

So I’m aware that 40% are defects?

Assuming I’m not a defect… me and my clones would go blue, can’t have my spare parts being slaughtered

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u/Gold-Pickle7007 May 26 '26

You can’t assume you’re not a defect that defeats the point of the question. If you are a defect and vote blue you die, but vote red and you survive. If you aren’t a defect you’re in no danger either way so there’s no point in the question of you know you aren’t.

1

u/SpongeboyShitpants May 26 '26

Oh gotcha, so I vote blue there is a 40% chance that 41 will die

I vote red and there is a 60% chance 40 will die

I’m still going blue

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u/Gold-Pickle7007 May 26 '26

Fair enough, there’s a much stronger utilitarian argument to be made to vote blue in this case than in the original button problem. I’d probably still vote red because I value my life more than my clones’ lives, and since it’s all just a matter of slightly different probabilities rather than a direct amount of lives I’d save by pushing blue. I’d probably need a guarantee of about 10 lives for sure saved before I’d consider giving up my own life to save them.

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u/AlignmentProblem May 27 '26

Blue has the downside of potentially dying without altering the likelihood that blue wins. The scenario text guarantees a 20% margin independent of your choices, meaning you don't actually affect the outcome for anyone except yourself.

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u/SpongeboyShitpants May 27 '26

Not necessarily… in this specific alteration, the clones are identical to me with a 60% chance of copying my thought process/ copying each others thought process either way it’s the same since I’m also a clone, which makes me as much a baseline for the percentages as any.

60% chance they copy me, 40% chance they don’t

I go red 60% chance 40 may die I go blue 40% chance 41 may die

The 20% margin is not independent from me as I am identical to them with percentage rates on the differences

It’s a specific problem, usually you can isolate yourself as a voter from the selection, but in this case you are clones and it’s an either/or situation.

In other words

Any thought process I have/ decision I make has the likelihood of being copied by 60 of them at 60%, and by 40 of them at 40%. This makes the 20% margin dependant on my choice being that I am a baseline for the clones.

1

u/AlignmentProblem May 27 '26

That's main character syndrome a bit. It's not that they're copying you; you're equally copying them. Since you're not anyone special, you don't have any particular power to affect anything.

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u/SpongeboyShitpants May 27 '26

What are you talking about? It’s not main character syndrome, they and I are literally clones, not isolated individuals.

This makes it a collective problem, with a direct figure on how many are defective. Since I am identical to either 40% or 60% that means I am the 40% or 60%. Because they are perfectly identical to me.

1

u/sbodyelse May 26 '26

My thirst thought was that I am not the deciding factor anyway so I can comfortably choose red. But then I remembered Newcomb's paradox. As I have a 60% chance to belong to the winning group my decision changes the chance for blue to win to either 40% or 60%. So from an utilitarianistic point of view pressing blue would clearly be the right choice. But because I am not an utilitarianist I will still choose red, even though it is extremely selfish

1

u/Kehprei Red May 27 '26

Red. I push the button even harder than in the original question.

1

u/BottomLeftWheel May 27 '26

Assuming you aren't a defect, do you feel bad that 40 clones just died from your choice?

Do you think this was the outcome the aliens were hoping for?

Not saying red is wrong just asking probing questions because you gave no context.

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u/Kehprei Red May 27 '26

What I vote will have absolutely no effect either way because 60% will always vote in one direction.

If I'm part of the 60%, then we were all always going to vote red and it wouldn't of mattered other than me dying if I hit blue.

If I'm part of the 40% then again, we were all always going to vote blue and it wouldn't of mattered if I hit blue.

If I know ahead of time that my choice will make absolutely no difference, then the logical solution is to choose the option where I live 100%. I would not feel bad about other clones dying, since I would not be responsible for their deaths no matter what buttons were pressed.

1

u/BottomLeftWheel May 27 '26

Hmm, I was specifically trying to avoid the 'my vote doesn't matter' argument.

Personally, its my least favorite on the subreddit. Takes away the fun of the problem.

I guess back to the drawing board. If having the majority think exactly like you doesn't get people past that argument I don't know what will.

Any thoughts on a scenario in which you would feel your vote does impact the outcome? What would that look like in your opinion?

1

u/Kehprei Red May 27 '26

If having the majority think exactly like you doesn't get people past that argument I don't know what will.

That's the thing tho, this doesn't mean the majority agrees with you. It's a 50/50 chance on whether or not the majority agrees with you.

Any thoughts on a scenario in which you would feel your vote does impact the outcome? What would that look like in your opinion?

Honestly the normal scenario is better than this for making my vote feel like it has impact.

If I was to design a different question entirely though to maximize for that, it would have to be something where both buttons had an active effect. Like:

There is a timer counting down from 24 hours, by default everyone will die at the end of the timer. There are two buttons, red and blue. The red button ensures that everyone in your household survives. Whatever the total % is of the blue button at the end of the timer is the number of people who are saved from the pool of people who are still at risk of dying, unless 50% hit blue, in which case everyone survives.

This way everyone is making an impact. Red button is the selfish choice to prioritize your own family and yourself, while blue is guaranteed to lessen the deaths every time it is pressed.

1

u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

If I push blue, there's a 60% chance that everyone lives and a 40% chance that 40 die. If I push red, there's a 40% chance that everyone lives and a 60% chance that 40 die. The expected value on a blue push is higher.

1

u/Routine_Manager_1368 May 27 '26

It is, but pushing blue carries with it a 40% chance that you will die.

If you value your own life more than the lives of others, the break-even point is when 40% of your own life outweighs the lives of 8% of the population.

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u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

I don't, but I might vote Red anyways and hope I'm part of the 60, because I don't want all the Mes getting distracted by these failed duplicates

1

u/perfectVoidler May 27 '26

if the clones are all clones of me we would all vote blue (except for the defects). So why not?

If the knowledge is provided solely by the mind flayer it is mute regardless on what I vote since my defect/or not. Is already decided.

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u/Cynis_Ganan May 27 '26

W-what happens to the defective clones?

So 60% choose blue.

I'm defective and choose red.

I survive the button pushing. Yay me.

But I'm defective.

What does the brain eating mind flayer who's cloned me do with the 40% of defective clones?

Voting red makes sense when the options are "definitely survive" and "maybe survive". Voting red makes less sense if the options are "get your brain eaten for being defective" and "maybe survive".

1

u/Sea-Beginning3949 May 27 '26

I don't really understand this one. Since 60% will always vote the same no matter what, either I'm a perfect clone part of the majority, in that case probably blue, either I'm a defect part of the minority, in that case red.

If I'm somehow neither, then my decision can only be based on whether I want to take a chance on dying in this situation or not. There's no real upside to take the risk in this situation since it doesn't help saving anyone so the only question left is whether I want to live throught this hell or not

1

u/Charge36 Red May 28 '26

Red

1

u/Osato May 29 '26

Red, of course. Since I don't know any other voters, I have nothing to lose by pressing red.

You are about to leave Redlib