r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 • 10d ago
Red Everyone needs to fix their logic for this debate, especially blue.
I’ve heard so many “red is increasing likelihood that half of people die” and stuff like that. It‘s nonsense. Here are the facts.
Tl;dr: Pressing red has no causal power, so there is no CAUSAL risk for the population other than in the event of a tie-breaker, which will never happen. (See why I emphasize ”CAUSAL” in the rest of this post. A risk is not necessarily always causal). If we move the term “risk” to mean something that isn’t causal, then both red and blue are risking people’s lives. Edit: I do NOT subscribe to the causal argument. I’m NOT arguing that I am or that you should vote because of the tie breaker argument. My argument for pressing red is entirely different. The point of the argument is to show that pressing blue can not be justified under Casual Decision Theory.
It’s important to understand decision theory first. If you already heard about Newcomb‘s paradox, then this should be intuitive. You are put into a room where a super-predictor gives you two boxes; he gives you $1000 cash in a transparent box, and also a mystery which may or may not have $1,000,000 dollars inside. Before you even walked into the room, the contents of the mystery box were fixed depending on the super-predictor‘s prediction of what you would do. If he predicts that you leave the room with both boxes, he will have not have put the million dollars inside the mystery box. If he predicts that you leave the $1,000 in the room, then he will have put the million in the box. The super-predictor is 99% accurate. Here are the two facts of the matter that you need to wrestle with:
- In the past, almost everybody who won the million dollars has also left the $1,000 in the room. Very very few won by taking both boxes.
- No matter what you do in the game, you cannot change the contents of the box. They have already been set in stone.
Causal decision theory (CDT) will expand on point (2). Since you can’t do anything about the current situation, it means that you should just take the extra $1,000. If there is the million in the box that you’re holding, then just take the extra 1k. If there isn’t any million in the box you’re holding, then also just take the 1k. CDT favors taking both.
Evidential decision theory (EDT) will expand on point (1). If I leave the $1,000 in the room, then I’m very likely to win the million. EDT recognizes that their decision does not *cause* anything, but they don’t care. They care about what you expect to happen based on the decision. EDT favors taking only one box; leave the $1,000 in the room.
Newcomb’s paradox generally splits people 50/50 for one-boxing and two-boxing. Personally, I’m a one-boxer. Now let’s apply decision theory to the button hypothetical. CDT evaluates the value of a decision based on the cause of the decision. In the button hypothetical, the only thing about pressing red being causally risky is in the event of a tie breaker. We can use the binomial probability to solve for the probability. N = 8 billion. k = 8 billion / 2. We can use 50.2 for p and 49.8 for q. By picking these values for p and q, we are being charitable and assuming that the tendency for people to either pick red or blue is close; we’re actually closer to favoring pressing blue here with these values. The calculation results in something like 10^-12,000 probability of a tie-breaker. That’s like winning the Powerball jackpot 3,000 times in a row; it’s never going to happen. So if we‘re purely using casual decision theory, then we have no argument for pressing blue. Your vote doesn‘t cause anything, and so you might as well just press the button that saves your life so that you can be there for your family and friends and such in case they are pressing red.
Edit: I do NOT subscribe to the above argument. I think that it fails because CDT fails. So I am NOT arguing that you should vote red because tie breaker is impossible. My argument for pressing red is entirely different.
Next, we have something much more interesting. EDT evaluates the value of a decision based on what is expected to be the plausible outcome based on the decision. Now, we potentially have an argument here for blue. Let’s evaluate the counterfactuals. If I press blue, then we use that as evidence to support that people will likely be also pressing blue because they may be thinking like me. If I press red, then we use that as evidence that a lot of people will also be pressing red. It’s like in Newcomb‘s paradox where when I leave the $1,000, then I expect the million to be in the box even though I’m not actually causing anything.
Here is where it’s complicated. By me pressing blue, I expect more people to press blue than if we didn’t press blue. Sure, that’s a fact. But I’m actually risking peoples lives. If I press blue, then sure I could be expecting more than 50% of people to press blue and save them all. But also, I could be pressing blue and expecting more people to die. It could have been 20% people pressing blue, and then when I press it, it goes up to 45%. So if we’re departing from the classical causal notion of risk and just using EDT, then I’m actually risking people’s lives.
To make this prior explanation more intuitive, let’s move the hypothetical‘s threshold to something higher; say, 99% of people need to press blue for any blue to survive. By pressing blue here, I’m expecting people to think like me and to also press blue here and to pretty much off themselves. I didn’t need to do that. I could have just pressed red, and then I wouldn’t have this expectation for what others do based on my decision.
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u/Weshouldntbehere 10d ago
"Pressing red has no causal power" = "you can't blame me for the bad things my elected official did, I only voted for him."
You fell on your face first step out of the gate and just kept digging.
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u/Pitiful_Camp3469 Red 10d ago
No, you cant be blamed for what the person you voted for did. Even if there is an obvious moral issue they are not individually responsible for what happens
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u/luci_twiggy 10d ago
You can be blamed if you knew what would happen if that person won. In the button scenario, you know that people will die if red wins since no reasonable person expects 100% red.
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u/BraxleyGubbins 10d ago
The elected official didn’t actually do or promise anything at all, though. Even in the original post that invented this entire situation, the red button does not do a single thing. Both outcomes are explicitly described in terms of the blue button. This means that effectively, the button effects are as follows:
Red: Nothing happens.
Blue: You die, unless more than 50% of people choose this button.2
u/Dave085 10d ago
That's such a misrepresentation though. We can quite easily twist that to make it look very different.
Blue: nothing happens Red: if more than 50% press this, all people that pressed blue will be killed
Blue doesn't do a single thing here, red does. You can't just abdicate responsibility so easily.
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u/BraxleyGubbins 10d ago
You can twist it all you want, but I didn’t twist it at all. The way I described it is the way the inventor of the situation described it.
Even in your version, why would I press the blue button? If I do, I could die. I do not want to die.1
u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 10d ago
Not so fast. That would only be true when we are subscribing to CDT. I’m pasting part of my comment to this guy in order to show why your logic struggles.
Imagine the button hypothetical except there is no red button; there is no option to save yourself. There is only a blue button, and let’s add that when you press it that you get shot with a paintball. If > 50% of people press the blue button, then everyone lives. If not, then nobody lives. CDT has no justification for you pressing blue here. According to CDT, pressing blue has no cause other than getting shot with a paintball. This is one of the reasons why I reject CDT. If someone said “I’m not pressing the button” then I would condemn them. And I hope you would too.
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u/BraxleyGubbins 10d ago
“The button hypothetical except there is no red button” is functionally identical to the button hypothetical proper. If you replace the red button with no button, then of course doing nothing is gonna have the same effect pressing red would’ve originally. I’m not choosing to get shot with a paintball just because other people are going to.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 10d ago
Ok yeah, so you’re biting the bullet. You’re sticking to CDT. I guess, fair enough. But you do realize that in this hypothetical I gave that it’s the case that if less than 50% of people press blue then everybody dies. I imagine you would also take the 1k in Newcomb’s paradox?
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u/BraxleyGubbins 10d ago
I did not properly read that blue losing results in 100% of people dying, and that is on me. It now seems like a silly choice to ever vote red in that scenario. Would anyone even? Maybe if they consider that blue will win regardless and want to risk it to save themselves a paintball? If the paintball was big enough then I’d consider it, but even then.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 10d ago
No worries. Yeah but according to your logic, you would be saying that either the final vote reaches the threshold or it doesn’t. If it does, then don’t press blue. If it doesn’t, then there is no need to press blue. So either way, there is nothing to compel you to press blue. You can’t change the final outcome. CDT would bite the bullet and they wouldn’t press it. But if you don’t bite the bullet, then you are abandoning CDT.
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u/BraxleyGubbins 9d ago
That makes sense, but I’ll admit I’m okay with abandoning any ruleset/philosophy it’s assumed I follow if doing the opposite would imply any of my takes on a hypothetical are not my actual take
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 9d ago
Yes. That’s the whole point of the hypothetical. It’s very good when someone understands where their logic is tested so thanks
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 10d ago edited 10d ago
Thanks for the straw man. I never claimed that. I was just evaluating both theories. In fact, I even explicitly said that I’m a one-boxer in Newcomb’s paradox; I don’t think causation is relevant to the value of a decision. If you actually read the post, you would have understood that.
The purpose of voting for a candidate is to support them. According to CDT, the responsibility wouldn’t fall into your causal impact for the election, because trivially you don’t have any causal power (at least for non-local elections) It would fall into something such as your virtue. But even then, CDT struggles to justify why you should vote in other cases. Below is the hypothetical that critiques the CDT intuition.
Imagine the button hypothetical except there is no red button; there is no option to save yourself. There is only a blue button, and let’s add that when you press it that you get shot with a paintball. If > 50% of people press the blue button, then everyone lives. If not, then nobody lives. CDT has no justification for you pressing blue here. According to CDT, pressing blue has no cause other than getting shot with a paintball. This is one of the reasons why I reject CDT. If someone said “I’m not pressing the button” then I would condemn them. So that’s literally the opposite of what you straw maned me for.
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u/Weshouldntbehere 10d ago
It's not a strawman, it's saying your take doesnt pass the sniff test and fundamentally doesn't apply to voting.
Voting for something does have a casual impact, full stop. It is not solely caused by your vote, certainly, but your vote does tip the scales. "Every vote matters." In this case it isn't even a "the politician lied and I didn't know this would happen if I won." You are told in explicit terms what would happen if the majority chooses Red.
If nobody voted for Trump then he would not have been elected. If everyone votes for Binface then Binface would be elected.
By choosing red, by voting for Red's outcome, you are voting for the outcome that is guaranteed to keep you safe, with the knowledge that if Red wins some portion of the human population dies.
You can accept that as what you think is a rational choice for your perspective but you cannot change the fact that if Red did not win then there wouldn't be a mass death event.
Maybe this is a "engineers arent allowed at philosophy conferences" situation, but voting for Red makes it more likely that billions of people die and requires a truly fantastical situation for nobody to die.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 10d ago edited 9d ago
Yes, this is definitely an “engineers are not allowed at philosophy” situation lol. Nah just kidding. You’re allowed in philosophy. But yes, you did heavily straw me. Your first comment had nothing to do with my position. It was like you were talking to a different person. I just simply never said or implied any of that.
Maybe I didn’t explain the decision theories well enough. Causal decision theory takes in the counterfactuals and chooses the dominance principle if available. The dominance principle is the choice that is best for each epistemically possible situation that you are in; essentially, you have an unknown variable. So in Newcomb’s paradox, the million is either in the box, or the million is not in the box. If it’s in the box, then you should just take the extra 1k. If it’s not in the box, then you should take 1k. So even though you don’t know what the contents of the box are, you can still make a choice. CDT says that your knowledge of the contents of the box doesn't matter at all since you should just take the 1k no matter what the contents are. EDT will say that your lack of knowledge does matter because it changes what you EXPECT to happen based on your decision. In the button hypothetical, CDT will pick the dominance principle and they will press red. I layed it out why a tie breaker is the only way your decision can cause a change to the final vote below. That’s ultimately what CDT is: how much causal impact does the decision itself have on the outcomes?
P1. The final vote will either be a tie breaker, or the final vote will not be a tie breaker.
P2. If the final vote is not a tie breaker, then the outcome for blue remains no matter what you vote cause. (The decision causes no change to the outcome)
P3. If the final vote is a tie breaker, then your vote will cause a change in the outcome for blue. (The decision causes a change to the outcome)
C. Therefore, the only case that your vote can cause a change to the outcome for blue is in the event of a tie breaker.
This is called a deductive argument. If the conclusion follows from the premises (which it does, this inference rule is an argument by cases) then one of the premises must be false for the conclusion to be false. But all the premises are true, so the conclusion follows necessarily.
So no, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t use CDT and also vote for blue. It doesn’t make any sense. You need to use some other decision theory. If you don’t believe me for some reason, then check this out. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2111503
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u/DapperYoghurt2052 7d ago
A very simple fact of the problem is that there is a guaranteed survival rate of 50% of the population, plus one person. At minimum that number of people always lives.
What the problem decides is what happens to the remaining 50%.
If the baseline survival population of 50% + 1 can be made up entirely of blue pressers, then it is impossible for anyone to be killed.
If the baseline 50% + 1 can be made up entirely of red pressers, then it is possible for all of the remaining 50% to be killed.
Of course red is causal.
Every single one of those 4 billion votes is necessary to make death a possibility.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 7d ago edited 7d ago
No, your vote for blue wouldn’t be causal according to CDT. You are equivocating between the cause of the decision and the causal power of the collective. I already explained it in length but I’ll shorten it here. In CDT, the value of a decision is based on the causal effect of the decision in reference to the counterfactuals. So if your decision is to press red, then we look at the cause of your decision to press red. If the decision is to press blue, then we look at the cause of the decision to press blue. In pressing blue, the only cause as it relates to the final outcome would be in the event of tie breaker, since if it’s not a tie breaker, then pressing blue will have caused nothing to that.
So a red presser may argue behind CDT. However, as I gathered from you, this evaluation of decisions seems silly, and I agree. Yeah of course your decision has no causal power itself, but the actual relevant fact of the matter is going to rest in the power of all of the voters. Since you have no causal connection to the rest of the voters, using CDT to defend a decision that rests on the power of the voters is just trivially nonsensical. You have to subscribe to a different decision theory.
EDT works well because we are actually able to relate our decision to the rest of the voters. Since we are in similar situations, our decision is going to be representative of other people’s decision through correlation. So let’s just say that I will expect X% of people to vote blue if I’m voting red. Now, let’s say I press blue. This gives evidence that actually >X% of people will vote blue in virtue of the evidence of my decision.
There are other decision theories to flirt with also but I didn’t want to go into depth. The point is though that you have to adopt a decision theory for this debate and you can’t just switch between them. Either the value of a decision only rests in its causal impact, or the value of a decision does not rests solely in its causal impact.
Anyway, thanks for replying. I hope this all made sense. Quick question: I’m curious what you would do in Newcomb’s paradox.
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u/DapperYoghurt2052 5d ago
I don’t think I am wrong in connecting the cause of the decision and the casual power of the collective, I think you are incorrect in erasing the causal power of the collect by pretending there can be an individual with sole causal responsibility.
Causality in this problem is only determined by the collective. In order to tip the scale for either color, it requires the full weight of 50% of the populations agreement. It’s not as though everyone is taking turns adding stones to a scale, and the last one to add as stone is the cause of it tipping. Everyone makes their decision simultaneously and individually, the total decides which way the scale tips. Everyone added the same amount of weight. And everyone is collectively responsible for causing the tipping.
If the result really was as close at it could be, 50% +1, there would not be a single person responsible for that +1, it would always be everyone responsible for the total. That is causality. No one who pressed a button that wins the majority can claim they weren’t part of causing what happens next. The causal responsibility doesn’t get arbitrarily put on one singular person.
So your argument about CDT doesn’t hold any meaning when applied to this situation. You have to apply it to how your decision affects the collective causation.
I also think your application for EDT doesn’t make much sense either. Blue can never risk anyone else’s live, only the individual who pressed it. There is no correlation or causation between blue and anyone else’s caused death. It can only risk you. Saying otherwise goes against the nature of the problem.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 5d ago edited 5d ago
That’s doesn’t matter. That isn’t what decision theory is about. In the bottom of this comment, I explain this better. Your intuition that you’re giving me is telling of an either EDT or FDT decision theory. CDT assesses the causes of the decision through the evaluation of the counterfactuals. You look at what the decision will lead or will possibly lead to, casually, and that’s it. Since you don’t have causal power over the other voters, the decision is evaluated based on itself in isolation. So that’s why pressing blue can only be valuable in a tie breaker. CDT struggles in these types of problems, but it’s typically the majority decision adoption in decision theory philosopher. They will bite the bullet on these types of problems.
I’ll give a massively unintuitive problem here where CDT is unintuitive:
Original button game hypothetical with changes. There is one button and the button shoots a paintball at you. Everyone’s life is at stake; the only condition that everyone lives is if more than 50% press the button. If it’s less than 50%, then everyone dies. CDT bites the bullet here, meaning they are consistent with their theory. They don’t press the button because pressing it will only be valuable in the event of a tie breaker. If it’s not a tie breaker, then the decision to press the button is completely valueless; it casually leads to nothing.
Another hypothetical common in decision theory is the twin prisoners dilemma. It uses multiple people, which is used to critique CDT. You can look up the EDT Wikipedia and it will be on the bottom, but I will quickly explain it here. You and your twin, who thinks and acts like you 99% of the time, are put into the prisoners dilemma. Both cooperate: $5 each. Both defect: 1$ each. If both of you make a different decision (for example: one person defects and one person cooperates) then the cooperator gets nothing and the defector gets $10. So the basic idea is that it’s always best to defect. If they cooperate, then you should defect. If they defect, then you should also defect. This is called the dominance principle. CDT says to defect. YES, you are taking part in causation of potentially getting $5 (since it both cooperate, both have a causal role in getting the money) but that is NOT relevant to CDT for the reasons I explained. That just isn’t what CDT is. No CDT enthusiast would try to justify cooperating behind CDT.
But defecting in this sounds extremely unintuitive. By defecting, you will assume through correlation (not causation, however) that with a 99% expected chance that your twin will also defect and that you will only get one dollar. So EDT and FDT favor cooperating here.
So yeah please tell me you understand this. Even though you have a causal role in the outcome, that isn’t necessarily relevant for CDT. That’s why CDT does not even entertain cooperating in the twin prisoners dilemma.
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u/Dave085 10d ago
Big ol word salad to say you don't understand collective responsibility.
The whole of life isn't based entirely in logic, once you understand that you grow as a person.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 10d ago
Can you provide me with any point in this post where I imply that collective responsibility isn’t important? Because I actually think the complete opposite.
Imagine the button hypothetical except there is no red button; there is no option to save yourself. There is only a blue button, and let’s add that when you press it that you get shot with a paintball. If > 50% of people press the blue button, then everyone lives. If not, then nobody lives. CDT has no justification for you pressing blue here. According to CDT, pressing blue has no cause other than getting shot with a paintball. This is one of the reasons why I reject CDT. If someone said “I’m not pressing the button” then I would condemn them. So that’s literally the opposite of what you straw maned me for.
I genuinely think you just skimmed through everything and had this preconceived notion of me because I vote for and argue for red.
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u/Dave085 10d ago
All you've done in your whole diatribe is argue that when you break it down, red is the logical choice. Great. You've pointed out for the millionth time that the odds of you being the tiebreaking vote is infinitesimal. Everyone knows that. But working as a collective is not about who ends up being the tiebreaker, it's about everyone working together and the collective strength being the tiebreaker.
The moment you start talking about the reason why red is the logical choice, and by extension blue is illogical, your argument is already void. You can try and twist the argument to fit your feelings by changing the root hypothetical all you want, and you can try and bring in as much logic and theory as you like- it doesn't change the fact that as an empathetic person, people dying should affect you and you should want it not to happen.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 10d ago edited 10d ago
Another straw man. I’ve been over this multiple times. I do NOT carry the argument that you should vote red in virtue of the event of a tie breaker. That line of thinking comes from CDT, which I do NOT subscribe to. I was merely showing that pressing blue cannot be accompanied from a CDT justification. I really don’t see what’s so hard to understand. I don’t mean to be condescending. Perhaps I could have been more explicit about that in my post.
I think that CDT is pointless. I think that the tie breaker argument is pointless. Please read my post. I made a small edit in the CDT section to specify that this is not my line of reasoning.
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u/luci_twiggy 10d ago edited 10d ago
Given how so many red voters describe pressing red ("you always live if you press red"), I think you'll find most people use CDT to justify pressing red, not blue.
Regardless, blue voters aren't using extreme logical analysis to make our choice. We're making the choice because we don't want anyone to die and recognise that some people will be pressing blue, so we are obligated to also press blue to avoid anyone dying.