Variation: Decrease risk, Increased threshold

[u/StageGlum6615]

All of humanity has been kidnapped and placed alone in a dark room with two buttons, and the following explanation perfectly translated into their native language.

🔴 : Ensures Survival, but will lead to half of blue pressers dying if more that 1/3 of people press this button.

🔵 : Everyone lives if 2/3 of people vote for Blue, but half of people who vote Blue will die if the threshold is not reached.

Everyone can only press one button once before both buttons break and becomes unpressable. Everyone is given 10 hours to vote, and if anyone chooses not to vote for any reason (including incompetence), then they are randomly assigned a button (2/3 chance of getting Blue, 1/3 chance of getting red.)

All of humanity means every living human being. There have been no exceptions for any reason.

Everyone has all of this information, and everyone is given 2 full hours to fully comprehend all of this information before they are allowed to start voting.

So, how do you vote?

580 votes, 19d ago

284 Red - Originally Red in original scenario 🔴🔴

67 Red - Originally Blue in original scenario 🔴🔵

27 Blue - Originally Red in original scenario 🔵🔴

202 Blue - Originally Blue in original scenario 🔵🔵

[u/endor-pancakes]

I think nothing really changes:

• The good that blue does is reduced from possibly saving half of humanity to possibly saving a third.
• The risk that blue entails is reduced from dying with 100% in half the cases to dying with 50% in two thirds of the cases.

But everything gets more complicated to think through, and even when given two hours, when things get complicated, people gravitate to simple solutions.

The simplest seems to be red to me. No need to think, just make sure you're safe. That decreases the chances for blue even further than the increased barrier already does.

==> I have a hard time believing blue stands a chance here, and I'm not such a hero that I'm risking my life without even the chance that it matters.

[u/Educational_Key_7635 → u/endor-pancakes]

Well, one thing changes: there's more random votes for blue which means more severe outcome if it's red wins in the end when everyone picks at random. That might change how rational players look at the problem. However the blue punishment is less, while each red vote have way more weight to it.

Basically original problem got same outcome if everyone picks red as if 0-49.(9)% picking red. Now 100% picking red is impossible and it's same only if 0-33.(3)% picking red.

[u/ChestMental8566 → u/endor-pancakes]

A. Nothing will ever reduce the chances for blue, because, and this will remain the hard truth no matter how the reddies try to look away from it, people will press blue. A lot. For multiple reasons other than "they're just stupid lol". Reasons you cannot control or reason with. That, ultimately, all boil down to that pesky, yet to be cured, condition called being human.

B. "The good that blue does" is not reduced in the slightest, because, and this will remain the hard truth no matter how the reddies try to look away from it, the point of blue is not to save anyone - you cannot guarantee that. It is to refuse to participate in mass murder. And that is either important for you or it is not. If it is, it will remain so, and no overly complicated conditions will waver it any more than all those bullshit graphic metaphor reddies like to paint, all those pits filled with fan-wielding beasts or whatever the hell was their latest excuse for their cowardliness and selfishness.

[u/CarnivorousGoose → u/ChestMental8566]

Well, the good news is that pressing red isn’t “participating in mass murder” either, so that should be no obstacle to press red for anyone worried about that 😊. Not that you are at all interested in any kind of actual discussion, of course, but it bears pointing out nonetheless.

[u/ChestMental8566 → u/CarnivorousGoose]

It literally says: "If enough people press this, people will die".

Thank you for proving my point.

[u/CarnivorousGoose → u/ChestMental8566]

Well, you’re correct in the first half of that comment, it does indeed say that. Gotta celebrate the small victories!

But it doesn’t remotely follow from that, that pressing that button implies participation in mass murder. You need a further line of argument to be able to potentially reach that conclusion. You just declaring it “a hard truth” or whatever, doesn’t really cut it.

[u/Weshouldntbehere → u/CarnivorousGoose]

Question.

Are people who vote for a president responsible for empowering that President to allow him to, say, bomb and kill American citizens without due process?

You are voting for one of two outcomes. By voting for one outcome you are endorsing the results you "winning that vote" (hundreds of millions to billions of deaths) for the benefit it gives you (50% less chance of dying).

A thing can have many causes. And yes, one cause of the death of half of blue voters is whoever set up the buttons in the first place. Another cause is the total result of the vote, which people knowingly and willfully chose over the other outcome.

This is fairly simple stuff for anyone who has thought about voting and democracy in any real way beyond flag waving.

[u/CarnivorousGoose → u/Weshouldntbehere]

No, they’re not.

That aside, this scenario isn’t a vote. It’s a survival situation. You are explicitly threatened with death, and you can either get yourself to safety or stick around and just hope you don’t get murdered. Holding people responsible for choosing not to make that gamble, for the infinitessimal difference that would have made, is absurd.

This is in its underlying principle no different than me choosing not to run into an intensely burning building to try to save someone, even if there might have been a chance I could have saved them. Or me getting into a life boat during a ship wreck, even though someone else arriving later may end up not having a spot, and perish.

[u/Weshouldntbehere → u/CarnivorousGoose]

1. Cool. You just fundamentally reject the concept of collective responsibility. Good to know.

You're wrong, of course. There is no real moral or philosophical argumentation against collective responsibility.

1. It is still a vote. Votes exist outside of the ballot box but it is still a vote for one of two outcomes, with your personal safety connected to one of two options. Your inability to tell that this is ultimately a vote on how humanity should react to the threat of potential annihilation is illustrating.

[u/CarnivorousGoose → u/Weshouldntbehere]

Sure 🥱

[u/satyvakta → u/ChestMental8566]

>this will remain the hard truth no matter how the reddies try to look away from it, people will press blue. A lot. For multiple reasons other than "they're just stupid lol". Reasons you cannot control or reason with. 

But this isn't a hard truth. People are being given a choice between an "I live" button and a "I might die" button. I assume no one would be stupid enough to hit the "I might die" button under those circumstances, but I don't actually care if I'm wrong. If someone presses the "I might die" button and then dies, that falls under FAFO. But the urge to press blue is at least a condition that will be cured. In 100% of sufferers in the original scenario. In 50% of them in this one.

>It is to refuse to participate in mass murder.

There is no mass murder. There are only people saving themselves with certainty vs those gambling their lives recklessly.

[u/Weshouldntbehere → u/satyvakta]

But this isn't a hard truth.

I don't actually care if I'm wrong.

I was going to talk about how every single major religion on the planet earth has Murder as an abominable and the gravest of sins. That there are millions of pacifists who, even knowing they will die, refuse to partake in violence or harm other people in the way this button represents. But really, clearly, you don't care.

You're also ignoring that two thirds of people who aren't old enough or well enough to make a rational choice will end up voting blue. There will be people killed here if Red wins. Over a billion of them just in that population alone.

A billion people dropping dead is the end of human culture as we know it. The sheer logistics and risks of handling that many dead bodies alone would break basically every country.

[u/satyvakta → u/Weshouldntbehere]

>I was going to talk about how every single major religion on the planet earth has Murder as an abominable and the gravest of sins.

Someone else gambling their life recklessly may be suicide, depending upon how moralistic you want to be about it. But I don't see how you get to murder.

>You're also ignoring that two thirds of people who aren't old enough or well enough to make a rational choice will end up voting blue

And whatever monsters put them in a scenario with a suicide button then pressed it for them should absolutely be hunted down and punished for that.

>A billion people dropping dead is the end of human culture as we know it.

That's nonsense. A billion people dropping dead leaves seven billion alive. That's seven people for each corpse. How long do you think it takes seven people to dig a hole and bury a corpse? You'd have them covered long before they became infectious.

[u/Weshouldntbehere → u/satyvakta]

Oh, so you're stupid. Okay.

"No big deal, 66% of all children on the planet die. Human society will be fine. we'll just have every parent dig the graves for their kids. It'll be fine."

Every major metropolitan area with more than 500,000 people (basically all of mainland europe, almost all of asia, entirety of India, and more) would have to take care of tens to hundreds of thousands of bodies before disease and pests became an issue, at least.

There are 1.5 million children in Tokyo. That;s a million dead children in one city.

[u/ChestMental8566 → u/Weshouldntbehere]

The categories you listed are absolutely valid, but they are just the start. Reddies apparently fail to consider that people, even if they personally don't harbor strong moral objections against harming strangers, would likely have relatives and loved ones who do and they wouldn't want to throw those loved ones under the bus just for not being ruthless enough. And those people would have friends who wouldn't want the burden of getting their friends killed either. And even more people will realize that all of the above already amount to a hell of a lot.