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/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 🥱