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Question stolen from Twitter:
Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?

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my choice and rationale 

my choice and rationale:



Blue button because it’s the superior moral choice. Moreover, the red button world becomes shithole tier hell with all of the genuinely cooperative people eliminated. High trust is gone and you have global izzat chicanery. May God have mercy on red buttoners.

my choice and rationale 

@BowsacNoodle
Exactly. I don't care about "being completely safe". I really don't want people to die. The blue is literally the only good choice.

But man, do I wish the red pressers the world they would get.

You could make a neat short story where this happens, but it’s just a way to ID misanthropes. It becomes a public event and the people who voted red are suddenly all recognized by some distinct thing (idk maybe they all grow a horn out of their forehead).

re: my choice and rationale 

@BowsacNoodle @LukeAlmighty But Bowsac, if everyone presses the red button, everyone lives. The blue button is just the “maybe I die” button.

re: my choice and rationale 

@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
> If an absurd hypothetical, that literally never happened....

But it didn't happen, and you knew it won't. So, pressinng red is the selfish option, and you knew it would be.

re: my choice and rationale 

@LukeAlmighty @BowsacNoodle No I didn’t. If everyone knows red button pressers are guaranteed to survive, we can just all agree to press the red button. Since there’s no upside to the blue button, everyone presses red, and everyone survives.

re: my choice and rationale 

@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
Do you understand the concept of world existing outside of your "everyone agrees with me" framework?

re: my choice and rationale 

@LukeAlmighty @BowsacNoodle Well sure, but there’s a guaranteed good outcome present that only requires people to think in their self-interest anyway. It’s a tough situation, but since there’s no way to guarantee everyone pushes blue, the only safe option is for everyone to push red. If someone pushed blue, I would simply not understand why they did that.

@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
Pressing red assumes that everyone is as selfish as you, or that people are not worth saving.

Pressing blue is hoping that at least 50% of people are good people.

@LukeAlmighty @BowsacNoodle but you have to put your life on the line with that. If you press red, and everyone pushes red, everyone gets out of the dilemma. There’s no potential bad outcome if everyone pushes red.

@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
There is no potential bad outcome, if everyone pushes blue either.

Do you seriously not see, that you wrote a tautology?
You wrote a "there is no bad outcome in 0.001% of cases" while I said that there is no bad outcome if just 50% of people are good.

@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
And yes, I know, that the entire question is a framing issue, but a truly interesting one.

@LukeAlmighty @BowsacNoodle It is interesting, but to me the risk of the blue bad outcome is so vast, that the safest option is everyone voting red.
Imagine if 51% of people vote red? That’s the end of the world. If blue wins that’s a feel-good moral victory, but we have a perfect solution.
If the titanic is sinking, but we have enough lifeboats for everyone, why doesn’t everyone just get in a lifeboat? No one has to be left behind or risk anything.

@Griffith @BowsacNoodle
And that worst outcome is exactly, where your thought process lead us to though :D

@LukeAlmighty @BowsacNoodle True, but I can't guarentee that the Titanic doesn't hit the iceberg, I can only guarentee there's a lifeboat for everyone.
>Imagine if 51% of people vote red? That’s the end of the world.
if 80% of people vote red, that’s the end of the world. Blue would partly be made up of suicidal/people doing it for the lolz, but the majority would be people who feel morally bad about contributing to the death of others. Humanity would be worse off without those people. In a big way.
@BowsacNoodle @LukeAlmighty I'm not gonna join a suicide pact for people who can't read a question.
I understand that. You understand that. I do not bank on all good natured decent people understanding that. I choose blue.
@BowsacNoodle @Griffith @LukeAlmighty It doesn't take that long to think about the problem and to come to the conclusion that nobody dies if everyone presses the red button. The vote is secret but rational people are going to come to the same conclusion as Griffith by just gaming it out in their head.
@BowsacNoodle @Griffith @LukeAlmighty RIP Bowsac :gura_pain:

We know what people *here* would press, but what did the Twitter thread look like?
@LukeAlmighty @Griffith @BowsacNoodle Oh interesting. That sort of tracks with the guess that blue is the midwit choice, then.

An idiot who has no morality just presses red. A careful mathematician also estimates that everyone else is a rational actor and observes that red is the Nash Equilibrium in this game - hoping that everyone else is as smart as him and also presses red.

I do not understand the psychology of someone who picks blue and then rationalizes it for a lengthy period of time afterwards.

@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @Griffith @BowsacNoodle
Well, you could call me midwhit if that is a sufficient explanation, but I simply do not expect everyone to act rational. Where did that ever happen in hystory?

Nah. I want to go for the option, that ends up with noone dying. Simple as that. And we both know, that there will be many people who will try to save everyone, and that knowledge itself turns the red button from "obvious" to a selfish one.

@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @Griffith @BowsacNoodle
Don't you think that expecting people to act "fully rationally" is the peak midwhitery though?

I press blue expecting that at least 50% of people will either be stupid, or willing to ensure the good outcome for everyone, since anyone without a robotic thinking will know that there are people in the blue category.

@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @Griffith @BowsacNoodle
And obviously, in here, it is 30x easier to press blue then in real life.

The real threat to life would overwtire everyone's real logic into pressing red anyway. Therefore, this thread is just a funny post to me anyway.

Please, I hope noone takes it too seriously. :D

I once told a famous game theorist professor of mine that game theory was just religion and had no basis in reality...

Total (((game theorist))) death...
lol...someone has to justify why their religion is better than mine...before i waste a semester learning it...especially if their motivating example is the contested garment rule from the talmud...
@Frondeur @Griffith @LukeAlmighty @aceattorneybot @BowsacNoodle @karna Game Theory is not a religion though. It's just "I think the other guy is as smart as me. What would I do if I was in his position? OK, now what would I do if he did that?"
dead wrong...it relies on cardinal utility and of course an assumption of what rationality is...
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@Frondeur @Griffith @LukeAlmighty @aceattorneybot @BowsacNoodle @karna Yes but cardinal utility essentially holds here. Everyone has two outcomes: "I live or I die." Because there's exactly two outcomes here, these can be quantized as "1" and "0" easily.

Sure the assumptions of Game Theory do not apply 100% of the time, but they absolutely do apply here and we should use tools that apply without crying that they don't always apply.
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@LukeAlmighty @ceo_of_monoeye_dating @BowsacNoodle The problem is, the alternative is you risk your life for people who literally can't see the rational option. It's like choosing to stay inside a burning building because not everyone can see the fire exit labels.
If you choose red, you live. If everyone chooses red, everyone lives. Anyone choosing blue is gambling with their life over nothing. There's no morality to it. You don't *have* to enter a suicide pact with other people, and if no one does, everyone lives.
@LukeAlmighty @Griffith @BowsacNoodle Expecting literally everyone to act rationally is silly, of course, but I would absolutely not expect *more than half* the population to act irrationally.

Pressing blue is just suicide. I expect any adult to realize this. I expect any adult to be able to explain this to their children - and I assume that in this situation, even if the votes are secret, the parents have the ability to explain this to their kids before they vote.

If there's a lengthy amount of time before the vote, then the rationale for pressing red can be made to everyone. Mathematicians around the world will shriek to the populace, "I am pressing red, and for the love of all that is holy you must as well."
I am familiar with game theory. Blue is the morally correct choice. Red is the correct choice for those you care about and your own survival. It’s not even a contest. I still choose blue (at least online) because I prefer no one die.

Reminds me of the fun standoff clip I saw from the show “Golden Ball“. I wish I could find it.
You can’t control others’ actions, even if you’re showing them the rationality. Therefore there is a chance you will be contributing to their death. I’m so sci-fi irony poisoned I half expect a circumstance like this come from some deus ex alien that kills the selfish reds.
@BowsacNoodle @LukeAlmighty @ceo_of_monoeye_dating I personally think it’s brainrot to punish people that make the right choice. Feels very anti-racist to me.
It’s only selfish if your life is worth nothing, and there’s nothing lost by pressing the red button. Blue button people are essentially killing themselves on the basis of a useless principle.
If there was a single downside to everyone pressing red, I would flip, but there’s not, so the argument boils down to “risk your life, because some people can’t read instructions.”
The single downside to not pressing it is that not everyone presses it. That’s pretty obvious to me :anime_glasses:
@BowsacNoodle @LukeAlmighty @ceo_of_monoeye_dating Yeah, but it’s kind of their fault? I accept you accounting for human stupidity, but I wouldn’t attach any virtue to it.
“Get on board the lifeboat! We have enough lifeboats for everyone!”
“No, I need to make space for other people. I’m going down with the ship.”
It seems like blue button mindset is about feeling virtuous, rather than getting the best possible outcome.
I think what's interesting about the discussion is the difference between stated and revealed preferences

@monsterislandcolonizer @Griffith @BowsacNoodle @ceo_of_monoeye_dating
Yes, obviously the revealed preferences would be everyone pressing the red, since it would turn a philosophical/mathematical discussion into a real life danger.

i've seen the original poll restated as "everyone is in a giant blender. If you press the red button you get to leave, if greater than 50% of people press the blue button, the blender doesn't turn on" and the results were very different from the original poll
I would choose to leave. Giant blenders are scary.
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