PatrickRHJ

@joshscorcher The red button in the first panel should say "0% chance of murdering someone", the blue one should say "Nonzero chance of murdering yourself"

Something I noticed.

@MrBeast Consider a variation of this game where if blue fails to obtain more than 50% of the votes, estates of all blue voters are liquidated and proceeds awarded to a randomly-selected survivor. Does this change the outcome?

Everyone on earth takes 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? BE HONEST.

@waitbutwhy This survey, with one addition: in case blue loses the election, the combined wealth of all blue button selectors is awarded to a randomly-chosen survivor. Care to predict the outcome?

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?

@Rainmaker1973 Sort of like the stoning scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian?

Fun fact. In the Lord of the Rings films, most of the Riders of Rohan were actually women with fake beards because when the production put out a call for local experienced riders, a lot of women showed up with their own horses.

What a great tribute to the Britain that once was.

@SELVIGZD @ChrisPacia I can choose blue precisely because I understand the risks and the consequences related to my choice. Someone who cannot understand risks and consequences should be opted out if possible. A proxy vote of red on their behalf achieves this.

@SELVIGZD @ChrisPacia For the color, blind, etc, a proxy should be appointed to vote for that person. And that proxy should press the red button. Why place the risk of death on a person who is unable to choose?

One more attempt at articulating why the red button pushers view the blue button pushers as so irrational. Let's say your options are this: Red Button: Nothing happens to you. Blue Button: Kills you instantly. If everyone is confronted with that choice, why would anyone push the blue button? Would we not expect 100% of people to push the red button? Now if you change the terms and add a proviso that the blue button pushers will be spared if a majority of people push the blue button, wouldn't your reaction be: "Ok, well. We've already established that nobody's going to push to Blue Button so this shouldn't change anything for anyone". If your reaction suddenly becomes "Omg we need to organize a campaign to get everyone to push the blue button and you're Hitler if you push red" ... Its like.. um what?

@ChrisPacia Just don't push the "oopsie" button. If you do, you are essentially asking 50% of the world's population to rescue you, and villainizing anyone who declines to save you from your bad choice.

My final thoughts on the button push. - I reject the framing that you're an immoral person if you don't want to risk your life to save people you never met. There's nothing wrong at all caring more about preserving your own life and your family's lives than people you've never met. Is it noble if you do so? Maybe, depends on the circumstances. If your actions have a 99.9% chance of killing you and 0.1% chance of saving people, I'd say that's more foolish than noble. - It's generally considered unethical to put yourself in a situation where other people have to risk their lives to rescue you. Think of a hiker in an inhospitable area that gets lost and then first responders have to risk their lives to try to save them. Or the person who stays behind in a hurricane evacuation warning. The blue button pushers are actively thrusting themselves into a situation where they then demand that billions of other people risk their lives to save them. Not only do I find that unethetical, I find it contemptable. How dare you take an action that you didn't need to take and then demand I risk my life to save you? Sorry, even more not happening now. Your free to do whatever you want with your life, but you don't then get to impose obligations on me because of your poor choices. - Even if we accept the bogus framing that the correct choice of action is to do whatever minimizes death, even if it means putting your own life at risk, it's not clear at all that the blue button actually does that. My intuition tells me the blue button is at a very high risk of falling short of 50%. They could only get 57% on an internet poll where nobody was actually at risk of dying. That probably translates to 20-25% when people are confronted with an actual life or death choice in a real world secret ballot. So you're being asked to risk your life in a high probability of death, where the outcome is extremely uncertain at best. If blue fails to get 50%, congrats the blue campaign has now maximized death rather than minimized it. - Individually, there's no benefit to you for pushing blue over red. Votes of 8 billion people have a near zero chance of ending in a tie. Meaning it doesn't matter if you personally vote blue or red, the outcome wont change. If you know your vote isn't going to change the outcome, why would you ever vote blue? You can't save anyone. But you can add +1 to the death toll (you). That realization will hit many people when are in the ballot box and that further reduces the likelihood blue would win.

@waitbutwhy Plot twist: the election is rigged so that red gets 51% of the vote in a last-minute, 2AM ballot dump. After an appeal, results are voided and thoughts and prayers are offered.

@educationpalmer @Aella_Girl I doubt that the results of this thought experiment obtained from a survey on X could ever correspond to the results of an actual real world instance of this experiment. The stakes are very different.

@educationpalmer @Aella_Girl You say "the 55% of us" as if you'd know that percentage. But the conditions are that everyone chooses privately, so you'd have no idea of the percentages prior to making your choice. Choosing blue would then really be like playing Russian roulette.

im confused by people saying the right answer is pressing red. the good outcomes are 51% of ppl press blue OR 100% of people press red. the second is obvs way less likely

@waitbutwhy If this experiment is run and less than 50% vote blue, should the resulting mass deaths be known as the Red Holocaust or the Blue Holocaust?

@Aella_Girl Could end up on either one.

Imagine a circle, with a little spinner on it that you can flick. The circle is 80% red and 20% yellow, like a yellow pie slice. You flick the spinner. It spins, and slowwwly stops. Where did it land?

@waitbutwhy Would it be immoral to attempt to persuade someone to choose blue?

@waitbutwhy Would it be immoral to persuade another person to choose blue?

@Devon_Eriksen_ @SandyofCthulhu @Risen_SzN Perfect.

@SandyofCthulhu @Risen_SzN

Its so funny to see women think like this instead of facing reality that they have absolutely NO chance of winning that battle.

@1_n0el @waitbutwhy You are not choosing to survive at any individual's expense, since that individual can either decide to survive with certainty by choosing red, or choose to take a chance of dying by picking blue.

@waitbutwhy Pressing red means you’re betting that most people won’t cooperate, and choosing to survive at their expense. Blue is the only outcome where everyone lives. Defending red just comes down to fear and selfishness

@GroundhogStrat @bed__wards @waitbutwhy Except no one paid any price - it was purely a thought experiment. In real life, with real enforced consequences for decisions, the results would almost certainly be different, because individual strategic calculations would be different.

@bed__wards @waitbutwhy In your world, 60% of people died (based on how the poll currently is). You can be a smug asshole all you like, but maybe you should look at the data and realize the price you paid.

@waitbutwhy Immanuel Kant would push the red button, since that is what he would wish everyone to do.