Fogfield Project

I wrote a strange fairy tale for children and adults. I think it's probably my best work online so far. Enjoy.

@GoodFarmingAdam This is the reasoning of the insane. Worst button-pushing rationale I've seen yet

By either altruism or utilitarianism, blue is objectively the better answer under 50/50 conditions. Assume 7 billion people are voting. Red guarantees the individual voter survives. Blue is personally risky, because if Red wins, Blue voters die. But Blue is the only choice that can create the outcome where nobody dies. Now assume the final social result is uncertain across a realistic range, not exactly 50/50. For example, suppose the world could land anywhere between 40% Red / 60% Blue and 60% Red / 40% Blue. That is a 20 percentage-point range. With 7 billion people, that range equals 1.4 billion possible vote positions. A single Blue vote only becomes decisive if the result is right at the survival threshold. So the chance of one vote being decisive is roughly 1 in 1.4 billion. But if that one Blue vote is decisive, it can move the world from “Red barely wins and roughly 3.5 billion Blue voters die” to “Blue wins and nobody dies.” So the rough collective value is: 3.5 billion lives saved ÷ 1.4 billion vote-range = 2.5 expected lives. But Blue also carries personal risk. In roughly half of possible outcomes, Red still wins, so choosing Blue instead of Red costs the voter their own life. That cost is about 0.5 expected lives. So: 2.5 expected lives saved − 0.5 personal-risk cost = about +2 expected lives. Therefore, under a realistic ±10% social uncertainty model, one Blue vote is not just symbolic. Compared with a Red vote, it has about +2 expected lives of collective value. Red guarantees one personal life; Blue has positive collective life-value because it supports the only outcome where everyone survives.

This isn't an exercise in logic or ethics or game theory or anything like that, it's an exercise in *semiotics*. Something about this *framing* of the problem, in English, on Twitter, messes with your head and makes you pattern-match to problems where blue is the better answer.

@AlwaysWrightDM that is precisely what i am pointing out

@FogfieldProject You say, ignoring that the framework IS part of the problem.

@94SweetGoats You don't seem to value your life very much

@FogfieldProject The only way for me to win is if blue wins. If I press red, and red wins, I have still lost.

@FCopernicium You're engaging with the problem in a constructive way but reaching entirely the wrong conclusions

Red, in the original framing, is absolved of personal responsibility in two ways. A) It implies that there is some possibility that everyone could simply pick red, so doing the self-serving choice of pushing red SHOULD be the responsible thing (when this is, logically, never going to be the case, particularly if you don't explicitly exclude children). B) It phrases blue's demise as entirely their fault, as though reds had nothing to do with it. "IF blue doesn't get 50%" is the same as saying "If red gets more than 50%". Red is voting in favor of killing blues. Other ways people are trying to rephrase the question is adding extra information -- something scary directly in your face that would make it unlikely anyone would ever pick blue (such as the "woodchipper" example I see floating around), whereas simply pushing a button has no such problems. When you remove that explicit framing, moral actors will overwhelmingly choose blue.

@MN_Vikings_Pete While I disagree, this is one of the better responses. It gestures in roughly the right direction

@FogfieldProject That's a good reason to vote blue. Framing affects people. The human brain isn't natural good at game theory. Voting blue is the only way to help those folks, and I think they deserve help even if they are bad at game theory.

@BlameBootsy Belligerent quokka

@FogfieldProject You're deeeeeep in a dunning-kreuger chasm and trying way too hard.

This is precisely my experience with birdwatching as well and is mirrored in my local poetry club Slam poetry however is 100% queer

@_natastrophe_ Yes, poetry - old style, not slam.

Birders (in my experience) are generally either boomer retirees or young queer people. Are there other hobbies that have these generational dynamics

Your king has called you to war. If enough men volunteer, the enemy will be routed and safe return is assured. If only a paltry few sign up for the front, they will all be slain. Those who stay and tend the farm are safe. What would it take for any one man to join the march?

To say that matter is the only real thing, because it is consistent and observable and measurable, is like being inside a video game, claiming HP and mana and polygons are the ultimate reality because they have numbers on them. Adorable

It's a dilemma in which one option wins every time, while the other one sometimes wins and sometimes fails catastrophically killing you instantly

The kind of people who get this kind of question in their algorithm are also the type to be easily baited into a supposedly prosocial act. So you know that blue will win, which makes people vote blue, a self-fulfilling prophesy Any other framing? Red wins every time

@kendrictonn Are we forgetting something?

Next comes cherries in cream, chickpeas with ghee, and meatballs in white sauce

Dinner was yogurt with blueberries, peas with butter, and macadamia nut ice cream: I'm in my Dairy with Spheres Era

@kendrictonn Spherical cow in a vacuum...

@robertlasagna1 I hit the blue button just to give the evil scientist a micropenis, thereby punishing him for his wrongdoing. The world may never know. But his four new siblings might

an evil scientist is going to kill 50% of the worlds population. he presents you with two buttons. if you press the red button, everyone will be hypnotised and believe that you fought him to the bitter end but tragically could only prevent him from killing 100%, but your dick becomes half as long and you get an extra ear growing on the left side of your head. you will be celebrated for your noble attempt, especially notable with your physical disfigurement. Although people wont know about your penis, they just know about the extra ear. You'll get the key to the city and lucrative future options in marketing, as people will pay you to endorse various products, and you essentially have a pathway to becoming a wealthy influencer type individual. But every time you get in a car for the rest of your life, you fart incredibly loudly 4 times. This is magical and not indicative of bowel health in any way, it is merely potentially embarrasing. Your parents will apologise to you for their shortcomings in your childhood and you will make amends with them and have a much stronger family life. but your siblings will be the only people in the world immune to the hypnosis and know that you pressed the red button, and if you dont have any siblings, or only have one or two, you will magically now have 4 siblings, who will be retconned into your life, and your memories will be adjusted so you will feel like you've known them all your life. you have a pretty good relationship with 3 of them but you are all estranged from the fourth. after ten years all of your siblings will have to press a red or blue button, and if more than 50% of the total 5 siblings press the blue button, nothing happens, but if more than 50% press the red button, your pants fall off and everyone will be able to see your secret micropenis. and if you press the blue button you will change places with the scientist and nothing will change except you will now be the one responsible for the murder of 50% of the worlds population what do you do

@Holamayan It's here! Well done

Mosquitoes, specifically the ones that bite humans, Aedes, Anopheles, and Culex. If these three mosquito species suddenly disappeared, it would have virtually no negative impact on Earth's ecology. Nothing that eats mosquitoes eats them exclusively, and it would remove the single largest vector of disease on this planet. We would only benefit from their extinction. And before anyone brings it up, no, bats don't eat thousands of mosquitoes every night. That's a myth, and they prefer larger insects like moths. Mosquitoes account for less than 3% of a bat's diet. They would be fine without them, especially if we're only talking about three species.

Ivory and rock crystal insets for the eyes, copper lips, and silver teeth

Friday night. A new book. The Chronicon is complete. The Book of Enoch. The Secrets of Enoch. The Book of Jubilees. The second in a now fifteen planned volumes from Antediluvian Publications. I even have some charts and diagrams in the back! Grab a copy lulu.com/shop/ante-luvi…