MikeDM
982 posts
- 4 billion years of evolution
- take and enjoy the gift of life
- refuse to pay it forward
Iris Thalia@JadeK526
I'd rather eat glass and step on lego's than be pregnant, give birth and have a kid.
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When I told my wife about this game she asked something I haven’t heard at all in the discourse: how would you tell our kids (ours are under 7) to vote?
Tim Urban@waitbutwhy
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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@Stretchedwiener @gfodor @ZPostFacto Firstly, children can't vote.
Secondly, you underestimate people's capabilitiy for self preservation. People understand "press red to live". It needs more IQ points to start game theorising and trying to estimate the likelihood pressing blue will save everyone.
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@MikeDiMat @gfodor @ZPostFacto This part "Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button."
What's missing? "Some people in the world, the adults, the smart ones who understand"
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In this hypothetical, does "everyone in the world" include toddlers?
Suddenly the blue pushers dont seem so dumb.
Are toddlers the only examples of human lives that have worth, but are incapable of solving game theory problems?
Tim Urban@waitbutwhy
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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@GidgetSpinner @gfodor @Stretchedwiener @ZPostFacto No I push red if its adults voting. I push blue if its innocents randomly choosing colours. The latter is an absurd inclusion in the experiment
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@gfodor @Stretchedwiener @ZPostFacto yeah no most of the people on the red side would still pick red because they only care about themselves
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@gfodor @Stretchedwiener @ZPostFacto Yep - innocents choosing buttons randomly is an absurd case to consider as being part of the experiment. Few red-pushers would have thought of this scenario and still pressed red.
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@Stretchedwiener @ZPostFacto I think it's funny that you think that I made up details in the thought experiment *and* also presumed at the same time that all red pushers did not have the same assumptions I did. Total scrambed eggs. If children are mashing buttons at random then obviously you vote blue.
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What's interesting to me about this is that I pressed "red" b/c that was the correct answer to an internet poll, But I knew if it was real I'd have to press blue b/c my wife & at least 1 (maybe all 3) of my daughters would hit blue. I guess IDC about the rest of the world.
Dr Kareem Carr@kareem_carr
If you press blue, the worst case is you die. If you press red, the worst case is you took part in an action that killed just under half of humanity. Clicking blue minimizes the worst-case moral injury. It says you’d rather die than risk contributing to the death of another.
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@Layserguy @Tomjones890392 @MikeDiMat @kareem_carr There is no universe where every single person out of billions picks red
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If you press blue, the worst case is you die.
If you press red, the worst case is you took part in an action that killed just under half of humanity.
Clicking blue minimizes the worst-case moral injury.
It says you’d rather die than risk contributing to the death of another.
Tim Urban@waitbutwhy
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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@CPursall @TheLastNeocon @PliskenMGS @ImNotOwned It definitely means voting adults. It's just absurd for the person positing the question not to qualify it with "Everyone (including people who dont understand the question)". With the limited information we infer its people who can make a choice and understand
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@TheLastNeocon @PliskenMGS @ImNotOwned No it doesn't. It says everyone, if you aren't engaging with that then you're not actually answering the hypothetical. You are constructing a different question to answer.
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Reds are so high iq that they can’t think hard enough to understand that many kids will choose at random, people won’t read hard enough to understand if everyone hit red everyone lives, etc. Blue obvious choice if you value living in a society at all. We do have an obligation to not wipe other people off the earth if it’s preventable.
just matt@questionableway
struggling to understand the insistence that reds are higher iq
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@MikeDiMat No time = red because I don’t think there’s any chance in hell of saving the innocents, however much I’d like to.
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Anyway, I think there’s no way to get to a great outcome as stated. Even with advance notice and deliberation I don’t see how you get 50% of the world on board nor how you prevent a pretty wide array of people (including kids, blind, mathematically challenged) from dying.
Tim Urban@waitbutwhy
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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@SkrawnyJ @Tomjones890392 @kareem_carr It's a possibly kill people who chose possible suicide button. It's messy
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@Tomjones890392 @kareem_carr The red button is a kill people button, no reason to push it
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@MikeDiMat I really don’t think this is true, especially when you consider that many people will be advocating red because they (like me) despair of 50 and want to save as many as they can.
If you have notice you spend your time training your kid to press red.
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The next one of these that goes viral, I commit to voting blue, because I reckon we are not close enough to doing the ‘all switch to red at once’ to not have it ‘go badly’. So if you vote red next time you’re ‘killing’ me too.
Tim Urban@waitbutwhy
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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@Bunagayafrost Even a die-hard red-pusher would push blue in self-interest to save 50% of the next generation and avoid an economic catastrophe
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@Bunagayafrost It would be interesting to have a couple of scenarios explicit. It's not clear so difficult to morally judge anyone's decision to vote red or blue. If it definitely includes babies/invalids, then its clear some innocent % will press blue, and so it's better to press blue.
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I feel like if everyone had a minute to choose, pressing blue is the ethical move. Something like 70% of people are fundamentally cooperative and their gut will lean blue.
But if everyone had 24 hours, pressing blue at that point is deliberately choosing their demise.
Tim Urban@waitbutwhy
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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@listenJimGreene @BlackDumpling No whoever pressed blue is responsible for their own death. No one needs to needlessly risk their own life in such a clear cut case lie this.
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@BlackDumpling If 100% push red, all live and save themselves.
If >50% push blue, all save themselves.
If red wins in a landslide, red saves themselves, blue kills themselves in an attempt to save everyone.
If red wins by one vote, blue die and every red is responsible for their deaths.
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And I'm picking red because I'm not going to kill myself or expect some other dope to do the same to follow some intellectually dysgenic freakshow you CAN'T FIGURE OUT TO PRESS THE COLOR CODED BUTTON THAT WON'T KILL THEM.
In all cases Red gets me what I want.
herefor1reason@sonic7ischaos
@BlackDumpling @LosingBetsToday If everyone were rational. If everyone just listened. If everyone just. If everyone just. They're not going to. I'm picking blue because I think it gives me the best chance to save the most people, people I care about. I don't want to kill them.
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@craigthecrane @BlackDumpling Dude what / who are you trusting?? The choice is A) Don't play Russian Roulette and live. B) Play Russian Roulette and maybe live or maybe die, depending how many others choose to play too. You are maybe trusting that others also want to play RR with you?
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@BlackDumpling Red gets you to live in a world where all the people with trust and the ability to think past their own self are gone. And that's what you want...?
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Insane that we'll end up producing 99% of our energy from space, and send it down as intelligence. Literally no other way to send this much energy back — intelligence ended up being the densest form of energy we discovered.
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