Christopher Stoll

Y’all have no idea what’s coming

Luke Skywalker’s stand on Crait in The Last Jedi (2017) had the whole theater locked.

Since everyone was very curious my answer, my answer is obviously blue. Gotta save the naive, the kids, the blue lovers, and the principally hope-pilled people. You red button pickers need therapy.

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?

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.

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?

Your vote only matters if: A) you're the deciding vote (you save half the world) B) you vote blue and blue loses (you kill yourself) All other scenarios, nothing happens The only rational reason to vote blue is if you think you have a shot at saving more people (multiplied by the chance you are the deciding vote) than you're risking (multiplied by the chance you die) Assuming 8.3b people in the world, being the deciding vote has a utility of +4.15b lives Revealed preference estimates suggest the average person rates their own life ~1,000-10,000x more valuable than another human's life So not killing yourself has the utility of let's say +3,000 lives If we assume the global vote is centered around 50/50 then you have a 50% chance of dying if you vote blue (we don't know what the world will vote after all) Making the EV of choosing blue 4.15B x P(deciding vote) - 1,500 lives (3,000 lives * 50% chance you die) For 4.15B x P(deciding vote) to be greater than 1,500 lives, you would need a 1 in 2.8M chance of being the deciding vote You would need to predict the vote will have a std dev of about 0.013 percentage pts (+/- 1 million votes) around 50% in order to think you create more EV under your own life-weighted values by voting blue than the life you're risking That's really small!! I can't possibly imagine being that certain without having special knowledge about how most of the world will vote (original post says it's a private vote) More realistically, if we assume the result might be 50/50 with a std dev of 5 percentage pts, that means the probably you're the deciding vote is about 1 in a billion (the further our spread, the worse it gets) That's about 4 lives (4.15B x 1:1b) you would expect to save by voting blue (vs 1,500 at our break-even point above). If we go to std dev of 10 percentage pts, we drop to 2 lives! If you think you value your own life at less than 2 lives then I urge you to consider why you haven't volunteered your organs to a hospital yet So, assuming you value your life as much as an average human does and you vote blue, you either have very good evidence the vote is *extremely* close, or else you're simply not voting blue to save lives, you're doing it for some other reason If you don't have strong evidence the vote is extremely close and you value you're life even a modest amount, you would vote red For all other cases: If you think the vote is likely to be strongly red, why are you voting blue If you think the vote is likely to be strongly blue, you still shouldn't vote blue. The chance your vote matters is even less than if it's a close vote

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.