@LoftusSteve And you were born you rather than born a Palestinian through what process?
English
CRIPES
3.6K posts
It's not luck.
My parents, their parents, and all the generations before built this place.
Gazans built nothing except tunnels. They destroyed the infrastructure they were left. Generations chose violence and hatred. They voted for a terrorist government.
No luck involved.
Jenni@hashjenni
Don’t ever forget: the ONLY difference between you and the people of Gaza is geographic luck. Nothing else.
English
@Rob_ThaBuilder I just couldn't risk my kids in this scenario. Knowing every other parent would feel the same, we'd all pick red and be ok
English
The ppl signaling their virtue by insisting the correct answer is blue, and only evil ppl would pick red dont really understand the question. It isnt a question about your OWN morality, but instead is a question of your perception of everyone else's morality.
And it isnt even a measure of their "morality" but is actually a measure of their survival instincts. Betting against the survival instincts of 50% of the human species is a bad choice.
Anyone who is facing this choice for real and had to think about it for more than 5 minutes would pick red, and more importantly, would council everyone they care about to pick red.
Would you want your children to risk their life on 50% of the human species to bet against their own guaranteed survival? No decent parent would.
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?
English
@Rob_ThaBuilder Seems fairly critical that in the set-up you are not given the chance to council others. It's a coordination problem - if you get a leg up in the coordination then yes, it becomes less of a problem.
English
@revenant_MMXX Coordinating >50% to press blue is not simpler than Coordinating 100% to press red.
English
Best IQ test this site has seen in a while. Most read it as blue being the only way to guarantee everyone's survival, but the simpler solution is for everyone to press red. Although one may press red for selfish reasons, it's also the only true guarantee of survival for anyone.
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?
English
@MarkChangizi Nobody would suggest that. Obviously the framing shapes what people will do - logically or illogically - which must then be taken into account.
English
— The Suicide Button —
No need for a Red button at all.
Just have a single (Blue) button labeled,
“Press me to commit suicide by midnight.”
And then in fine print it says,
“Guaranteed to work unless more than 50% of humans end up pressing their button.”
Are you suggesting it’s now selfish to not press the button? Because that’s exactly the Red button answer in the equivalent Res/Blue button case.
English
@MrHarryCole What, so you can write "Lib Dems silent on political violence"?
English
@robertlasagna1 This is such a meaningless statement, I have no idea what you think you're trying to say.
English
@wheregild if you actually cared about them, you would have helped them years before the button ever came into play
English
every time blue wins red wins. there is no lose state for red mr game theory
Peter Hague@peterrhague
Amazing how lots of self appointed game theory experts confidently asserting that blue is the stupid choice. But every time this poll is run blue wins. Not only is the “game theory” answer predicting the wrong outcome, its explanatory power is based on it being able to predict the right answer. So it’s doubly wrong.
English
@Cdnbuddyguy @robertlasagna1 I get that. But in reality the possibility of coordinating 100% to vote red is vastly less plausible than coordinating 51% to vote blue. You can't just wish away the brute fact that people will not all vote red, regardless of how well you can/do state the case for red.
English
Yeah and if all of those people who would die because they chose blue decided to choose red, then they all have a 100% chance of not dying. Hence no “quarter of humanity” dying.
Whereas in your case you’d need a complex campaign to get an imprecise number of people to follow through with their declaration to vote blue “for the greater good” in order to guarantee 100% survival.
Red is easier, red is the only one where if you pick it you 100% live either way.
That fact you don’t get this is concerning
English
@Cdnbuddyguy @robertlasagna1 Jesus christ. A quarter of humanity dying is a lose state for red. This is not a hard concept. It's not about shame. It's about not wanting to live in a ruined society. I can't understand why you don't think this is explicitly part of the though experiment.
English
No lose state for red is actually true because regardless of who picks what, you automatically live. If you’re talking about the knock down effects of blue voters somehow taking it out on red voters then A) doesn’t seem to line up with the morality of someone who would choose blue in the first place; and B) means that not only the results overall but the individual results would be shared among society to the level of friends and family, which is a hell of a consideration since this was never suggested in the original question. You’re building a shame-based moral framework into the question which isn’t at all quantified in the original thought experiment.
Red is the only logical choice - this therefore still stands as the thought experiment is asked. As I said, this changed based on the makeup of the group but when considering a global audience (which the original question does) with the global spectrum of morality and care for human life - this is then reinforced. Again, should the experiment have outlined more then we can see the rationality of picking blue subject to change, but as it stands with the original question then that statement is correct and true.
English
@Cdnbuddyguy @robertlasagna1 Totally agree that the decision depends on complex judgements about what other people will do. The things I objected to were not that. They were "there is no lose state for red" and "red is the only logical choice". Both clearly untrue.
English
No, my consideration was not beyond my kin group. I can think perfectly well beyond it, hell I’m even trying to help you understand why you’re wrong so you’ll pick red and guarantee your life as well.
If not all humans are logical, then it stands to reason that you need to look out for yourself FIRST. Put on your own mask before helping others.
If the survey was in a closed environment like a high-trust, Christian, homogenous culture, it would be a societal effort to vote blue because we are all guaranteed to share the same values to a 10% variation.
Include the global hordes of the 3rd world, where your vote has the same weight as someone from Papua New Guinea, or Mozambique, or Russia, now all of a sudden it doesn’t seem so clear that most humans would act that way.
I’d love to pick blue, but the world is not full of kindness and happy little sunflowers, it’s full of nuclear bombs, bio weapons, and millennia-old tribal feuds. This doesn’t get overcome on a 2-option ballot vote, no matter how much you want to trust your fellow man. That’s the reason why. It’s the fact that I can think in excess of second-order effects that I have this understanding
English
@Cdnbuddyguy @robertlasagna1 I'm saying your answer showed an inability to think beyond kin group, which is generally considered a right-wing attribute.
The thing you're missing is that "the logical choice" must grapple with the fact that not all humans are logical, which immediately undoes the logic.
English
It actually doesn’t matter what your politics are, it’s about intelligence and susceptibility to propaganda.
Blue is not a guarantee you live, it has a chance you die
Red is a guarantee you live regardless of the outcome
Therefore, red is the only logical pick you could make, unless you were propagandized into participating in the social experiment of picking blue to virtue-signal that you consider others above yourself. This is a nice idea, but in the animal kingdom, void from this thin (and rapidly retreating) veil of society, it’s dog eat dog. Just look at the covid hoarding panic that we saw in 2020, and that was just toilet paper.
You’re telling me that in a situation where these people are forced to make a decision like that where the stakes are unquantifiable magnitudes greater than Covid, that these people will naturally chose the righteous option?
You’re out to lunch if you think that way. And your reduction to the colours of American political parties is a really low-brow take. We’re on the global internet, the entire world is available for exploration - your Republican-Democrat dichotomy in no way reflects the politics of the people responding, including even those who are American in the first place
English
@SMB_Attorney Yeah likewise anyone drinking Jack Daniels straight. Pathetic behaviour. Drink real whisky.
English
If your boyfriend drinks whiskey like this, you don’t have a boyfriend, you have a girlfriend
Bobbi@kittenaround_51
This is how whiskey should feel, looks yummy 🥃
English
@BobMurphyEcon I'm glad that the real-life evidence of coordination failure has helped you to understand that this is a coordination problem.
English
OK I think I'm done. I believe the exchange below summarizes much of the conversation. (Note: I'm not even saying Red is obvious anymore, largely because so many people are pushing Blue.)
English
Pretty sure if he chooses blue, I can't marry him.
Immediate ick.
Lisa@lisavsworld
guaranteed survival
English
@johnennis The moral problem exists exactly because the original wording triggers different behaviour than in your example.
English
I have never understood why this is even a question, let alone why someone would consider pressing blue
Here is an equivalent problem that shows why pressing blue makes no sense
—
Everyone is standing on the edge of a pool
When the whistle blows you can jump in the pool or not
If more than half of the people jump in the pool then everything will be fine
But if less than half of the people jump in the pool, then sharks will be released into the pool and everyone in the pool will die
—
Why on earth would anyone jump into the pool?
If they jump into the pool, that is their own dumb fault
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?
English
The former will never succeed; the latter easily can. And, indeed, in online polls it almost always does. Of course red voters will insist that in real life everyone will vote red and so you should join them. They may be right! But it would be a sad reflection of humanity if so
English
I get really annoyed by people saying that the “rational” or “game theory” answer is to vote red here. This a coordination problem: there are two optimal outcomes: everyone votes red or >50% vote blue. People dying is (I hope) not an optimal outcome even for the red voters
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?
English
@LRH_Superfan No there are 2 optimal solutions: everyone picks red, or more than 50% pick blue. How are either of these less than optimal?
English
Every time this question is posed it just turns into Newcomb's problem in that there is one obviously optimal solution but people keep trying to find reasons to pick the suboptimal one just with the added dimension of morality
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?
English
@Cdnbuddyguy @robertlasagna1 Guess this is why it's republican-democrat colour- coded, impossible for you to think of non-kin as relevant.
English
@wheregild @robertlasagna1 Nah, all my kin vote red, I asked them. So seems like me and mine are gonna be alright either way
English
@Devon_Eriksen_ They are different because our understanding of how the wording changes people's likely answer plays into the moral decision.
English
You are offered a pill.
Anyone who takes the pill, dies, unless over 50% of humanity takes the pill.
Obviously, you cannot be affected by the pill if you don't take it.
Is the same moral scenario as the red and blue buttons?
English