@MikeDiMat @neil_chilson If I tell my daughter to press red, there’s a large probability that she will answer ”ok I will press poop!” and laugh uncontrollably.
This is what makes me think people saying red don’t have children, actually.
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Stefan 実 Bäckström
7.7K posts
Stefan 実 Bäckström
@stefanbackstrom
’Sup
Stockholm, Sweden เข้าร่วม Nisan 2009
272 กำลังติดตาม122 ผู้ติดตาม
@neil_chilson Red. You just can't condemn your own children to a chance of dying when the alternative is no chance.
I sense people saying blue here dont have children of their own. I just can't imagine asking them to press blue - it makes me sick to think about it.
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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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@nicaddice @_LukeCSkywalker @RichardHanania The coordination is what we are doing right now. If the societal consensus is that people should risk their lives to help people survive, then there is a good chance that many people will choose that option, and therefore that your risk is worth taking.
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@stefanbackstrom @_LukeCSkywalker @RichardHanania That has coordination though. In this scenario there is absolutely no coordination involved. If I can’t communicate with other people then I have no idea if I’m risking my life for nothing, or if there’s a good chance my risk could help people survive.
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But everyone also survives if we all push red. Everyone acting in their own selfish interests actually gets you the optimal outcome.
David Shor@davidshor
We asked this to a large sample of nationally representative Americans - blue wins by a 3:1 margin!
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@Gnizzll69 @ZalinskyS @IntractableLion Maybe not. But in the world where only the people who choose red survive, you’re going to have a hard time putting out fires.
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@stefanbackstrom @ZalinskyS @IntractableLion Well, yeah. I believe when it's an instant decision, you can't go to outside sources can't wait to see what others think/do, th3 self preservation will be towards the top of instincts, making my conclusion that I dont believe 50% of the world would choose blue
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Every time this goes around the funniest part is watching the reds freak the fuck out because on some level they all know they only exist because a thousand million times in their ancestral history people chose blue
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.
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@ZalinskyS @IntractableLion @Gnizzll69 They absolutely are! How many firefighters do you think roll up to a burning house and go ” Well I never even heard of this guy let’s go get some donuts instead”?
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@IntractableLion @stefanbackstrom @Gnizzll69 They aren't sacrificing for random faceless strangers. It's a totally different dynamic.
Chandler, AZ 🇺🇸 English
@tyler_tone ”I may be cynical, but most people are more cynical than me” is something that only people who are more cynical than most people would think.
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I take the smarter points of the blue button people, but my feeling is I just don’t know the global population well enough to make the leap.
The poll responses leaning blue and the related debate between high-minded moralists and game theory cynics all draw from relatively high-trust societies.
When you account for everybody, there’s a chance the blue button is just certain death.
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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@Gnizzll69 @ZalinskyS @IntractableLion Self-preservation is very often beneficial to the species. That’s why we have it.
But if it were the only instinct we had, there wouldn’t be any soldiers or firefighters or policemen.
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@LinkofSunshine If everyone instead pressed blue, how would you know the difference?
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“Oh I pressed the kill myself button so now you also have to press the kill yourself button to save me from my decision 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺”
Just don’t press the god damn kill yourself button???
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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@Naxela2 @_LukeCSkywalker @RichardHanania You’d be surprised: a lot of folks here are very clear that they 1) would have pressed the red button, and 2) are angry that the hypothetical poll did not kill the blue pressers this time either.
Social shaming is not what it used to be, I suppose.
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@stefanbackstrom @_LukeCSkywalker @RichardHanania What button you push isn't public knowledge though.
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@nonzenz @krishnanrohit @zdch As opposed to the entity with the button who only wants what’s best for us?
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@krishnanrohit @zdch If the entity with the button forces children to decide and purposefully excludes their parents from their decision making process, that’s pretty evil.
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The funniest part about this poll is that people keep asking it, the majority keeps choosing blue, and a minority keeps getting upset that they're choosing wrong. At some point maybe you should revise your theory?
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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@ChazakielDoremi That you watch more and more people jump in, to the point that one more person would make it > 50%.
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What argument could there possibly be made for jumping into the woodchipper here
Ariel@redtachyon
Every human stands in front of a massive woodchipper. You can either jump into the woodchipper or not. The woodchipper has a design flaw - if more than 50% of humanity jumps in, it will break and everyone survives. If less than 50% do it, those people will die. What do you do?
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@minordissent I think you might be construing this as a question of intellect, when all the evidence points to it being a question of reading comprehension (or of question writing, frankly).
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Just FYI blue votes think the question is “would you put your life at risk to save the lives of others?”. They genuinely lack the intellectual capacity to comprehend what it’s actually asking.
David Shor@davidshor
We asked this to a large sample of nationally representative Americans - blue wins by a 3:1 margin!
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@Naxela2 @_LukeCSkywalker @RichardHanania Certainly. But this is also part of why the reasoning of ”red is the obvious choice because you are guaranteed to survive” strikes me as, well, naive.
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@stefanbackstrom @_LukeCSkywalker @RichardHanania Of course this only gets them their lives. Their social perception would have been ruined for their survival by doing so. As such, it was lose-lose.
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@_LukeCSkywalker @RichardHanania People absolutely behave differently than they would have expected themselves in extraordinary circumstances. However, history tells us that the direction of this difference is not always what one would expect, either.
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@stefanbackstrom @RichardHanania I think the assumption the people behave the same when the stakes are "see poll results" (i.e.- no stakes) vs. "never see your family again and leave your kids without parents" is self-evidently flawed.
People behave quite differently when there are real consequences.
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@AltRtXian @SimpleFrameAi @joeybeastmarket I understand that this is the only part of the question that interests you, and as such, your response is logical.
Now, why do you think the actual question was not the one you have written? Do you think it was just a trick for stupid people?
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@stefanbackstrom @SimpleFrameAi @joeybeastmarket The question is “do you want to die or not” and if someone doesn’t understand pressing red to not die, idk wtf you expect anyone to do with that.
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The literal only result of picking blue is that you increase your own chance of death from 0% to not 0%. There are only 2 reasons to pick blue: you are stupid or you are suicidal. There is only one reason to try to convince others to pick blue: you want them to die. If you don’t understand this I actually think you are not a human being
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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@_LukeCSkywalker @RichardHanania I agree that those choosing red are being honest with themselves. However, I think the rationalization that others must be equally self-centered is flawed. After all, the 20% of men surviving the Titanic is virtually the same share as the 22% choosing red in this poll.
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@stefanbackstrom @RichardHanania Two issues:
1. Pretty sure if the Titanic happened in 2026, those numbers would come out far differently.
2. Titanic was true selflessness. Pressing blue is not selfless.
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@_LukeCSkywalker @RichardHanania On the Titanic, 74% of women survived but only 20% of the men.
In real life, some people will actually press the blue button.
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@RichardHanania I guarantee you in a real life test with their actual lives on the line 99.87% of the people who are picking blue in meaningless polls are picking red as soon as it's real.
I suspect the poll may measure something like "brutal self-honesty." Red just knows themselves better.
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@Son_of_Mars_III No, I am saying that this specific question has nothing to do with proximity of association. The impact of your actions will be the same on your children and on a complete stranger.
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@stefanbackstrom The leftist has no theory of mind for the rightist.
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It's just this again.
William M Briggs - Statistician to the Stars!@FamedCelebrity
Why does this question make people so angry.
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@ZalinskyS @IntractableLion My family and community happen to be humans. If I happen to help a few others whom I don’t know, so be it.
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@stefanbackstrom @IntractableLion Yes but this game is not about your family or your community.
It's about humans, most of whom in the world have no connection to you.
Chandler, AZ 🇺🇸 English
@BlueRepublik I agree that that those who would press red are generally more fearful of things than those who would press blue.
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I think cognitively a lot of blue pushers don’t register Button —> Death because the causal mechanism is in the abstract
Make it *real* - like a woodchipper - and they’re terrified and defect
I think a real button in a real example, not a twitter poll, would terrify them too
Ta-Nehisi Quotes@steady_drumbeat
Great example of where abstract game theory breaks down. Normal people will push blue, normal people won’t jump into a wood chipper!
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@CoachBroker Lebron has had a better career than any other player I’ve seen, and I’m old enough to have watched Kareem play.
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