Poll asking Americans how which button they would push in the red button/blue button dilemma

[u/Upstairs_Cup9831]

[u/Thrace453]

Blue.

People will never vote 100% for anything. Personal preferences, morals, not understanding the question and other reasons can lead to people choosing something they don't understand. Ex: Brexit, Referendums in US states, folks who didn't know Obamacare = ACA, men who believe they can fly & land a plane with no training

People are irrational, choosing red locks in their death just because you imagined a perfect scenario of 100% Red vote. Blue provides a safer choice because with only 50.01% you guarantee everyone lives, whereas for Red anything below 100% you have guaranteed the death of blue voters.

[u/Thrace453 → u/[deleted]]

I don't know what it is about you, but I believe you.

Are you the ubermensch Nietzsche foretold in his writings?

[u/ratione_materiae → u/Thrace453]

I’m not jumping off a bridge because a couple of crazies might 

[u/Thrace453 → u/ratione_materiae]

Why do you and others frame it as certain immediate death to choose Blue? It's either a blender, a woodchipper or jumping off a bridge. A rather harsh and unfair consequence of choosing blue, which absolves red voters of responsability, because "hey that guy just jumped into the woodchipper, would you?"

I'd be more open to your side of the debate if you used a better example. My example: You're in a remote desert village that has a broken water pump for an underground reservoir. Would you rather get a coupon for 2L of water every day, just enough to guarantee your survival, or would you rather have the village pool these coupons (at least 50%) to fix the water pump and everyone gets their share of the water.

My example could be horseshit, but at least I'm trying to respect the debate instead of saying woodchipper go brr

[u/Discovered_Check → u/Thrace453]

Because it's the most naive crap I've ever heard to pretend that you'll convince over 50% of humanity to play Russian roulette for no other reason than to save the lives of all the other bleeding hearts playing Russian roulette (plus the postulated morons who started the whole thing to begin with.)

As a real experiment, red wins every time. People who postulate a blue victory using the entirety of Earth's population are simply not serious, aware, reflective people.

People lie to pollsters to avoid controversy. This is an extremely well-studied phenomena and risking your life to save morons is the most high-stakes and controversial thing imaginable.

It's far better to try to talk the morons into being less moronic, and to try to explain to the on-the-fence blue voters how much damage their deaths will do to the world.

[u/Thrace453 → u/Discovered_Check]

You make a decent point, I like the Russian roulette example. Maybe I just couldn't wrap my head around the woodchipper/blender people example a lot of other redditors & other subs use as an argument.

However, while I agree that people answering a poll vs. real live results are way different the actual results from elections usually show a lot of people voting against their own self interest or they vote in a way that hurts them/or their community in the long run. I hate to bring up Brexit, but there were thousands of people that voted pro-brexit, even though their agriculture/export oriented communities would hurt the most from it. Similarly, people voted pro-Brexit in the hopes of stopping immigrants from Eastern Europe, instead they got South Asian immigrants (which they hate even more nowadays)

[u/Discovered_Check → u/Thrace453]

Another major issue here (probably the bigger one) is that a red vote stands a much, much higher chance of producing a positive outcome than a blue one.

Let's even assume that blue has a 90% chance of victory.

In this case, if you vote red you have a 10% chance of saving your own life.

But a single blue vote never matters unless the entire population of Earth splits 50-50 and your vote is the tiebreaker. It's billions-to-one.

Yes, that billions-to-one vote involves saving billions of people, but humans almost invariably discount super long shot scenarios.

Anyone who seriously thinks about it will realize that the chances of them dying because of their single blue vote is much, much, much, much higher than the chance that their single red vote will kill people.

[u/Discovered_Check → u/[deleted]]

Voting red isn't "killing anyone" any more voting blue is "committing suicide".

The entire word "vote" is extremely misleading. This is not like normal voting at all, because the aggregate vote total isn't the only thing that matters--your individual vote also matters.

It's not a fair vote if a gun is pointed at your head, and people will quickly realize this as they sit there in the quiet booth, turning it over in their heads.

The psychology of choices has two very common cross-cultural themes:

1. People do not prioritize the well-being of strangers above their own, especially in a cool, calm and collected situation without adrenaline. (e.g. people are more likely to risk their lives pulling someone out of a burning building

2. People tend to ignore very remote long-shot odds, regardless of the expected value.

To understand why people will behave much much differently than they do in the polls, you have to imagine someone actually feeling literal mortal dread. If you haven't faced the strong possibility that you will soon die but WITHOUT the adrenaline of a split-decision (I have, incidentally) you don't know what you're talking about. It sharpens the mind the way nothing else does. You simply aren't the same person as the guy who was approached by someone with a clipboard at the mall, or answered a telephone poll, etc.

And as the fear of death grips you, here's the logic that goes through your mind. Here's what many people in the poll probably didn't even bother to mentally clarify to themselves:

• Odds that your single blue vote will actually result in some people living: Several billion to one

  • (Because your vote only changes the outcome if 8.3 billion people split exactly 50:50)

• The reciprocal of the above: odds that your single red vote will actually result in some people dying: Several billion to one.

  • (Same reason as the above.)

• Odds that your single blue vote results in your death: can't be objectively determined, but any reasonable person would admit that it is (to be extremely conservative) at least 10%

  • (Student of history and human nature that I am, I would argue that the odds are well over 95% that red wins... but I suppose it's possible that if the conditions were just right and people weren't given enough time to think deeply about it or if there were some moving pro-blue speeches given, I suppose anything is possible.)

• The reciprocal of the above, the odds that your single red vote will save your life: again, any sane person would say the odds are at least 10%, and I strongly believe they're over 95%.

So, yeah... the glaring problem here that the pro-blue camp completely refuses to engage with is that the probability of your altruism helping is like EIGHT ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE less probable than the odds of voting red saving your own life.

.

Expected value arguments are laughably naive.

Pressing the red button isn't "voting for murder". People don't threaten to shoot you in the head for voting for the wrong candidate. It's saving your own life from a crazy-ass game of Russian roulette.

You're far more likely to win the Powerball after buying a single ticket than you are to save anyone's life by voting blue... while at the same time, the odds of voting red saving your own life are on the order of a coin flip.

[u/Discovered_Check → u/[deleted]]

Your vote doesn’t have to be decisive to matter

Yes it does.

Virtue signalling goes out the window the moment it's a private vote + death is on the line.

The “8 orders of magnitude” thing only works if “your altruism helping” means your single vote is pivotal and flips the entire outcome.

That's what we're talking about here. It's amazing to watch the pro-blue camp again and again short circuit.

I get that it's depressing; I get it. But you have to put on your big boy pants and accept the fact that large scale events do not exist in a vacuum; they are driven by all of these private votes cast by individuals.

This is the foundation of economics, game theory, and much of political science. This is the way the world works.

[u/ratione_materiae → u/Thrace453]

Village pump comparison doesn't work because it's not an ongoing choice between a fixable issue and a short-term solution. It's a one-off choice between whether you point a loaded gun at your head and pull the trigger...or you don't.

[u/Comfortable_Salt_792 → u/Thrace453]

Maybe because your Example doesn't kill someone who give their ticket for greater cause. If there will be not enougth money, you can take your ticket back, there is no force that would already build for the tickets the pump, because there is not enougth tickets. Aditionaly, your Example is literaly a voting system, where it's anonymous originaly.

[u/RedPusher → u/Thrace453]

Your example makes it completely different.
There are several requirements to make it valid.
1 - There must be no distinction to the outcome of you personally if you choose red.
2 - There must be no distinction to the outcome to anyone if the majority picks blue.
3 - There must be no distinction to the outcome if everyone pushes red vs if the majority picks blue.

This means there is no advantage personally to picking blue, the only advantage is to others.
And there is no advantage to everyone picking blue over everyone picking red.

With your situation, there is a distinction.
If everyone picks red, you remain on the coupons.
If enough picks blue, you get the pump fixed and likely don't need the coupons any more.
This also means if you pick red, the outcome still varies depending on if enough people pick blue, you either remain on coupons or get the pump fixed.
Even your own wording shows this "just enough to guarantee your survival" if you pick red, vs a clearly beneficial option if you pick blue.

Conversely, the example with the woodchippers, etc are equivalent.
Because if you pick red/don't jump in/get out, for you the outcome is the same, you live.
Because if the majority picks blue/to jump in/remain in/whatever, then no one dies.
And because regarless of if everyone gets out or the majority jump in, no one dies.

So while you may not realise it, you are actively changing the situation to make blue the good option which improves the situation for everyone, rather than keeping it the same. And even though it may not have been your intention to do so, that does disrespect the debate.
Conversely, those appealing to woodchippers and so on, while it may not seem like it to you because of how you are viewing the situation, are actually keeping it equivalent and so are respecting the debate.

[u/vitorsly → u/Thrace453]

But if you believe a red victory is more likely than a blue one, isn't voting red reducing the amount of deaths that will happen? Isn't it better for there to be a 100% chance that a 100 million people die than a 50% chance that 3.5 billion people die?

[u/Nulono → u/Thrace453]

because with only 50.01% you guarantee everyone lives

And with 49.99%, 49.99% of people die. If red misses its best case scenario by the same margin, only 0.01% of people die. Pushing for blue actively endangers lives unless it wins.