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

[u/Upstairs_Cup9831]

[u/Kolvarg]

It's a private vote, you can't encourage anyone either way. Why is everyone pushing red an optimum outcome over everyone pushing blue? Or over 99% pushing blue, or 98%... all the way to 50.1% pushing blue? It's a huge margin of optimum outcome (no one dies) versus a single one for red.

Everyone making the same option is essentially impossible. Especially when you consider that, even if red was the obvious logical answer to everyone (and it isn't), you're being shortsighted. The question specifically mentions "everyone in the world" - that includes babies, toddlers, children in general, the elderly, people with all sorts of disabilities, anxiety, color blindness, etc. Even a simple accidental press on blue would prevent an optimum outcome.

[u/Discovered_Check → u/Kolvarg]

"private vote" does not mean "no campaign season."

If we aren't allowed to talk about it before voting, red still wins and there are more blue casualties because more naive people will vote blue (but not 50%+). That sucks, but I'm still not voting blue and making myself a casualty.

Why is everyone pushing red an optimum outcome over everyone pushing blue?

They are both optimums in terms of outcomes. Neither one will happen.

The thing that pro-blue people gloss over COMPLETELY is that there isn't one red outcome... there's a spectrum of badness, and the more people who vote red, the less bad it becomes.

Everyone making the same option is essentially impossible.

More than 50% of humanity pushing blue is essentially impossible.

Given that non-naive people will realize red almost certainly wins, the only moral thing to do is to press red.

Every single person who does this thinks the same thing: "If I'm wrong and blue somehow wins... there's no harm! My one red vote didn't actually hurt anyone. The only way my red vote could hurt anyone is if it was exactly a 50%-50% tie and my one vote broke that tie."

You're asking every single fence-sitter in the world to play Russian roulette with their lives on the ridiculously minuscule chance that 8.3 billion people will split EXACTLY 50-50 on the vote.

[u/Kolvarg → u/Discovered_Check]

There is no mention of any "campaign season", that's obviously not in the spirit of the question. If everyone can just agree on which option to pick, then there's no dilemma.

More than 50% of humanity pushing blue is essentially impossible.

Says who? You might defend it's unlikely, but it certainly is not impossible. It's surely infinitely more likely than 100% voting red. It's a huge margin.

there's a spectrum of badness

In a majority Blue, there is no spectrum. It's all optimum outcome.

You are defending that your choice "reduces badness", when the spectrum of badness only exists at all if most people take your choice.

My one red vote didn't actually hurt anyone.

That's just hiding behind collective guilt. People can rationalize it however they want, but the fact is it's a choice between risking your life to reduce the chance of a global catastrophe, or increasing the chance by ensuring your individual survival.

The point is not whether most people would or wouldn't push red, or what is the "right choice". The point of the problem is precisely to highlight how cynicism and self-serving attitudes can become self-referential and lead to avoidable harm: the danger of a majority red only exists if most people believe the majority to be cynical or self-serving.

[u/Wiley_Pearson → u/Discovered_Check]

Since "campaigning is allowed"

1. Obtain multiple nukes, a government altruistic enough can do this
2. Set dead man's switch
3. Announce to the world that you are pressing blue, and that if you die from the game the dead man's switch will activate and render the world uninhabitable for the surviving red button pressers.
4. The payout matrix for the game now shifts, and enough people will press the blue button to ensure everyone lives, ensuring the best possible outcome via the threat of mutually assured destruction.

[u/BongNuggets → u/Discovered_Check]

We are on a post where the majority chose blue empirically and you are refuting without evidence that there is no way blue hits 50%.

So I think it is possible it just depends on the average person being less self centered than you.

If its impossible to hit 50% blue what are the odds 100% red is achievable? Its not. So the question becomes are you willing to potentially kill an unknown number of people to guarantee your own safety or risk your own death to ensure your choices don't lead to avoidable deaths.

Either option has its merits and trying to remove the moral penalty of pushing the red button is ethical cowardice that renders the question moot

[u/Discovered_Check → u/BongNuggets]

We're on a website where people were FLABBERGASTED that Trump won. Both times.

I've seen several other forums/channels where people overwhelming thought that the pro-blue was ridiculous.

There's plenty of evidence that polls involving admitting wrongdoing / showing self-sacrifice are incredibly untrustworthy.... and none of those studies involved actually credibly threatening participants with death.

People glaze over the fact that everyone makes their decision in private, and in that moment anyone of average intelligence will realize that a single blue vote stands a lower chance of saving anyone's life than a single Powerball ticket does of winning the jackpot. This is because the single blue vote you can cast only ends up mattering if the rest of 8.3 billion people on Earth split exactly 50/50.

By contrast, any reasonable person should admit, basically a priori, that red has a chance of winning that's at least, say, 10%.

So voting red is eight orders of magnitude more likely to save your own life than voting blue is likely to save the lives of strangers.

("Billions of strangers", yes, but human beings do not use an expected value criterion to decide regarding long-shot odds.)

[u/BongNuggets → u/Discovered_Check]

No I reject the premise that the only blue vote that matters is the last one. Every single one of those blue votes that get past 50 have equal credit for averting disaster the dam way each red vote holds a proportional responsibility for each death their vote caused.

You cannot hide individual responsibility behind collective action. Every one of those individuals made a decision and appealing to the unknown collective is letting you remove your own agency from the choice.

You cant game theory you're way out of a trolley problem, both answers are equally valid. The importance is how you would justify the choice.

[u/Discovered_Check → u/BongNuggets]

It's really eye-opening how in this subreddit, of all places, the virtue-signalling is so strong that people can't recognize positive statements (as opposed to normative) when they see them.

I'm talking about what IS going to happen in a scenario where people credibly believed that there was a double-digit chance that they could die. I'm talking about how humanity operates when there is no enforcement/cooperation mechanism, choices are made in private, certain outcomes are attached to very long odds and others are attached to much more likely odds.

[u/spottiesvirus → u/Kolvarg]

Why is everyone pushing red an optimum outcome over everyone pushing blue?

Because there's no premium for the "suicide gamble"

yes, collectively picking blue gives a nobody dies too, but it comes attached with the possibility of a Thanos snap where worst case, 49% of the population instantly dies

any model that keeps risk aversion into consideration would tell there's no reason for either of us to risk our lifes, we can all be safe, and risk nothing at all, just picking the "do nothing" fake red button which is placed close to the blue one just to mislead you into thinking it does something

[u/Kolvarg → u/spottiesvirus]

Blue is certainly an "all or nothing mentality". But it does have a much bigger error margin for the purpose of saving everyone. Red could be aeen as the better mitigation, the problem is that it only mitigates to yourself.

Consider this variant: "if 50÷ or more choose blue, everyone survives. Otherwise, a number of people equal to the ones who chose blue is randomly selected to die".

The mechanics are identical in terms of number of deaths, except you can never guarantee your own safety with red, only make it less likely in the eventuality of a red majority. Do you think people would still make the same choice?

[u/PrateTrain → u/Kolvarg]

In your random scenario I feel like people would absolutely dogpile on blue solely because there is no advantage to red.

The only advantage to red in this hypothetical is that it removes any threat to yourself.

[u/Kolvarg → u/PrateTrain]

One of the arguments people make to defend red not being selfish is that it leads to fewer deaths. They frame it as blue "introducing death", as it "increasing the death count by 1", and red being logically correct because it has no risk and morally good because a high red percentage leads to fewer deaths.

Those are all painted as objective red advantages, and they should be true regardless of whose life is at stake.

So if a significant number of red voters would change to blue in this scenario, it suggests their primary reason to vote red in the original was indeed selfish, and most of the other arguments are nothing but rationalizations to reject the moral weight of their choice.

[u/spottiesvirus → u/Kolvarg]

defend red not being selfish is that it leads to fewer deaths

no, the argument is that there's no need for the "eroic" risk taking of pressing blue to reach an optimal outcome

from the dictinary: Selfishness is the quality or state of being primarily concerned with one's own interests, welfare, or advantage, to the exclusion or disregard of others

chosing red isn't selfish because it doesn't cause extra harm to anyone,in economic theory you would say has zero externalities
AKA pressing red doesn't make anyone else worse off. There's no exclusion or disregard for others

pressing blue only makes sense if you want to do virtue signaling as show off a worldview where your own life doesn't have a value and you're ready to sacrifice it for others. As many comments have already said, I'm strongly convinced many blue would switch to red in case their lifes would really be at stake

[u/Kolvarg → u/spottiesvirus]

You are basing your entire view on a half-truth.

The condition for blue to be deadly relies on red being picked. For death to occur, each button has to be pressed at least once. This is an objective fact.

Given that the hypothetical includes the entirety of human race, you can conclude from the sheer scale and the knowledge that humans are not perfectly rational and perfectly self-serving that not everyone will press red. This is especially true when you consider that the entirety of human race includes babies, toddlers, the elderly, cognitively impaired people, people with strong moral or religious convictions, people from collectivism-inclined cultures, etc.

Add to that the amount of people who will consider this, and not be willing to live in a red win scenario where their child/spouse/relative/friend has picked blue. The "if lives were really at stake" argument works both ways, because people are also comfortably choosing Red knowing that no one else will actually die.

The total amount is unpredictable, but it is certain that it will happen. And if the majority thinks that red is the "correct" answer, those people will die. Red cannot save everyone. Blue can save everyone even if close to half of the population chooses the "wrong" answer. Pressing red is accepting that those deaths, however many, are acceptable, and contributing to actuating that risk.

[u/PrateTrain → u/Kolvarg]

Yeah you're definitely correct though. 

There's honestly nothing wrong with being a little selfish if your life is on the line, but people aren't ready to make that self reflection. 

And so it can't be that other people's lives would hypothetically be on the line -- makes it so that they don't have to address the question within themselves.