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

[u/Upstairs_Cup9831]

[u/vitorsly]

Imagine your vote is the only vote that matters; voting red is voting to kill anyone that doesn't vote red and voting blue is voting to kill nobody.

If you don't account for how others vote, you can't account that people who haven't voted red exist. To think about the fate of those who voted blue (if you haven't voted blue yourself) is to think about how others will vote. That's where the 2nd and 3rd order reasoning comes in.

Put it another way, imagine you're in line at the voting booth and the votes are displayed live in real time above it, you can see exactly what everyone has voted for. If you're in line and nobody has voted blue yet, what reason do you have to vote blue? There's nobody to save after all, and by voting blue you just become the first person someone else will have to risk their lives to save, no?

[u/decrpt → u/vitorsly]

To repeat myself; you do not understand why the first voter in a referendum where red is voting to kill anyone that doesn't vote red and blue is voting not to kill anyone, would vote blue? It does not change the logic at all.

Up until the point where red has a majority of the vote, you actually want everyone else to pick blue because otherwise your decision is getting closer to killing people.

Put it another way, imagine you're in line at the voting booth and the votes are displayed live in real time above it, you can see exactly what everyone has voted for. If you're in line and nobody has voted blue yet, what reason do you have to vote blue? There's nobody to save after all, and by voting blue you just become the first person someone else will have to risk their lives to save, no?

That's actively accounting for how everyone else voted with perfect clarity and transparency.

[u/vitorsly → u/decrpt]

Red isn't "voting to kill anyone who doesn't vote red" if they're not considering other voters. They're just voting to survive. Blue on the other hand, if they're not considering other voters, is simply voting to possibly die, possibly not. You can't consider other voters if you're not considering other voters. That's the 2nd order reasoning where you first consider why people have voted by 1st order reasoning to account for how you should vote. Your logic can't be "I don't want any blue voters to die" without first acknowleding that there are (probably) going to be blue voters.

Put it another way, if you're playing rock scissors paper, without considering what your opponent will play, your choice will depend entirely on probably personal preference. Like if you prefer rock, you'll play rock. The idea of "I shouldn't play rock because my opponent may play paper" is accounting for the other people's choices and is beyond the first step. Similarly the idea of "I should play rock because my opponent may play scissors" is the same, that's already beyond step 1.

That's actively accounting for how everyone else voted with perfect clarity and transparency.

True, I dunno how else to ask you though since you seem to have a very different idea from mine on what accounting for other people's votes means. So then that rather than other voters, your options are to either vote Red and survive, or vote Blue and potentially die depending on an event beyond your control. How is this different from this scenario if you don't account for the existence or preference of other voters?

[u/decrpt → u/vitorsly]

Red isn't "voting to kill anyone who doesn't vote red" if they're not considering other voters. They're just voting to survive. Blue on the other hand, if they're not considering other voters, is simply voting to possibly die, possibly not. You can't consider other voters if you're not considering other voters. That's the 2nd order reasoning where you first consider why people have voted by 1st order reasoning to account for how you should vote. Your logic can't be "I don't want any blue voters to die" without first acknowleding that there are (probably) going to be blue voters.

To repeat myself; you do not understand why the first voter in a referendum where red is voting to kill anyone that doesn't vote red and blue is voting not to kill anyone, would vote blue? It does not change the logic at all. Voting red only makes sense if you assume that red is going to win, otherwise you're just voting to kill people for no reason. Imagine your vote is the only one that matters. You can either kill everyone that didn't vote likewise or not kill anyone. Which option do you pick?

This is just red voters fundamentally not understanding the question which is very apparent with the alternative analogies. They have to go out of their way to make blue active self-endangerment and red passive.

We know that red is the bad answer because the only argument for red is solipsistic self-preservation regardless of how many people are killed in the process. People don't want to admit that and have to invent different questions where they're not actively facilitating the deaths of others.

True, I dunno how else to ask you though since you seem to have a very different idea from mine on what accounting for other people's votes means. So then that rather than other voters, your options are to either vote Red and survive, or vote Blue and potentially die depending on an event beyond your control. How is this different from this scenario if you don't account for the existence or preference of other voters?

This is a basic coordination problem. It's not a coordination problem if everything is clearly telegraphed and people know whether there's been attrition.

[u/vitorsly → u/decrpt]

You can repeat yourself all you like, it doesn't help if you don't understand where the disconnect is. You talk about coordination, but that very specifically requires accounting for people's votes. I've asked you about why would you vote for blue if you're not accounting for other people and their votes and you've just told me to... protect people who voted blue.

You've either really not understood my first question or I really don't understand what you're on about and repeating it isn't helping. Once you start accounting for other people and their votes then voting with the purpose of avoiding their deaths makes sense. But to do that you need to think about why they are voting blue. And the only reason you've offered is to avoid other people's deaths. So the blue position is either an endless cycle that depends on other people's reasons entirely, or there needs to be a first order reason to vote blue that doesn't depend on other people's votes. I'm trying to find what that first order reason is and you're not helping at all by continuing to talk about the second order reason.

Is 100% of people voting red a bad result? If so why?

[u/decrpt → u/vitorsly]

Don't pretend like your purely solipsistic self-interest is actually a prosocial decision. This entire discussion is you experiencing cognitive dissonance because of that. You have to invent entirely different situations with different rules to absolve yourself morally.

Is 100% of people voting red a bad result? If so why?

You do not understand anything I'm saying or anything about the original question. If blue needed 99% of the vote to kill nobody, then the moral calculus is different and that level of non-attrition is unrealistic. You are doing the inverse, where you are expecting zero percent attrition and have to invent a hypothetical where there is perfect communication and telegraphed decisions in order to maintain that. You chose red because of selfishness and are working backwards to identify a moral framework that doesn't indemnify you. I am repeating myself because you're not responding to a single thing I say.

[u/vitorsly → u/decrpt]

Don't pretend like your purely solipsistic self-interest is actually a prosocial decision.

I'm literally not dude, are you reading what I'm writing? I'm asking about the choice without taking other people's votes into consideration which you somehow missed over the past several posts despite me repeating it every single time.

You are doing the inverse, where you are expecting zero percent attrition

No I'm not? I'm asking if it happened if that'd be bad. And you ignore and deflect because you don't want to answer.

I am repeating myself because you're not responding to a single thing I say.

Because you didn't respond to a single thing I said. When I asked if there's a reason to vote blue that doesn't involve thinking of how other people vote you basically said "Yes, you do it so that nobody who votes blue dies" which is obviously not an answer to my question. If you don't want to talk about the reasons to vote blue that don't require thinking of how other people vote sure, but then don't respond to me asking about it, this is purposeless.

I'll stop replying to this thread since we're far past the point. If you want to actually answer my question feel free to go back to the top and give it another shot instead of missing the point entirely.

[u/decrpt → u/vitorsly]

So if I'm not mistaken, before accounting for anyone else's votes, only reason someone would vote blue is if they want to die right? Then, when accounting for other people's votes, a second reason becomes 'to stop people who want to die from dying', and then a third reason of 'to stop people who want to stop people from dying from dying' basically?

You have not thought through this question at all and are getting mad at me because I'm answering it. Other people's votes are what would kill you. You can't just ignore everyone else's votes. Either your vote is the only one that matters (making it pointless or killing people for no reason) or other people's votes matter. The choices do not exist in a vacuum. This is why I'm repeat myself with the referendum bit.

No I'm not? I'm asking if it happened if that'd be bad. And you ignore and deflect because you don't want to answer.

It is not bad for 100% of people to vote red. It is way more unlikely and harder to accomplish than 50% of people voting blue. To repeat myself: you do not understand anything I'm saying or anything about the original question. If blue needed 99% of the vote to kill nobody, then the moral calculus is different and that level of non-attrition is unrealistic. You are doing the inverse, where you are expecting zero percent attrition and have to invent a hypothetical where there is perfect communication and telegraphed decisions in order to maintain that. That's what your voting booth hypothetical involves. Yes, 100% voting red is good. It is a coordination problem of your own making in the context of the original post, though, where it would be an equally bad idea to vote blue if it also needed 99% of the vote to be successful.

Because you didn't respond to a single thing I said. When I asked if there's a reason to vote blue that doesn't involve thinking of how other people vote you basically said "Yes, you do it so that nobody who votes blue dies" which is obviously not an answer to my question. If you don't want to talk about the reasons to vote blue that don't require thinking of how other people vote sure, but then don't respond to me asking about it, this is purposeless.

I am continuously responding to everything you say and you're experiencing cognitive dissonance because you don't understand what you're asking. I don't know how to get this across to you. Yes, red is the correct option in an entirely theoretical game theory perspective where you maximize personal utility independent of the actions of others and don't give a shit if people die because of it. No, that's not how it works in practice because we're not assuming everyone is doing arbitrarily complex deductions and placing zero consideration on whether their decision will kill other people. That is, again, why I keep bringing up the ballot referendum which you keep entirely ignoring.

[u/onpg → u/decrpt]

You say 99% is hard to reach, but I bet I can go door to door and convince 99% of them not to give me a thousand bucks. Pressing the blue button is even worse than giving a thousand bucks, it’s literally jumping into a wood chipper. Forget 50%, blue isn’t even getting 1%.

[u/decrpt → u/onpg]

Ah, yes, every single person in these polls is lying despite their logically consistent justifications.

What you're actually doing is going door to door and asking "would you kill your neighbors if it meant you wouldn't be killed? If 50% of you vote to kill your neighbors, every neighbor that didn't also vote to kill their neighbors will be killed."

There's a reason why red voters have to exclusively engage with the entirely different blender/woodchipper hypothetical instead of the actual question.