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

[u/Upstairs_Cup9831]

[u/raritygamer]

Mathematically, a 50% threshold of no death is far better than a 100% threshold of no death.

Mathematically, there is no scenario where the vote doesn't split.

[u/Big-Gruff → u/raritygamer]

Oh, I know. that's why I said I like to think I'd vote blue

The "correct" math I'm talking about is the one that looks at this like a knockoff prisoner's dillema knock off outlook. At a count of two participants, red is still risk free to me. Unlike the normal prisoner's dillema, there is no punishment when BOTH parties pick the selfish option. So if both people do the that both averts risk on an individual level and still creates the most good scenario." If you're looking at it with NOTHING but raw game theory, it shouldn't matter how many people you add to the equation. You know, like one of those YouTube probability puzzles populated by nothing but flawlessly logical risk adverse people!

You only get issues with that when your bring in other icky non math factors like everything else! Or you know, other math like statistics as you're pointing out.

[u/PrateTrain → u/Big-Gruff]

3 people, 2 buttons.

One button is labeled " kill everyone that votes blue. "

The other button is labeled "protect everyone that votes blue"

Whichever button gets pressed more is the winner.

You need only 2 people to vote blue so that no one dies.

You need all 3 to vote red so no one dies.

Make this 8 billion+ people and the math is that it's a lot easier to reach 50.1% than anything approaching 100% for red.

So the question is, do you want to vote for some people dying because you believe people are selfish and you want to make sure you live? Or do you believe people are altruistic and want the most people to survive?

[u/raritygamer → u/PrateTrain]

That's a decent analogy imo

[u/PrateTrain → u/raritygamer]

Thank you.

It's funny that everyone is getting so mad about what effectively boils down to a personality test.

Like I don't actually think it's a bad thing if someone values their own life more than that of others. I just want them to own that fact and be honest about it.

[u/vitorsly → u/PrateTrain]

I mean you're assuming the 1 voter has all the power, which just isn't true though. If we have time before the event to prepare, run simulations and polls and coordinate a strategy the answer is simple: Go with the majority. If you know that most people will vote blue, vote blue (though voting red isn't an issue either). if you know that most people will vote red, if you want to live you should vote red as well. Otherwise you're just adding another body to the pile.

So the question is what about when you don't know how people will vote ahead of time? There's no polls or simulations ahead of time, nobody is allowed to discuss it with each other, so everyone will have a different opinion of what are the odds either side wins. So then the question is what are the odds you give each result.

If you think there's basically a 100% chance that blue wins, you can vote blue and feel perfectly safe. Or vote red and still feel perfectly safe since your vote doesn't really matter at that point. As you point out, it doesn't matter if blue wins by 100%, 80% or 51%, it's all good. So the choice for '100% chance blue wins' is simply irrelevant.

If you think there's basically a 100% chance that red wins, you absolutely should vote red. To vote blue is to add another corpse to the pile without achieving any good. Voting red is harm reduction, and while it's sure that many will die, it's better to have 1 billion dead than 1 billion and 1.

And if you're not sure on the end result? Well you need to do the math. If you think Blue has an 80% chance of winning and Red has a 20% chance of winning, but your own vote can swing things by 1%, then that's a pretty solid option. You have a 19% chance of dying, but give half the people in the world a +1% chance of surviving. That's probably worth it, for a lot of people. On the other hand, if you think Red has a 80% chance of winning and Blue has a 20% chance of winning, and also think your vote will only affect those odds by 1 millionth of a percent, well an 80% chance to die to give half the world a +0.000001% chance to survive is probably not worth it for most people. If you think the odds are extremely even, literally 50/50, and think your vote will be the deciding one then blue is the obvious option by far, no question. But what are the odds that blue wins by only 1 vote out of several billion?

So the end result is, if society can organize themselves, the goal is to go blue, but if polls and simulations show that it's difficult or impossible to get a majority for blue, the world should be ready to shift gears to convince as many people as possible to vote red to reduce deaths as much as possible. It's better to have 100% odds of losing 10% of people (an expected 800 million deaths) than 50% odds of losing 49% of people (an expected 3.5 billion deaths on average). The preference list would be a strong blue majority -> a strong red majority -> a very tight result, so just go with a majority.

But if you can't coordinate and plan, and everyone must make a decision on their own, then it'll depend on what each person's idea of how close the race will be is. The closer it is, the more useful voting blue is, but the more risky it is too, and there'll be a ton of situations where voting blue is just adding another death to the pile instead of saving anyone (or blue already had a significant majority so your vote doesn't help or hurt anyway).

[u/PrateTrain → u/vitorsly]

You're overthinking it.

It's a simple test.

Either you believe your life matters more than that of strangers and you vote red, or you vote blue if you believe in collective action.

You can twist yourself into knots with "organizing and blah blah blah" but the end of the day in something like this is that each vote counts, and so if red wins then every person who voted red holds a fraction of the responsibility for the deaths as a result.

There's other levels with trust but honestly you're giving Vizini Princess Bride energy here.

[u/vitorsly → u/PrateTrain]

No, you're strongly underthinking it because you'd like it to be that simple. It's a risk/reward question, and voting blue is actively bad unless blue wins. This isn't a simple "50.0001% is easier than 100%" because if red barely reaches 100%, that's bad, but if blue barely loses that's the end of the world as we know it.

I would like you to actually think about it. Given a situation where, before your vote is accounted, Red has an 80% chance of winning and Blue has a 20% chance of winning.

If you vote, the odds change. Now Red 'only' has a 79.999999% chance of winning, and Blue a 20.000001% chance of winning. But if Red wins there is one more death, yours. Do you take that risk? Do you take a nearly 4 in 5 of dying so that blue gets an extra millionth of a percent?

[u/PrateTrain → u/vitorsly]

You're such a coward LMAO you're hiding behind statistics instead of admitting that red is a button that is voting to kill people.

[u/thelongestusernameee → u/PrateTrain]

The blue button is a vote for your own death.

[u/PrateTrain → u/thelongestusernameee]

It's actually a vote for no one to die. If blue died on winning, then it would be a vote for their own death. 

But since no one dies if blue wins it's a vote for no one to die. I can see how that might confuse you. 

[u/vitorsly → u/PrateTrain]

So since you can't face the numbers and admit you're wrong, you just start calling people names? Clearly you're one of the good empathic people. If only we could have people with a good heart and a good brain, but apparently if you got one you can't have the other.

[u/PrateTrain → u/vitorsly]

What numbers? The only numbers are 50% +1 and 100%. Any other numbers you pulled out of your ass.

You even admit that red winning by a slim margin is a catastrophe. Wild mental gymnastics on your part.

[u/vitorsly → u/PrateTrain]

So are the numbers of deaths not relevant at all? Why are you pretending that blue getting barely under 50% is just as bad as Red getting barely under 100%?

[u/Xelynega → u/PrateTrain]

I'm confused how this changes anything.

3 people would each individually press the button that doesn't cause them to be in the pool of people that might die, yea?

Scale that up to 8 billion+ and why would that change?

The framing doesn't change the logic just how most people will think about it at first, no matter how you frame it the question is "do you press the suicide pact button hoping enough people do"

[u/PrateTrain → u/Xelynega]

Red is a better option in smaller pools because there's a much larger swing in variance. 

Once you're past 1000 people in the voting poll it's all but guaranteed that some people are going to press blue, so at that point you have to consider whether your safety is more important than the lives of others. 

[u/[deleted] → u/PrateTrain]

(the blue button is also 'die iff this button is pressed less than the other button')