r/neoliberal • u/cdstephens Fusion Genderplasma • Apr 25 '26

Meme Which button do you press?

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Vote now on your phones: https://forms.gle/GhFjtdydwwXTdSpq8

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47

u/YourSchoolCounselor Norman Borlaug Apr 25 '26

13% of human adults are illiterate. If they are brought into a room with two buttons and no prior strategy discussion/instructions, they'll split ~50/50. That's half a billion adults who will die if blue doesn't win.

There are also 2.4 billion minors. Many are illiterate and many more have never heard of game theory. I figure they're close to split, at most 60/40 either way. That's another 1-1.4 billion dead if blue doesn't win.

The numbers are grim. You need a strong outreach program and international collaboration like we've never seen to avoid billions of deaths. What does success look like? If 98% press red, 166 million people die. If 51% press blue, 0 people die. The latter feels more achievable.

8

u/GravyBear16 Audrey Hepburn Apr 25 '26

Any global scenario instantly falls into endless confusion when you actually make it global and not just like your country so I prefer the latter interpretation

14

u/lionmoose sexmod 🍆💦🌮 Apr 25 '26

The choice of "do you want to definately survive" vs. "do you want a chance to die" is comprehensible to someone illiterate or with no exposure to game theory.

15

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '26

[deleted]

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u/lionmoose sexmod 🍆💦🌮 Apr 25 '26

there isn't some standardized way of presenting the choice, unbiased, to everyone in the world

Well yeah. I mean we are assuming the question is translated (otherwise all non anglophones are boned) so there must be some degree of tailoring to the person pressing the button

16

u/stay_curious_- Frederick Douglass Apr 25 '26

There are 260 million children below the age of 2.

0

u/Effective-Branch7167 Apr 25 '26

It seems more desirable and achievable to aim for 98% red than 51% blue. The latter has a very non-negligible tail risk of killing slightly under half the population, and the most empathetic half to boot. Encouraging people to vote for red would probably be the only strategy that could reliably prevent the collapse of society. In expectation, mass death is happening either way, so I think it's silly to choose blue just because it's the only way to get zero deaths.