If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive (opens in new tab)

This is like a prisoner's dilemma, but with no payoff for the risky option.

In a prisoner's dilemma, you can choose a risky option (stay quiet), but the potential reward is that if the other prisoner also stays quiet then you both go completely free. But if one prisoner instead speaks up and accuses the other prisoner, the accuser gets a short sentence and the one who stayed quiet gets a max sentence.

But in this scenario, there's no payoff whatsoever for the risky option (pressing the blue button). 100% of people choosing blue and 100% of people choosing red lead to the exact same outcome. So why would it ever be rational to choose blue?

This "dilemma" would make more sense if getting over the 50% blue threshold caused some additional positive outcome, like world peace or a cure for cancer.

This question has multiple layers of thinking:

1. People who can't read pick randomly.

2. People who can read, but are too dumb to model or care about other people pick red.

3. People with enough intelligence for basic cognitive empathy pick blue.

4. People a little smarter and think through game theory overall pick red, and think they are smart for doing so.

5. People smarter than #4 and capable of seeing the big picture realize they don't want to leave people who choose #1 and #3 dead, so they pick blue.

6. People who realize the game theory optimal strategy is to announce you're pressing blue and convince everyone else to press blue, but privately press red.

There are probably more layers to this but the whole debate involves people getting upset at each other and accusing people of being in groups they are not. Red group #4 accuses blue group #5 of being #3 (not thinking beyond basic cognitive empathy). Blue group #5 accuses red group #4 of being group #2 (too dumb to model how others act). It's almost a perfect ragebait question.

As for which camp I am in, I am pressing blue and think you should too.

Hello, Blue Presser here.

We learn something about humanity based on the results of the poll. It's naive to think that 100% of people will press the red button. Some people will die if red wins. I think pressing red is selfish and violent, in that it can result in the death of human life by their own unwillingness to cooperate.

If we are not willing to work together in order to protect each other then I have a very pessimistic long-term view of our future. If every blue-presser dies, then our average cooperation level will only decrease, and the population will be over-saturated with defectors. I'd rather just go out now then deal the those consequences.

Considerations:

* many people (at least toddlers, people with dementia) are going to press blue roughly by accident. See the lizardman constant

* other people will not want to be responsible for any deaths and will press blue out of a sense of moral imperative

* many other people are going to take this into account and vote blue out of hopes we can save everyone

You should vote blue.

I like this framing:

> Every person in the world is provided a gun. If a person wants to, they can shoot themselves in the head. However, these guns are special so that if more than 50% people in the world shoot themselves in the head, the guns will all jam and everyone will survive. Or, the person can choose to set the gun down and walk away.

I assume most people are aware there will be some blue voters as well as that greater than 50% of the population are more socially minded than not. I feel if otherwise, in the long run the society would fail to stay cohesive.

It would be easy to self justify picking red as 'it's not killing, it's self preservation' but personally I'd bet on society being more socially minded than not, for betting otherwise would mean i think society as an idea of togetherness is an illusion. After, it being not existent.

Though also to me the experience of life is starkly temporary, dying early or not doesn't really matter to me. So i'm not surprised other's emotional conflict varies here. Personally, losing the existence of something unique to experience (togetherness) in preference of something otherwise fleeting, even the self, isn't very interesting to me.

You might die if you press blue.

Ok.. don't press blue.

So a 100% presses red and everyone survives too.

I imagine this making more sense if this were framed with the backdrop of living in an authoritarian state, with progressively worsening social conditions.

You can choose to protest (blue button) and if over some threshold of people then conditions reset. Otherwise protestors are killed off, and red buttoners survive, but with increased oppression.

Sorry for bringing the mood down with this topic. I'll go back to playing Papers Please! now.

Some people seem to be convinced by logical reframings, like "if you jump into a woodchipper you die, but if 50% of people jump into the woodchipper they all survive"

A logical reframing is not equivalent though! We know everyone else gets the same frame, and most of the problem is predicting what other people will do when presented with this particular two-button frame.

The arguments made about wanting to protect the children/babies and those with cognitive impairments are well meaning, but I think misguided. The bottom line is that the world has been put in a shit situation and you can't fix it. Encouraging blue is encouraging an increase in the likelihood that all the truly nice and wonderful people that would would actually follow through on a blue vote for altruistic reasons wind up dead. And that doesn't seem like an altruistic position? It seems more like self-martyring. Well meaning, but actually making the likelihood of a bad outcome worse.

The problem posted is being taken at face value by some and being interpreted outside of a vacuum for others.

The reality is that we don’t live in a vacuum and the framing of red vs blue is almost certainly not an accidental alignment with political colors. If you are in the US, voting blue is also highly correlated with broader empathy characteristics.

It’s telling that some folks think 100% voting one way is just as attainable as more than 50% voting a certain way. The strong irony here is that they themselves would likely not change their vote to help get to 100% no matter which direction that happened to be. This is also why we are roughly split in half with only a small percentage actually voting differently than their identity politics allow.

I would describe it like this. We are all standing on the edge of a cliff. You can choose the 'Red' option. That option means you don't jump off the cliff. Or you can choose the 'Blue' option. You jump off the cliff. If 50% of individuals choose also the 'Blue' option then there will be a net to catch you so you don't all die.

So, now we agree? Red option it is every time.

These are so intensely annoying.

Besides the obvious choice of not pushing any button, so very rarely -- if at all -- are there only ever 2 options. The entire "thought experiment" leans into some fantastical unrealistic scenarios and plays on peoples "fast thinking" by saying here are 2 options I made up, tell me which of these 2 groups (us or them) shall I sort you into? Neither.

That’s basically why dictatorships are so hard to overthrow. In real life the game is slightly different, if you choose red (don’t protest) you get a negative outcome. But if you choose blue (protest) you risk being jailed (a very negative outcome) unless enough people also choose blue, in which case the outcome can turn highly positive.

That’s why dictators try to limit protests, not just because of the protests themselves but because they don’t want people to know how many others are willing to protest.

These types of analyses always treat voting red and ending up in the majority as preferable to voting blue and ending up in the minority. I don’t think that assumption is universally valid.

In the first case you contend with living in a world after a catastrophic population loss — likely including at least some of your loved ones — knowing that had some of you and your fellow survivors voted differently, nothing bad would have happened.

In the second case, you don’t care at all. Because you’re dead.

Is there actually a real-world version of this game, that the author is alluding to buy not explicitly mentioning?

Otherwise all I'm taking away from this article is that people don't think deeply about survey questions before answering them.

If red pressers always survive then everyone should pick red. Its incredibly and obviously so and I'm concerned by the fact that so many commenters aren't aware of this.

I don't like how the question is setup, both in wording and scenario. Saying "everyone will die unless >50% press blue" sounds more impactful. And pressing red is a free win in this scenario making it a nonchoice. Threshold not being announced or red having some condition would make it more interesting (and at the same time, boring).. unless the point of the question is not to make people discuss blue vs red, but why you should make an irrational decision.

I honestly kind of hate these thought problems, because they attempt to distill a complex system into a single, momentary choice, and then maximize the outcome somehow.

As if it’s the decision that somehow matters, as opposed to the systemic dysfunction and incentives that mandated the decision in the first place.

I’m an increasingly reluctant blue pusher, because I am aware that societal incentives reward individual greed when traded against societal harms; that is, those who sacrifice others are rewarded proportionate to the amount of others they sacrificed. I want to cooperate, because historically that has been the source of our collective survival and growth as a species; however, at this specific moment in time, I would be greatly rewarded if I harmed as many people as possible, as thoroughly as possible, to enrich myself.

If all you’re looking at is the binary decision, red makes sense. Except taken in the context of the wider whole, red pushers should be rightly vilified and excommunicated for prioritizing their own survival over the survival of the whole.

Immediate reaction after cursory read through: A fake scenario against virtue signaling feels like virtue signaling itself.

Another way to frame the question is "how much effort should society as a whole put into saving the lives of individuals who endanger no one but themselves through unnecessary dangerous choices?"

I feel like it's fine that wingsuiting off a mountain is legal. I don't feel a need to beg some stranger not to do it. Both myself and that stranger are perfectly aware there's a decent chance their choice will result in their death.

If you push red, you will survive. If you push blue, you might die.

Just push red.

These sorts of problems assume that actions have no consequences beyond the immediate decision. These tests, run in places which have higher long-term expectation of social connections, give different results than in the US.

In the world where <50% press blue, you know that everyone alive (the red pushers) would save themselves rather than take a risk helping you or those who aren't clever at game theory problems.

I don't want to live in that world, so blue for me. And it's the fault of everyone who pressed red should I die.

Silly.

Everyone will press the red button and everyone will survive.