[chias]

but why would anybody choose blue? there is no moral benefit to doing so.

If you altered the game to say that only some fraction of the population get the choice, and everyone who doesn't get the choice is assumed blue (or, is killed if less than 50% of voters choose blue) then there's some question to be explored here. But at it stands there is literally no reason to choose blue.

[imoverclocked]

There will always be someone who chooses blue. Choosing red is choosing to kill them.

[4ndrewl]

The blues sound like idiots.

Press the red button you survive, or press the blue button you might die

[hx8]

Press red and you might kill.

[4ndrewl]

Only the people who have chosen through their own free will to gamble with their lives - it's their choice.

[Yizahi]

Driving on a road while fully abiding road rules might kill people who aren't doing that (e.g. pedestrians walking across the highway).

[sunrunner]

Choosing red is choosing to survive knowing that there will always be people who choose blue, potentially an amount that would mean you don't survive if you didn't take explicit action against it.

[gpm]

The people who chose blue in no way contributed to the peril you are in, thus you aren't justified in killing them in self defense.

[sunrunner]

They didn't cause the peril, but knowing that their choice is possibility, if I don't make a decision to protect myself now their decisions may then be the cause of my continued not-survival.

[rationalist]

> Choosing red is choosing to kill them.

Choosing red is choosing to most likely kill yourself.

[rationalist]

I meant:

Choosing blue is choosing to most likely kill yourself.

[polotics]

I fail to see how anyone could choose blue, the certain scenario is everyone chooses red, and this whole post is a nothingburger.

[paufernandez]

To me, the whole point of the riddle is that it reveals the most internal bias towards either yourself or others, meaning that you do things for society or for yourself. Blues don't understand reds, reds don't understand blues. The bias is invisible to the self but it is clearly there given the huge contrast in the opinions of people.

[isleyaardvark]

You fail to see how anyone could choose blue, even though there are plenty of people on the internet and even in the comments here who are stating they would choose blue?

[imoverclocked]

> I fail to see how anyone could choose blue

Depends on the scenario… or the number of people in the experiment. A sufficiently large number of people will guarantee votes in both bins. The specific scenario (reading this outside of a vacuum) will also have knock-on effects.

Eg: reading this into the current political landscape in the US vs reading this into another toy problem about jumping off a cliff or not will have very different outcomes and ethics.

[margalabargala]

The article makes a good point with their reframing.

"Give everyone a magic gun. They may choose to shoot themselves in the head. If more than 50% of people choose to shoot themselves, all the guns jam. The person also has the option to put the gun down and not shoot it."

The "dilemma" is asking to what lengths we should go to save people choosing to commit suicide, and does that change when they are unintentionally choosing suicide due to being "tricked" into it.

[imoverclocked]

I guess that just underlines how reframing can really muddy or clarify a problem. The original problem can be mapped onto many varied scenarios with wildly different ethics.

[GaunterODimm]

Practically at least one person will choose blue for lulz or curiosity or as a moral compass. Shall we punish them? How does it affect survival of whole population in a long term?

[lukasgelbmann]

There’s a moral benefit to choosing blue if you think there’s a chance that the end result will be split 50-50 and you’ll be the deciding vote between a blue majority and a red majority.

[margalabargala]

There's an argument to be made that anyone choosing blue wants to die and you should respect their choice.

[bot403]

I think it would be hard to prove you, individually, were the deciding vote to blue.

Everyone who voted blue in such a case could think they were the one vote. And they could be right.

[throw310822]

> but why would anybody choose blue? there is no moral benefit to doing so.

Why? To contribute saving the others who chose blue. How isn't that moral?

[denkmoon]

If everyone picks red everyone lives, nobody needs saving by picking blue. Picking blue obliges others to pick blue to prevent your death, risking their own life in turn. Red is the moral option.

[atmavatar]

There is no topic in which you'll get 100% of people to agree with you, and this is no different. There will always be people who choose blue. Arguing that you could ever get 100% of people to pick red is a coping mechanism to deal with the knowledge that your choice to pick red will result in some deaths (i.e., unless blue wins).

That isn't to say I categorically judge anyone who would choose red.

If there's good reason to believe a majority and especially a supermajority would choose red over blue, then choosing red is indeed the only rational choice, and convincing overs to do the same is the only way to save lives.

What I like about the question is that it can be used to measure whether a society is low trust (majority red) or high trust (majority blue).

However, where I take issue with the article is the assertion that it's impossible to get a blue majority, especially in the face of polling that suggests such a majority already exists. The article's claim that choosing red is the only moral choice seems at best to be self-delusion.

The utility of choosing red and the morality of convincing others to follow suit maximizes the larger the currently expected pool of red gets, sure. However, while choosing blue has less and less personal downside the greater the expected majority of blue there is, similar to red, the morality of choosing blue maximizes the closer you get to an even split, since it's the product of the potential lives saved by going blue and the likelihood your individual vote will push it over the edge.

Personally, I'd choose blue. I'd rather sacrifice myself than be party to the deaths of billions of people, so if there's even some hope at convincing the majority to go blue, I'd feel obligated to stay with it even if pre-polling suggests things initially tip toward red. I'd also be a bit wary of living in a society now devoid of anyone willing to self-sacrifice. I'm not convinced most people choosing red give that any thought.

[rayiner]

> However, where I take issue with the article is the assertion that it's impossible to get a blue majority, especially in the face of polling that suggests such a majority already exists.

The people saying they'd vote blue would never actually do it. People support lots of altruistic things in the abstract, but almost nobody does it when it involves real risk and sacrifice. The cost of saving a kid in Africa by donating malaria medicine and insecticidal nets is only about $5,000. How many people do you know who will cancel their Hawaii vacation and donate that money to an African charity?

Every time you choose to take a vacation, or get a tricked out Macbook Pro, etc., you are in a real way choosing to allow some kid in Africa to die. But you do it anyway.

[disruptiveink]

You're thinking of this like a game where the only point is to "win". That's not how this would actually work in practice.

Blue is the only moral and logical choice. If red gets over 50% and you picked it, therefore contributing to the "red" outcome, you are now effectively a murderer. Plus you now get to live in a world where everyone else alive are sociopaths that picked red, where everyone with a conscience is now dead.

You also can't count on everyone picking red, or "if you picked blue, then you voted for suicide".

It's reasonable to assume that, leading to the button press event, the usual low-trust, "every man by himself" types will rally for red, with the usual excuses, where high-trust societies will make it clear that it's your moral duty to pick blue, to get the votes to the 50% threshold and ensure no one dies. Around the world there would be debates nonstop that would permeate every social circle and families. You'd have huge arguments where the typical selfish types would scream at their family members "how dare you say you're going to press blue, do you want to leave your poor mother alone without their only child?", only pushing red-leaning voters more into red and blue-leaning voters more into blue.

Plus, if you look at the possible outcomes:

- Red wins, you picked red: Depending on where you live, a reasonable portion to the large majority of the population is now dead. The ones alive have, by definition, a strong bias towards individualism and noncooperation. It's extremely likely civilisation will collapse. Pick your favourite fictional dystopia and you might have a reasonable chance of it actually coming somewhat real.

- Red wins, you picked blue: You are now dead, but at least you don't have to live in the world above.

- Blue wins, you picked blue: Things carry on as normal and your conscience is safe in knowing that you didn't vote to kill and that over 50% of your fellow humans also didn't vote to kill.

- Blue wins, you picked red: Things carry on as normal, but you now have a guilty conscience, or, if your vote was made public, people around you know you would have killed them to save your skin.

[renerick]

By picking red you didn't contribute to anything at all, this button does absolutely nothing in practice. If you remove the red button, leaving the choice between pressing blue and not participating at all, the choice to not participate seems quite obvious. The red button adds some "weight" to the decision, but it's materially the same

[ajam1507]

> Depending on where you live, a reasonable portion to the large majority of the population is now dead. The ones alive have, by definition, a strong bias towards individualism and noncooperation.

Anyone who picked blue gambled their own lives over nothing. There is nothing altruistic about pressing the blue button and especially nothing altruistic about trying to convince people to press the blue button. The altruistic thing is to convince everyone that they don't need to kill themselves by pressing the blue button.

[rayiner]

You're ignoring the dimension of universalism versus insularity. In practice, high-trust, high-cooperation communities are also insular. They cooperate within their community, but not people outside their community. Those communities can ensure the survival of their members by using their social infrastructure to ensure everyone votes red.

Assuming that the red/blue choice doesn't have a theological valance, you'd have a lot of tight-knit Mormon, Muslim, and Orthodox Jewish communities surviving in the red scenario. I suspect also all the highly authoritarian Asian countries.