[imoverclocked]

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.

[zahlman]

> is almost certainly not an accidental alignment with political colors. If you are in the US,

Please keep in mind that the association of colour to political wing is radically different, even the exact opposite, in other countries.

> It’s telling that some folks think 100% voting one way is just as attainable as more than 50% voting a certain way.

I don't see anybody arguing this. The entire point of the red strategy is that it is not dependent on how many press red. There are people who predict that everyone will independently come to the same conclusion (it's wrong to assume the entire population will be rational). That is not the same thing.

The argument, as far as I can tell, is that in the world where blue pressers failed to get a majority, red pressers are not responsible for those deaths. They were free to choose red, and had no real incentive not to choose red beyond sympathy for other blue pressers.

But also, in the world where blue pressers do get a majority, red pressers don't suffer any consequences for the "betrayal", as described. It would have to literally be a fate worse than death for choosing blue to make any sense. (In the limit, if we imagine that blue pressers will, if successful, enact their revenge and kill all the reds, then the game merely becomes symmetric and the goal is just to be in the majority.)

[imoverclocked]

> The entire point of the red strategy is that it is not dependent on how many press red.

Yes, but depending on the specifics of the actual implementation of this problem there are extended consequences. What is missed by the red POV is, in some implementations of this, you are losing collaboration/collaborative populations. Society works because of both competition and collaboration. Some people can’t see anything but one side of that.

> Please keep in mind that the association of colour to political wing is radically different, even the exact opposite, in other countries.

Yup, that’s why I worded it the specific way I did. It doesn’t stop people from having a strong opinion on which color they would choose in this scenario. My point is that red vs blue is pre-charged.

[zahlman]

> you are losing collaboration/collaborative populations. Society works because of both competition and collaboration. Some people can’t see anything but one side of that.

I don't follow. This would only make sense if we infer that pushing red demonstrates that a person is somehow incapable of cooperating on ordinary societal endeavours. I think that's laughably untrue. I disagree that a society without blue-pushers falls apart, because the button test is not an accurate or even reasonable proxy for whether someone is "collaborative". I parse it as more like a proxy of whether someone is "suicidal".

[imoverclocked]

Then, let's use a different instance of the red/blue problem onto a real world scenario. Since we are talking life/death, let's even go to the extreme of fascism, just so it's clear.

Voting red: In a world where fascism is taking hold and votes are monitored, voting for "red" allows you to stay alive (today.)

Voting blue: In that same world, if enough people vote blue (say at least 50%), then everyone lives.

This has all the same hallmarks of the original problem. Voting red=live another day, voting blue=maybe die.

Here is the rub, fascism usually vilifies a group of people whom will live immediately after voting red but ultimately won't matter if they vote red or blue. If the targeted group is less than 50% of the population then they need people who are not in the targeted group to vote blue to stay alive long-term. There will always be people who "just vote for themselves" since the immediate payout is obvious. Hopefully there will also be enough people who collaborate and vote blue despite that obvious/immediate payout to avoid genocide.

This changes the equation from "suicidal" to something else entirely. I think one key part of that something else is collaboration. It also takes courage and faith in fellow humans with whom you ultimately rely on. One could even say that voting red is cowardly in this scenario.

As usual, the devil is always in the details.

[zahlman]

> This has all the same hallmarks of the original problem.

No, it doesn't. It introduces a bunch of political baggage that doesn't fit, for no reason other than so that you can talk about political groups you don't like.

> If the targeted group is less than 50% of the population then they need people who are not in the targeted group to vote blue to stay alive long-term.

There are no "groups" in the thought experiment (except the ones defined by the choice), and nobody is being "targeted". No "vilification" occurs, and crucially anyone in the "blue group" can trivially just not be so (unlike the identity markers that you're clearly trying to allude to).

> There will always be people who "just vote for themselves" since the immediate payout is obvious. Hopefully there will also be enough people who collaborate and vote blue despite that obvious/immediate payout to avoid genocide.

Survival is not a "payout", and no "genocide" occurs in the case that blue voters fail to attain a majority. You say "hopefully", and you load the situation by describing evil politics. But in the actually described experiment, as an objective matter of fact, there is no meaningful difference between a world where 51% voted blue and a world where 100% voted red.

> One could even say that voting red is cowardly in this scenario.

One could say this, but ordinary tests of courage do not expect people to risk their own lives for no benefit beyond the possibility of contributing to saving people who don't need saving (as they can trivially save themselves.

> As usual, the devil is always in the details.

Things that you add to the situation, or read into it, are not "details".

[imoverclocked]

>> This has all the same hallmarks of the original problem.

Even the “reframed” version in TFA had additional details.

As for political groups I don’t like, I can definitely put fascism in that category… but that wasn’t the point, was it.

You have exceeded my ability to explain this problem. I hope you can find the knowledge you seek elsewhere.