site banner
PaperclipPerfector  17hr ago (text post)   773 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 1, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This has resurfaced and been trending for a while

Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?

Currently at 42.1% red and 57.9% blue.

What would you choose? (See also r/slatestarcodex discussion)

I was motivated to post because I have a convincing argument for blue:

  1. Stupid people will choose blue. You may not care about the disabled, elderly, generally moronic, etc. but this includes children and people who are "too generous": nice, but emotional, and devote their lives to charity

  2. Thanos snapping a decent amount of the population (including random children, and biased towards selflessness) will probably overall negatively affect society

  3. I probably won't die because most people choose blue, as evidenced by the poll. Even if I do, it may be preferable to living with the survivors (point #2)

In addition to other comments about how phrasing the question biases the selection, I'm curious how much impact the red/blue color of the button are subconsciously influencing people's decision on what button to press.

Also, I believe that vote count was influenced by the reply to himself indicating "Blue voters hanging on by a thread currently." That might have given enough push for people to be willing to press the blue button to end up with the 42/58 split instead of something closer to 49/51 as it was before the comment was made.

I'm also curious if there is any data on the demographics of the people that would press each button. I think it's very likely women are much more likely to press the blue button, and men are more likely to press the red button. If the men who would press the red button was conscious of this, would they be more likely to change their mind? For example if 70% of women pressed the blue button but 80% of men pressed the red button, that would mean the surviving men now have to live in a world where there are only 3 women for every 8 men. For the red button pressors, does the possibility of having to live in such a world impact your decision in any way? If you knew this possibility was made aware to all red button pressors, do you think it would impact enough red button pressors to become blue button pressors that could change how you perceive blue button pressors?

What if the question was modified so that the death/survival put you into random groups of X number of people? Or more simply, rather than this being a game of everyone, this is a game of a set number of people e.g. 10,000 or even just 100. At a low enough number, your chances of dying if you pressed blue actually increases significantly, if we assume the 42.1% red to 57.9% blue ratio holds true (it likely won't and I already expressed some skepticism at that number being a "true" answer). I presume red button pressors will always press red regardless of the size of the group. Are there any blue button pressors that would press the red button in smaller group sizes? For red button pressors, what if it was a small group e.g. 100, and within that group is a friend or family member that you know would likely press the blue button. What if this button was presented strictly to people in your family (or people in your friend group). Would you be more willing to press the blue button?

What if the percentage of people that needed to press the blue button to survive was increased to 60%? 75%? 90%? Most of the provided reasons for pressing blue still holds true because none of them take consideration any calculation on what percentage of people one might believe to press blue to warrant pressing blue. For the blue button pressers, is there a number at which you would change your mind? There has to be a number, because if the requirement was 100% of blue button pressors must press blue for blue button pressors to survive, knowing there are people that would press the red button even if the number was only 50% required would make any rational actor press the red button instead.

What if the percentage of people that needed to press the blue button to survive was increased to 60%? 75%? 90%? Most of the provided reasons for pressing blue still holds true because none of them take consideration any calculation on what percentage of people one might believe to press blue to warrant pressing blue. For the blue button pressers, is there a number at which you would change your mind?

Here is my post about it from when it was last discussed 2 years ago:

Red requires 100% cooperation for the optimal outcome, blue requires 50% cooperation for the optimal outcome. It is near-impossible to get 100% cooperation for anything, particularly something where defecting is as simple as pressing a different button and has an actual argument for doing so. Meanwhile getting 50% cooperation is pretty easy. If blue required 90% or something it would probably make more sense to cut our losses and aim for minimizing the number of blue, but at 50% it's easy enough to make it worthwhile to aim for 0 deaths via blue majority.

If we are to compare to politics, I think the obvious comparison is to utopian projects like complete pacifism that only work if you either have 100% cooperation (in which case there is no violence to defend against or deter) or if you have so little cooperation that everyone else successfully coordinates to keep the violence-using status-quo (akin to voting for red but blue getting the majority). Except that such projects at least have the theoretical advantage of being better if they got 100% cooperation, whereas 100% cooperation on red is exactly the same as 50%-100% cooperation on blue.

In real life serious crime is almost always a self-destructive act, and yet people do it anyway. "Just create a society where there's no incentive to do crime and we can abolish the police because 0 people will be criminals" doesn't work, not just because you can't create such a society, but because some people would be criminals even if there was no possible net benefit. We can manage high cooperation, which is why we can coordinate to do things like have a justice system, but we can't manage 100% cooperation, that's why we need a justice system instead of everyone just choosing to not be criminals.

It might help to separate out the coordination problem from the self-preservation and "what blue voters deserve" aspects. Let us imagine an alternative version where, if blue gets below 50% of the vote, 1 random person dies for each blue vote. Majority blue is once again the obvious target to aim for so that nobody dies, though ironically it might be somewhat harder to coordinate around since it seems less obviously altruistic. Does your answer here differ from the original question? The thing is, even if you think this version favors blue more because the victims are less deserving of death, so long as you place above-zero value on the lives of blue voters in the first question the most achievable way to get the optimal outcome is still 50% blue.

I think 60% might be enough to make me switch, but this is influenced by having seen polling where even in randomized polls targeting the general public blue only gets 74% of the vote if you exclude those who responded "I don't know" and 63% if you don't. (I think the general public is more blue than internet voters because this is one of those cases where instincts usually give a good answer but then people can talk themselves out of it based on stuff like half-remembered game-theory puzzles.) The 60% threshold would have to induce 19% of blue voters to switch to drop from 74% to 60%, it's hard to guess if that would happen. Originally before seeing any polling I think I would stick with blue at 60% and switch at 70%. Of course this is assuming it is a surprise and there's no opportunity to do stuff like talk about it, orchestrate pro-blue government advertising campaigns, and hold public-results rehearsal polls beforehand. Very high thresholds would be viable if we could do stuff like that.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats