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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1397 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.

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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)

I'm still on Team Blue. This is a coordination problem. You need to get close to 100% of people to pick Red in order for Red to be non-horrifying. Blue only needs 51%. As long as some significant portion of the population are picking Blue, and I don't think it's possible to change that, Blue is the only option that prevents atrocity.

The good endings here, so to speak, are 100% Red, or 50+% Blue. The latter is achievable, and the former is not.

Is this stupid? Yes. If everybody were rational, we could all just pick Red and we'd be fine. But unless you're willing to bite the bullet and say that irrational or foolish or unlucky people should all die, even 80-20 in favour of Red, or 90-10 in favour of Red, is a nation-wrecking calamity.

Is this stupid? Yes. If everybody were rational, we could all just pick Red and we'd be fine. But unless you're willing to bite the bullet and say that irrational or foolish or unlucky people should all die, even 80-20 in favour of Red, or 90-10 in favour of Red, is a nation-wrecking calamity.

I think the reason this hypothetical annoys me so much is that it's essentially set up to permit suicidally stupid people to morally and emotionally blackmail the rest of us by the threat of their own self-harm, and then self-righteously preen about it afterwards. It teaches bad - ruinous! - habits.

Real life coordination problems do not look like this! Real life coordination problems are made massively worse by this sort of intellectually cancerous SF Rat crap. Real life coordination problems instead look like "If you push red, the criminal goes to jail and then doesn't commit more crimes. If you push blue, we let them free and then they rape and murder a random person selected from among the reds and blues".

Unless you're willing to bite the bullet and say that stupid, or irrational, or congenitally anti-social criminals need to go to jail, then you are a nation-wrecking calamity.

...sure?

I am fully in favour of sending criminals to jail. That is a different hypothetical, though.

Sorry, I meant to rephrase that so it was more clearly ranting at the hypothetical in general, and not you in particular.

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