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Notes -
Are you stupid or am I evil?
There is a political quote which says that "the Right thinks the Left is stupid while the Left thinks the Right is evil". Today/yesterday there was a poll floating around rationalist twitter which I think is the best example I've ever seen of this dynamic.
It asks you to choose between two options:
And what happens is that:
- if > 50% of ppl choose blue pill, everyone lives
- if not, red pills live and blue pills die
Now if you think about it for even 30 seconds, it clearly makes sense for everyone to choose Red Pill here: if everyone chooses Red Pill nobody dies, which is the best case scenario from choosing blue, and on top there is no personal risk to yourself of dying. You can even analyse it game theoretically and find that both 100% blue and 100% red are Nash equilibria, but only 100% red is stable, and anyways, choosing red keeps you alive with no personal risk (not present in case you choose blue), so everyone should just choose Red, survive and continue on with their lives. Indeed this poll is equivalent to the following one (posted by Roko):
And what happens is that:
- if you choose the blender, you will die, unless at least 50% of people choose the blender as well, in which case the blender will overload and not work, making you live
- if you do nothing, you live
You would have to be monumentally, incorrigibly stupid to choose the blue pill (walking into the blender) here and we should expect Lizardman's constant level support for blue.
If only our world were really that simple...
The poll can be found here on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lisatomic5/status/1690904441967575040 . Currently there is a 65% majority for choosing the blue pill ::facepalm:: . At least this number is over 50% so nobody is dying. What justification is provided for people choosing Blue over Red? Well, one of the top replies is that "red represents the values of intolerance and fascism". Now this is an extreme example of a reply but even then personally I am stunned that there are a non-negligible proportion of people who actually think in this way. The best response explain what's going on here seems to be this one:
Perhaps expectedly enough, no matter how many Red supporters try to explain to people that choosing Blue is stupid, making the choice really really clear using examples like this:
And yet, large amounts of people still support blue (taking your life vests off to build a raft). The fact that such people get to vote (and make up a majority of at least this twitter poll) is a fucking scary thought. This is why we can't have nice things people!
</rant over>
In more encouraging news rdrama.net also ran this poll here: https://rdrama.net/h/polls/post/196874/are-you-effective-altruist-enough-to . Fortunately people there were sensible enough to vote for Red by a 90-10 margin, which is basically everyone once you discount the ultra-edgy maximally contrarian nodule on the site ("I want to die, so I pick blue") which will always vote to pick the maximally dramatic option (which on the site would be Blue).
I'd be interested in trying this out here on the Motte too, but unfortunately we don't have poll functionality on this site...
&&Blue Pill&&
&&Red Pill&&
EDIT:
For people who say "Blue" is the right choice for pro-social reasons:
Consider a slightly changed version of the poll where instead of choosing for yourself whether you have Red/Blue you are making this choice for a random stranger who's also taking part (and in turn some other random stranger is making the choice for you). In this case it makes sense from a selfish perspective to choose Blue for that random stranger, since there's a chance that the person choosing for you chooses Blue for you as well in which case you'd want 50%+ Blue as you want to live, while from an altruistic perspective it makes sense to choose "Red" for your stranger, since that way you're saving them from potentially dying.
In this case we'd expect everyone to end up choosing Blue if they play rationally, even though the "altruistic" pro-social option is to choose Red. If you still think that everyone should choose Blue then you agree that there are cases where the non-(pro-social) thing is the right thing to do.
If you say that in this case we should each of us now choose Red as that's the socially good option then since people generally value their own life at least as much as the life of a stranger (note: I say "at least as much", not "more" here) you must also agree that it's just as fine for people to choose "Red" in the case where they're deciding for themselves instead of a stranger.
I was baffled, then I got to this exchange and I think I understand now:
In this weirdo version of a prisoner's dilemma, everyone can cooperate by hitting Red and all is well, or everyone can cooperate by hitting Blue and all is well. If you have normal coordination and everyone chooses Red, they're all good, but if someone "defects" to Blue, they get killed. You or I apparently don't worry about the defector - just don't be an idiot and you're fine. Other people want to save the idiot contingent so much that they're willing to risk their own lives for it (at least in a Twitter poll). In a scenario where the only person punished by defection is the defector, the threat of that person suiciding is enough to make people change course.
What's wild is that I think this does actually have some explanatory power. When I say that I don't really care about bad outcomes for people that can't do something as basic as show up to work in a country where it's as easy as the United States, this poll makes it obvious that the Blue-pressers are willing to risk their own wellbeing for people that are too stupid to just push the correct button. This also seems like it helps explain the efficacy of hunger strikes, which I've never viscerally grasped - if someone elects to starve themselves in response to something, I am morally blameless when they starve, and their argument completely fails to persuade me. I see their actions working on others via media exposure, but I've never understood how the threat of killing yourself is supposed to move others to your position. Apparently, "give me what I want, or I'll kill myself" works even what the person wants is just the ability to smash Blue. To be fair, their impulse probably is pro-social, but it's also completely foreign to me.
Yeah, I don't know how simpler than "if you pick red, you live" it could be. If someone picks blue after that, then it really is a case of "did you not understand that if you pick red, you won't die?"
'Well if I pick blue then I'm helping to make sure everyone lives'.
There's only the risk of death if people are silly enough not to pick red. Five people picking blue on the grounds "I'm smart but those other guys are dumb so they'll probably pick blue" are doing the equivalent of grabbing a live electric wire while standing in a paddling pool full of water and sharks and piranhas being shoved off a cliff without a bungee jump cord and swigging down a cyanide cocktail at the same time. You are not showing off your intellect or your virtue.
Seriously.
I've been asking blue-choosers who they think they're saving by picking blue.
That is, who is choosing blue, OTHER than the people who think they're saving someone by picking blue?
And if the only people who are picking blue are the ones trying to save someone, they are now the only ones in need of saving. They all jumped off a bridge thinking they would save someone, when there was nobody who needed saving prior to them jumping.
Its a self-fulfilling prophecy which can easily be sidestepped by choosing red.
If you can posit a person who picks blue for some innocent reason other than a desire to look like a moral person or the desire to save someone else, then you've got the beginnings of an argument.
Otherwise, you're just creating risk where no risk needed to exist.
Literally, if I were a Supervillain playing the game, I would be trying to maximize death toll by convincing some people to choose blue. I'd lie and say I was choosing blue then mercilessly defect.
"I am choosing red and you should too" provides zero reason to lie.
It's really reminding me of the saying beloved of our mothers "And if everyone jumped off a cliff, would you do that too?"
Now I'm imagining the infant Blues rebuking her with "Mother, how selfish! In order to assure the 50%+ victory over gravity where, if a sufficiency of us jump off the cliff, we will magically float safely and slowly down to solid ground, I too must and shall jump! The lemmings, Mother, the lemmings! Can Nature in its infinite wisdom, honed over millions upon millions of years of evolution, be wrong?"
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The premise is that everybody who responds to the poll chooses based on their response. Are misclicks such an insane possibility that they haven't even occurred to you?
The thought experiment literally posits colored pills, which implies this isn't just a button on a screen, as presented.
So I'm imagining a person who has two pills in front of them, and has it explained to them what each one does. And, magically, knows for certain that these explanations are 100% truthful.
So I can not imagine someone thinking "I'm picking the red pill!" and then somehow, just completely brain farting and grabbing the blue one.
And believe me, if misclicking meant living or possibly dying, I'd be pushing that mouse around with the slowest movements possible.
I actually posit that the hypothetical, as presented, doesn't allow for the possibility of a misclick. Given the life-or-death stakes involved, if you made an accident in your click, then that's a consequence of your choice not to take precautions against a misclick by doing something like what you suggest. I'd personally zoom in/scroll to the page to the extent my non-preferred option is literally not on the screen before my mouse or finger is even over any of the options. And obviously there would have to be a decent time gap between press-down and pull-up of the finger on the mouse button or the touch screen, so that I can visually verify that the button I intended to click was indeed the one I clicked (usually you can cancel such clicks by dragging the mouse off the button before letting go).
Freak occurrences happen, I suppose, including a random bit of cosmic radiation flipping a bit on your PC to switch your choice to the other one. These seem like such unlikely and uncommon outliers that they can be effectively rounded down to zero. Otherwise, if someone misclicks, I would consider that just an active choice the person is making that they don't really care if they have to face the consequences of pressing the blue button or the red one.
Yeah, if we're allowed to control the circumstances under which the click occurs, I'd run a script which removes the blue option from the screen entirely. I would be preventing any possible avenue by which I might push the universe into the state where the 'blue' option was selected and transmitted.
I can absolutely accept some tiny tiny chance that a player screws up the choice. But if it's not quite small enough to fall out of my reasoning, it may as well be.
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Yeah I guess that's true. Still:
You still have to add quite a lot to make the premise 100% work. They magically know the explanations are 100% truthful, nobody is blind/colorblind, nobody is insane or too young to truly understand the decision, and so on. Given a very generous interpretation of the premise, I think at least one person from one of the previous categories will still around.
Even if literally everybody perfectly understands the question, not everybody will choose red. Some people are just dumb. Some would rather sacrifice themselves than risk even an infinitesimal chance that they're responsible for another's death, or perhaps they'd rather sacrifice themselves than even admit the possibility of such responsibility, even if the probability is 0. Even if everybody is quite rational and understands the game theory, people have different values and/or may not decide upon the same Schelling point as everyone else.
In reality, no matter how rational everyone is, I'd be utterly shocked if everyone chose red, regardless of what the "correct" answer is. Thus the correct answer (assuming it's reasonably likely to succeed) is blue.
What % of the whole are dumb, though. Because now we're adding in irrational/random actors, which makes it even less certain that we'll meet our blue threshold because some of those will also be choosing red for dumb reasons.
I have a hard enough time modelling other rational actors in this game, now add the ones who will do things for reasons I can't even fathom!
And if we posit dumb actors, why not posit evil ones as well who are inclined to maximize death toll?
I wouldn't be utterly shocked if everyone chose red (self-interest is a hell of a drug), but I wouldn't be utterly shocked if, say 30% chose blue between those who were dumb and those who thought they were helping.
But expecting only 30% to choose blue is explicitly a reason for me to choose red.
And since the hypo doesn't present a mechanism under which you can reliably predict that the outcome for blue would be over 50%, I am pretty much going to pick the one which provides certainty.
It's a fair question, but I still think the framing is off. I'm not adding irrational actors; they're already part of the scenario as written.
Sure, I just don't think there are as many of them as there are pathological altruists, who will choose blue even when blue odds are very low.
Agreed. I like to think I would still choose blue if it came down to it, though, because (valuing my own life equal to others) I simply think it has higher EV.
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Not just no reason to lie but no need to trust. The cost of trusting that someone will vote blue is that if they vote red you may die if you vote in accordance with the agreement. The cost of trusting that someone will vote red red is that if they vote blue they might die if you vote in accordance with the agreement.
Lying is punished when the agreement is voting red; lying isn’t punished when the agreement is to vote blue.
Yes, the trustless aspect cannot be overstated when you're playing a game with strangers, potentially millions of them, and have no enforcement mechanism.
It's virtually guaranteed that some avowed blue-pickers will have a panic attack and go with red when the choice time is actually arrives. I suppose some red-pickers have a crisis of conscious and go blue, but holy cow if you have no other information to go on, Red is the one that doesn't require faith in strangers.
Trying to play the recursive game (I know that he knows that I know that he knows I'll pick blue, therefore...) seems like an inherently losing approach.
It just seems so obvious yet some people are arguing against it. I honestly cannot model their thought process (outside of them treating the thought exercise solely as an exercise instead of thinking — how would people actually vote if voting the wrong way could lead to their death).
The closest I've gotten is that they actually believe that "Altruism is a Schelling Point."
"I want to save people, and other people will too, so they'll accept the risk and we'll all pick blue."
But they can't fully articulate WHY they believe someone actually needs saving. They reason out why someone would pick blue based on altruism, but not why someone would pick blue a priori and thus need to be rescued. So why do we need altruism?
And on the meta level, I think they may be assuming that how people behave in this thought experiment is how they'd behave in other scenarios in which case they think reds are inherently self-interested.
But no, I'm capable of being altruistic, I can just recognize that this specific situation is one where it is best to shut off the altruistic impulse.
I genuinely WANT to understand the position that allows one to pick blue believing it to be the best action.
But it seems to require that you start with premises that are completely inborn or 'faith-based.'
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So, it's guaranteed that people will die then.
Ever consider that might not be the point?
Everybody dies eventually. Picking blue does not mean eternal life.
OK?
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In a Twitter poll? Not even for a second.
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Like said below, it becomes a different thing if you imagine that everyone in some community has to make the choice, including small kids.
Would I trust my 3-year-old and 11-month-old kids to understand the subtle logic of the "everyone picks red" option, or just pick the pill that looks more like candy?
Ironically I think a kid at a certain age might cut right through the question without even blinking.
Imagine if the question were phrased thusly: "If you pick red you don't get spanked. People who picked blue get spanked, unless greater than 50% of people pick blue then NOBODY gets spanked"
Would most kids have to hear anything other than "If you pick red you don't get spanked" to immediately pick red?
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Why wouldn't a red pill look like candy? Again, if you're giving a choice to an eleven month old, it's stupid.
The original poll was a simple choice in an online thought experiment that didn't say one thing about "the people in this experiment don't have the brains to come in out of the rain, so you must save them from themselves by your choice". The blue choosers then started introducing all kinds of qualifications to justify their superior virtue. Now we're down to "if an eleven month old infant in real life was given the choice of a candy or a poison pill". Come on, just tell us reds we're all devils and be done with it.
what's the point in this baiting?
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Did I say it wouldn't? Both might look like candy. 50/50 choice doesn't sound like good odds when talking about my child's life, though.
I said nothing of this sort, and find it very odd that red-pressers get pre-emptively angry over the mildest of challenges or questions around this thought experiment, considering that most of red-presser rhetoric revolves around how it's immediately and axiomatically obvious that blue-pressers are all either morons or lying virtue-signallers.
So how does your picking blue save the kid? "Look, Junior, Mommy is picking blue so you know that one is safe". Oops, no, that's not how it works, it's "You picked the poison blue so now Mommy has to pick that one, too, and hope that enough other people pick it so we don't die".
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Nuh-uh! You're the virtue signaler! I'm rubber you're glue!
Is it so hard to imagine that some will misclick? There are no added qualifications. The brute reality of the poll will guarantee some choose blue by accident.
Misclicking does not send them into a blender, or the hangman's noose, or however they are theoretically supposed to go "poof!" into thin air in the thought experiment. The blue moralists, though, are acting as though "but they will DIE if they misclick, we must save them!"
No, all that happens is that they misclicked. Oops-a-daisy, but it's not like they spilled spaghetti sauce on their white shirt.
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As with everything, kids are different and require a different kind of political thinking compared to adults.
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Maybe I'm the complete moron, because I didn't even think about children. As someone notes below, toying with variables to make the situation more or less obvious and more or less iterative would change it in important ways.
The literal phrasing of the poll would probably exclude children, since it only talks about those voting in the poll, and presumably there wouldn't be too many 3-year-olds using Twitter (expect when someone accidentally posts awfoijgjdoindfnaofnbmadf,öd,dföl,bfbdfb,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,)
Then again, if we go by the results of the actual poll, it would have comfortably over 60% voting blue, so voting blue would be safe anyhow.
Yeah, there would probably be at least one 3-year-old though. There's only one way to guarantee everyone remains safe.
No there isn’t a way of you (the sole voter for your choice) guaranteeing everyone lives. If you vote blue you may die. If you vote red someone else may die. The only way to make sure is if enough people vote the same way but once you can allow for cooperation you tell everyone “if we all vote red no one does so just vote red.”
I hate this kind of turnabout. I wasn't talking about myself. I was talking about us, considering there's at least one 3 year old who makes the "wrong" choice. There's only one way to protect them.
Yes, technically speaking, without cooperation there's no way to guarantee anything. So obviously what I meant was that given a 3 year old who picks blue there's only one way to save everyone.
And I hate your kind of turnabout. You introduced the knowledge and ability to influence others into the scenario in order to “get” to your preferred outcome. If we can do that, then we can very easily influence the 3 year old to take the red candy. I have kids. It isn’t hard to convince the kid to take the red pill in this example. In fact, I think you’d be really irresponsible to get the kid to take the blue pill hoping you could get enough other people to pick blue. I know I would do everything in my power to get my kids to take red even if it meant going from sufficient blue to insufficient blue because I would not risk my kids dying.
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Participating in an online poll for a rationalist thought experiment? Man, three year olds these days are way more sophisticated than my time!
Bro come on. All it takes is one person to leave Twitter open, or a chance series of clicks on a computer/tablet/phone. Not that crazy.
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