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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.
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.
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.
Maybe? I am kind of working off the assumption that everyone who is capable of participating in the choice is able to at least understand that one choice is "100% chance of survival" even if they can't make complex moral calculations.
I grant that we can't be certain what number of people are irrational, though, which complicates the issue further.
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