If everybody presses red nobody dies. If I press red I won’t die.
I’m pressing red, and anybody who dies it’s their own fault.
How is it their own fault? Because they’re not clever enough to figure out the ideal selfish strategy like you, or because they didn’t want to kill anyone and went for the result where no one dies? Blaming people for trying to do the right thing and not kill people is absolutely victim blaming. People like you are practically guaranteed to kill over a billion people in this scenario, but it’s okay, they tried to do the right thing, so it’s their fault.
This is true in almost all cases where scientists have studied IRL “prisoner dilemmas” people usually do the irrational thing and cooperate, rather than follow the Nash Equilibrium and betray. That’s even true when studying “prisoner dilemmas” with animals.
The key point (as others have have pointed out) is IRL it’s not just a single one-off prisoner’s dilemma like the one the in OP, it’s a series of prisoner’s dilemmas where you know if the person you are playing with has cooperated or betrayed in the last. And in those cases the optimal strategy is to take the history into consideration and cooperate with people who have cooperated in the past and vice versa. The people currently running America are firmly in the betray everyone all the time camp 
People selfish enough to push the red button can easily delude themselves into thinking everybody else will too.
No, that’s not how it would work. In the original scheme, if Blue won, no one was supposed to die. If Red won, all the Blues were to die. There’s no scenario under the original rules that leads to the Reds all dying, so if the Reds all suddenly died, there’s be massive outrage that the rules apparently were not what we were told they were.
Billions of Reds who thought they were safe are now dead, and billions more Blues, who thought they were voting to not kill anyone, now find out that their choice actually lead to the deaths of billions. The world erupts into flames as the survivors try to find those responsible.
Yes, it’s instinct at least in part. I’ve heard it called “rational irrationality”; sometimes the rational thing is to be irrational, especially when somebody else is trying to manipulate you through creating such dilemmas.
And in turn, people expect that kind of irrationality and take it into account, even if unconsciously. When people set up a “game theory” style dilemma on their own rather than as part of an experiment they tend to slant it more towards the benefit of the subjects, because otherwise the subjects will likely go against the intended result even if it causes them net harm.
That’s the great thing about these hypotheticals, it brings out the good in people.
The Reds won’t be around to object. The Blues did vote to not kill anyone. I would be perfectly comfortable knowing I voted Blue and intended to protect everyone, the deaths were the act of someone else. I would also know that every single person who died intended that I die for the crime of choosing to protect everyone from harm.
I would certainly want to find those responsible and ensure they were punished for killing so many people.
There should be a 3rd choice. If you push the black button, EVERYBODY dies.
Or maybe if you push black, everybody dies except you. Meaning the only survivors are the black-pushers.
Who can then each enact their Mad Max or Omega Man fantasies in the warm and inviting company of their own kind.
It almost sounds like socialism versus capitalism: invest in what would benefit everyone, even if your contribution is meaningless without others’ cooperation and may in fact hurt you; or have everyone be selfish, which in an Adam Smith manner paradoxically works out for the best except for those who insisted on collectivism.
Or even as I’ve pointed out in gun control debate threads, that either nobody having guns or else everyone having guns appear to be equally workable solutions each in their own fashion, but that any waffling compromise is worse than either.
I think everyone dies anyway because the black button pushers would be killing each other as well as everyone else.
One of my life goals is to avoid killing another human being. So this is a no-bassinet, i pick blue.
That’s not accidental. As well as Mutually Assured Destruction this kind of game theory was also a big part of development of libertarian economics in the 20th century. The idea the everyone acts rationally and chooses the Nash Equilibrium that is best for them alone, and that benefits everyone. Which as mentioned is a basically flawed theory, in real life that almost never happens people choose to cooperate as long as the people they are dealing with have a history of cooperating.
I kinda want to set this up in my classroom. Kids vote:
- Majority vote blue: everyone gets an M&M.
- Majority votes red: everyone who votes red gets an M&M, but nobody who voted blue gets an M&M.
I’m curious to see what happens. I might do it twice, first time with no discussion, and second time with discussion.
Depends on the rules of the game. Your rules and my rules aren’t quite the same. Either game is interesting in its own way. I’m glad you thought this one up.
In effect black consists of applying two opposing rules to the world:
- I live
- Everyone dies
Given the incompatibility of the two rules, the global outcome depends on which rule takes priority. In your version rule 2 takes priority, so my black-pushing can’t protect me from everyone else’s black-pushing. In my version rule 1 takes priority and does protect me. And so protects every black-pusher from all the others.
I will preface my answer by saying that I believe I am fairly liberal and even progressive. I am in favor of my taxes being used to help those less fortunate both domestically and internationally. I donate to causes to support this as well. I work for a public non-profit utility and put in many more hours than I am paid for. I volunteer in the community, and have spent many hours helping out with food drives in my town for over 20 years now. I believe immigrants are a net good, and it is wrong to deport them indiscriminately. I am in favor of vaccines for myself and my loved ones both to protect myself (and my loved ones) as well as contribute to herd immunity for the community—I am not a freeloader on others getting vaccinated.
But at least half of the country doesn’t think that way. They are conservatives who don’t believe in helping others and think it should be every person (or country) for themselves. They don’t get vaccinated because they don’t want to risk the 1-in-a-million chance of an adverse reaction, and instead freeload on others who are vaccinated. (And these people are in charge of the government right now and are cutting and even eliminating many if not all of the programs across the board designed to help others…like USAID and international food aid, or medical and vaccine research.)
I would be foolish to put my life in their hands.
About half of the country is going to select the red button because they are conservatives—and I believe that conservative ideology at its core is based on selfishness.
And some percentage of the moderates and liberals will choose the red button as well, either because they don’t trust the conservatives or they fear there won’t be enough people who will choose the blue button. So I’m not at all surprised that the polls reported in the OP show that about 60% of people say they would choose the red button.
And so while my immediate first inclination was of course to select the blue button, I think that is all but guaranteed to result in my death. So I think I have no choice but to either not play the game at all—if that is an option—or if not, to select the red button and tell all my friends and loved ones to do the same thing.
In its most basic sense, everyone capable of rational thought is responsible to keep themselves alive. It might help the world and the environment if there were fewer people, but that doesn’t mean I want to commit suicide.
And lastly, I would rationalize my decision by noting that I didn’t create this game. I was forced to play it (if opting out is impossible), just like I am forced to live in this world. I would never intentionally wish for someone else’s death.
Again IMO I think the point of the dilemma in the OP is demonstrate how a purely rationalist game theory interpretation is flawed. In these circumstances (which are identical except swapping out death for M&Ms) then the rationalist interpretation makes sense. Vote red, take the guaranteed M&M if other people want to risk their M&M by voting blue that’s on them. It’s only when you swap back to taking people’s lives that it seems (and is) obscene to take that approach.
Yet the maths of game theory does not distugiush between them.
I’ve not actually taken the time look it up and see if that is the point but that my 0.02$.
The other big difference is that the reds and blues will remain in the same classroom after the experiment, and that social piece might change behavior.
And the more alert kids will pick up on that after-effect before voting. Of course that depends on how old the kids are. There’s a minimum age / maturity to be able to understand the game at all, and a higher minimum age / maturity for the kids to start applying 2nd, 3rd, or nth order thinking to it.
OTOH, good bet most kids (of sufficient age / maturity)in that classroom could make a decent prediction of how each of their classmates will vote.
That would be an extra-interesting layer on this. Explain the game, then pass out a class roster to each kid and ask them to record how they think everyone from Adams to Zabarsky will vote. Then conduct the vote with private but identified ballots so the teacher knows who voted how, but the kids won’t ever know.