Knowing that the choice that guarantees survival is red, what were you and all your fellow blues thinking? Why did you vote for something that gives you a "maybe we’ll survive if enough of us pick blue, knowing that the likelihood of that happening is indeterminate at best?
The issue with that one is: if you don’t choose to take the pill, it doesn’t matter whether it’s sugar or cyanide. It only counts if you’re going to be forced to take it if you don’t choose to.
Guaranteed survival for red pushers only. There’s always gonna be blue pushers. So you are choosing to kill them. How does it feel to have killed those people?
Color Blindness is gonna be a stressor.
This is binary. More than 50% will certainly agree on something, whatever it is.
In this case “not taking the pill at all” is the red button.
If about 500 million people out of a population of 7 billion decide to press the blue button, explain how any red button pusher could have done anything to save them?
But no one is forced to take the pill, just like how no one is forced to push the blue button. Everyone can choose to live by simply not taking the pill or pushing the blue button.
If it makes the analogy closer, say there are two pills. The red pill is always a sugar pill. The blue pill is a sugar pill if 50% of people or more choose blue and cyanide if 50% of people or more choose red.
Why would you ever choose the blue pill?
Well, I mean, your decision could kill billions of people, and deals with cooperation and a social dilemma, and whether you’re prioritizing your own survival even knowing that billions will die if enough people make the same decision you did – it’s hard to say that has no components of a moral issue.
You know exactly what we were thinking. We were thinking “no one has to die if only half of us pick the cooperative choice” – don’t feign ignorance.
This is something I found repugnant about the red justifiers in the previous thread. They weren’t honest, by and large, about what they were doing. I kept asking them - give me your best estimate, how many people do you think would pick blue in this scenario? We’ve given you dozens of reasons we we think some people would pick blue. And we know that everyone picking red is an absolute fantasy.
And they all refused. Every single one of them. None of them would say “I think 1.2 billion people will die and I’m picking red anyway”
They only offered rationalizations. Well, those people chose to die. They basically committed suicide. It’s not my fault. Same thing you’re doing now.
When did EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the planet ever agree to one thing? Because that’s the bar you have to set to create a “no one has to die” scenario by picking red. I think you’d agree that 50% is a much lower bar. Or you can acknowledge that you’re going to kill people. A lot of people.
If you can hold your views honestly, you can acknowledge the real costs and downsides of your views instead of just acting completely puzzled anyone would think differently.
Again, a blue button boy here, but if I confidently believed that there would be 1.2 B picking blue (therefore 7B choosing red) then I’d pick red. There is in that scenario no chance for blue to win and each of us choosing blue are just adding to the death count.
My blue choice is predicated on a belief that it might be a close election and my vote counts to increase the possibility of saving nearly half from immediate death and another nearly half from the resulting nightmare.
I’m fine with your position. It’s honest. It’s the dishonesty that bothers me, the reframing of “you’re all choosing to kill yourselves for no reason, no one has to die, my choice has nothing to do with your death” - the rationalization. People need to own their decisions, sit with them honestly.
Whenever red pickers say “no one has to die!” the immediate and obvious response is yes, but WILL people die? Do you honestly think that all 8b+ people on Earth are going to pick red? You know people from the very thread you’re participating in that that’s not true. So how many people do you think will die? What if it’s 49.9% of Earth’s population? You cool with that?
And they can honestly answer yes. And I’m fine with that. But I hate it when they retreat to not honestly thinking about what it is they’re saying and doing.
The same person saying “there’s no way we can get 50%+1 of people on Earth to agree to anything and make the same decision, so blue is a foolish decision” but at the same time “if every single person on Earth picks red, no one dies, and we all win! So red is morally absolved!” is an obvious contradiction. Both thoughts are self serving.
…you DO realize that those two statements are not in fact contradictory and are in fact both true?
If not, which statement do you think is incorrect?
FWIW, I’m Team Red. The idea that 50% of people will bet their lives on the kindness of strangers is absurd to me. The idea that 10% of people will bet their lives on the kindness of strangers is absurd to me. It’s not a question of what’s the most moral thing to do. The most moral thing to do is press blue, obviously. But that’s a red herring. The real question is, what will the majority of people actually do? Call me cynical, but I firmly believe that when push comes to shove the vast, overwhelming majority of people will vote red. Therefore, you should to. To do otherwise is to throw your life away.
They are contradictory.
“We can’t get 50%+1 people to agree on blue, so I can’t trust picking blue”
“We CAN get 100% of people to pick red, therefore I’m absolved of anyone dying and anyone who dies killed themselves, me and other red pickers had nothing to do about it”
Now, can you tear apart an exact, specific, technical version of those statements that aren’t in conflict? Yes. Can you say that the rationalization and moral justification are not in conflict? No. A person is being contradictory by presenting both of those views.
This is completely rational, but it’s worth pointing out that you’re basically forced by this logic to pick red because you’re defending against other people who also think like you. You are not external to the problem, as you frame it – “other people will pick red, therefore I have to, too” – you’re part of the “other people” you’re talking about. The decision is simultaneous. You’re as much a red picker that you (sort of) lament as any of the others. In a way, most of the red pickers are probably people who are saying “I’m going to pick red because people like me will pick red and I have to defend against that”
But they often frame themselves as the sort of reluctant hero. Those other people will pick red, so I have to. But no, you’re all one big ball of “those other people” - you’re equally responsible as any other red picker.
As expressed my answer is predicated on a prediction that getting to 50% plus one is a reasonable expectation. Results of this specific pool of participants is running three to one blue but we are not necessarily a representative sample of humanity or even of Americans - if we were we wouldn’t have a President Trump!
To those who have seen this elsewhere, what is the range that plays out elsewhere? The previous thread on it stated “sometimes” as much as 60% red, which makes me think our result is also in that sometimes and a close election is likely.
To the red button folk. Imagine you knew ahead of time that this sort of question runs 50 50 ish in general. Sometimes more one way sometimes another. Would it impact your decision?
Well, I think 1.2 billion people will die and I don’t want to be one of them.
If I thought the vote was close, or that blue had a clear majority, then I’d vote blue - but I don’t. I think that a majority of people will vote red, and my blue vote would do absolutely nothing except kill me. So I’ll vote red. And if I’m wrong, and most people vote blue… even better.
The chance that my one vote out of 10 billion will be the deciding vote is infintesably small. I won’t risk my life for the negligible chance that it will change something.
And yet you have served in the military. The outcome of any specific war or operation was not on knife edge contingent on you being there but you risked your life. Huh.
Amateurs think in terms of strategy, professionals think in terms of logistics. This, unfortunately, is a logistical issue.
But that’s not what you said above:
These two statements are not equivalent. One of them, the one from the earlier post, is true; the latter one is not.
We cannot make every single person on Earth pick red, but I don’t see where anyone claimed to be able to do this.
But no one believes that we can make every person pick red that’s a strawman that you made up.
The fact that we cannot ensure that no one committed suicide by picking blue does not mean that we should join them in committing suicide.