It’s the responsibility piece that is, I think, at the crux of the disagreements. The red-pushers keep saying things like, “If you push blue, that’s on you.” And that’s fundamentally not how I think. I see blue-pushers as trying to prevent deaths, taking responsibility for other people. Red-pushers think that’s irrational and leads to death, but blue-pushers don’t see it that way at all: they see the red-pushers as leading to death, since 50.0001% is easier to achieve than 100%.
If you’re responsible for other people, if we should be making lots of our decisions together, then pushing blue is the right choice.
For me, I also value my life a lot; but I value a life well-lived in which I act according to my ethical standards. I’m far from perfect, but pushing red would be so far outside my standards that it would permanently and severely affect my identity and well-being. I don’t want to die, but I would rather risk death than live with the knowledge that I helped enable so many deaths.
I’d guess there is an amount of money which the average person would accept for a very significant risk of instant death but it is probably ‘nonsensically high’.
Okay, see this is exactly the intuition I’m trying to crack through.
Try this instead: everything is as in the original problem, but pressing red also costs one finger. Do you prefer red (lost finger, guaranteed to live) or blue (keep all fingers and vote for everyone to live)?
That’s a more interesting problem. That changes the feedback loop. In the original the fact no one wants to die makes pressing blue extremely dangerous, and the fact pressing blue is so dangerous makes pressing blue more dangerous.
Here you have a damper, it’s maybe dying and definitely keeping all your fingers vs definitely living and definitely losing a finger. It’s much closer. I’d still say blue is likely a death sentence, but I’m much less sure. If it’s an arm or leg, I’m changing to blue. Finger is tougher, when you (you being the average person) are there in the room will you risk death for a finger?
If the cost is a finger, then pressing blue isn’t risking death at all.
Again, the thought experiment has something like the entire world population, right? So the situation I’m supposed to be afraid of looks like this: over four billion people all choose to lose a finger… when They Just Could Have Not.
Like, where does the threat come from? Even a million people choosing this seems somewhat high at first glance, but I’ll grant that 1% of the population is 83 million people and there would easily be that many pressing one button or the other. At 10% that’s 830 million people. How does it rise to four billion? The probability, in my view, is effectively zero. You’re easily much more likely to just have a random heart attack anyway than to die because half of a group did this.
Red-pressing people keep imagining it as “some unknown probability of death, and death is very scary”, but every cost imposed is, due to its effect on others’ choices and their awareness of that effect, a massive reduction in those odds. If you’re afraid of a .0001% chance of death because “it’s still a chance”, you can’t even leave the house!
In any case, the same point also applies to the version where each blue-presser gets a million dollars: your fear is that four billion people will press the “no money for me, thanks” button, which they’d only do because they fear that 4 billion people will press it, which they’d only do because of that fear. Where does the fear arise in the first place?
Only if the average person decides a finger is worth risking death for. That’s the calculus. If %50.0001+ of people think that then there is no risk. Otherwise it’s certain death and a lot of 9 fingered people have some burying to do.
Very easily. Just because there’s a feedback loop, where risk is there because you think there is a risk, it doesn’t make that particularly unlikely.
You, average human, are sitting a room with a button that guarantees survival and losing a finger, and a button with an unknown chance death and keeping all your fingers. What are you pressing?
I don’t think anyone can predict how many people will press each button. I can see it being 1% either way or pretty much anything in-between.
With an arm or leg I think yeah it’s a much smaller risk (and because it’s a much smaller risk, it’s a much smaller risk ) . A finger it could either way IMO.
Similarly for cash. A million, yeah I think the blues have it, the risk is low (but not insignificant). A thousand, a hundred? Less sure, it’s still a “damper” on the feedback loop but not enough to definitely tip the scales (if that’s not mixing metaphors )
Okay, suppose there are just three people altogether. The reward for blue (assuming you live to claim it) is $1000. The cost for red (no matter what) is a finger. What do you expect to happen? If it’s “three lost fingers”… why???
Well that tips it the other way even with 8 billion, or three, with a 1000 and a finger that pushes it to the blues think.
Let’s just keep it at 1000, no fingers (as I think the reds probably have it in the 8 billion case here*). The three case is different primarily because now three red, no one dying is perfectly possible. Its now just a prisoners dilemma variant. I’m saying it’s probably the most likely outcome: 3 broke red pushers. Simply because people don’t like to die, more than they like having 1000 bucks. No one is betting their life on the fact the other two guys won’t choose not to risk their life.
[1] assuming we are saying it’s the equivalent of 1000 dollars in the GDP of everyone’s country. In the Sudan 1000 bucks is probably closer to a million in real value
In a regular multi-person prisoner’s dilemma, you can always improve your personal value, if everyone else’s stays frozen, by switching to defect. Here, it’s the opposite, with defecting making your position strictly worse (losing $1k).
Suppose we scale up to 50 people, it’s the $1k (or a similar high sum) for blue variant, and they can discuss beforehand. Should they try to collectively commit to red, or should they instead collectively commit to blue? (I suppose they could even agree to some weird mix, but I certainly can’t imagine why at all, ha.)
Yeah though there are variants with negative values too IIRC. This is just one where that cell of the matrix is like -inf and one is +1000 (though of course you can’t really do maths on -inf )
That’s a pretty basic prisoners dilemma, they should collectively commit to blue in the bribe case, collectively commit to red in the original no bribe case. Assuming they are all just strangers with no grudges. If it’s 25 members of Hamas and 25 members of the IDF, then you bet they are all pressing red no matter how big the bribe is
Collectively committing to red even in the absence of a bribe (and with the presumption of no prior hatred of course, just random humans as in a jury) is simply so absurd to me. But I guess that gets to the core of the question, which means there’s not much more for me to say.
You do what was agreed. 26+ people do the opposite.
If you agree to press blue…
Everyone survives
You and everyone who presses blue dies
If you agree to press red…
Everyone survives
Everyone survives
The chances of 2 are small but you don’t know these people. Maybe they get in the booth and just can’t face the possibility, however small, of death by pressing blue. Maybe 26 people are in a death cult. There is definitely a non-zero chance of option 2, why risk it? There is no downside to everyone pressing red.
It’s interesting that you’re still saying that when other folks are disagreeing with cogent arguments. I’m well aware that it seems obvious and logical to you; but it does not seem so to me. There’s nothing obvious at all about choosing red to me. There are excellent rational reasons to choose otherwise, and folks have described those at length and great repetition in this thread.
Clearly you’re unconvinced, but to insist that your answer is still the logical answer and is obvious? Huh.
You can argue, one way or the other, with the “whole world with no discussion” case I’m not saying red is provably the right choice. But this was specifically talking about the “50 people and you all discuss then agree which button to press”. In that case red is absolute the only logical choice.
There is absolutely no cogent argument against it that’s not “I would like to die”. You are choosing between “everyone lives, 100% definitely”, and “there is a chance you might die”.
I don’t understand. If everyone commits to blue, what’s the chance that you might die–is it if more than half the group is intentionally trying to kill you? If folks think it’s a bad idea to commit to blue, why would they agree to that commitment?
If everyone commits to red, then old Butterfingers over there might die by pressing the wrong button. If everyone commits to red and if people aren’t conspiring to kill you, then even a few fuckups will be protected.
The chance that someone will make a dumbass mistake seems much higher to me than the chance that the room is secretly conspiring to kill me.
) . A finger it could either way IMO.