Actually when thinking about this topic more, I came up with 2 more thought experiements (in similar fashion), and let’s see what people think about those. (I have a guess on what people will think but I dont want to influence people in advance.)
Assume that both experiments are done at the population of all adults in the world that has no problems with understanding what each option does and consequences of their options. There’s no misunderstanding from anyone.
Experiment 1: Half of the population are given a red and blue button. The people who are given a button are safe, but the people who aren’t given a button’s life is at risk and depends on people’s decisions. You are given a button and you don’t know who else is given a button. If more than 50% of the people (that are given the button) press blue, everyone on the other half survives. However, if more than 50% of the people (that are given the button) press red, then everyone that presses red gets to save 1 person (that is not given a button) and then the people who arent given a button and not saved are executed.
Which button would you press?
Button Choice for Experiment 1:
Blue
Red
0voters
Experiment 2:
Everyone at the population is given a red and blue button. If more than 50% of the people press at blue button, everyone survives. But if more than 50% of the people press at the red button, as many people as pressed the blue button will be randomly chosen and then executed. (i.e. same number of people would die with the OG experiment but instead of only blue voters dying, deaths are random)
Those two are more convoluted and hard to understand, but significantly easier to choose, once you riddle out what each choice means. Unless I am understanding these two wrongly, I think that in both cases “blue” is the more reasonable choice, since the risk of “red” has been significantly buffed.
It is more complicated than that imo. For both I’d still pick red btw, but my expectation was for experiment 1 it is either close to original or more favored to red when for 2nd experiment to be more favored to blue.
The catch with experiment 1 is it takes away one of strong blue argument’s away in OG: What if I chose red but someone that I value in my life chooses blue? I’d be killing them. Yes that isn’t everyone’s logic on picking blue in OG, but I saw that this is a legit fear of some (I cannot remember whether it was here or in my friend group). In a way it reverses it: Do you want the option to potentially save your valuable one in the event people chose red? And like if you choose blue and one of your valuable one’s die, you may end up thinking you killed them with your choice, you could save them but didn’t.
The catch with the second one is as you said it increases personal risk. Like I’d only vote red there since in 8 billion people it’s really low odds the vote ends exactly on 50-50 mark so in case it turns red I’d want 1 more person to stay alive than 1 less (similar to argument at OG case), but like make the experiment 2 on 100 people and I’m voting blue instead. In other words, since I expect the value of saving 1 more people randomly is much less than saving yourself I expect more blue votes at experiment 2.
It’s not about “low stakes”. Winning 100 € is a bonus, not a fundamental need. If I win 100 €, I can get some satisfaction, while if I read a story like “John Doe won 100 € at the lottery”, it would leave me totally indifferent, contrary to stories like “child was saved by courageous neighbor”.
I see what you mean, but isn’t the idea of “let’s vote blue and all win a 100 euros” still valid?
If not, why? Isn’t it the “common good” to vote blue again?
If people cannot be altruistic about a hundred euros or take a chance when it is a small monetary amount bonus at stake and they are not losing anything in either choice, then what are the chances that they’d really be altruistic and vote blue when their own life might be on the line?
I think that if anyone really run the experiment with money, this would be the result:
– 10 euro on the line? Blue wins
– 100 euro on the line? Blue wins
– 1000 euro on the line? Blue wins
– 10000 euro on the line? Blue wins
– 100000+ euro on the line? Red wins
100.000 euro is a lot of money and the temptation to take it, will be too much for a lot of people.
Of course that depends from the place/country.
If it fails at 100.000 euro, then red will win in the 1.000.000 million bracket or in the 10.000.000 million on, but there will be a point where the amount will be too large to ignore and regular people will just reach for the “safe choice” which ensures that they get their hands in what they might consider the opportunity of a lifetime.
That’s what I was thinking when I posted that old article.
I am not arguing.
I see what you mean and I am just adding my thoughts on what might happen.
It is just my guess.
It is not as if we have a few billions in disposable euros to run this experiment anyway.
(and if we did have that money, would we really choose to spend them on that? I guess that’s a different issue haha)
Also, this is entire dilema was pretty much at the heart of the TV show SQUID GAME
I.E. - everyone “trapped” in the game could leave at any time - it just required a majority of contestants to vote to stop the contest. The disparity between the two camps - and what it represented for humanity as a whole - was very much at the heart of what the show was exploring.
In the original experiment, the threshold blue needs to pass to save everyone is 50%. If the threshold were 99% (very difficult to save everyone), I assume many original blue voters would switch to red. If the threshold were 1% (very easy to save everyone), I assume many original red voters would switch to blue.
Perhaps a follow-up question could be: at which threshold would you switch your vote?
You two guys are having the archetypical “blue vs red” conversation. It’s really text book. Let’s look at your positions.
This is literally exactly the phenomenon I tried to delineate here:
JethOrensin here has the perspective of a stereotypical red buttoner, he is stating that in a game that has much lesser stakes (small amount of money vs human life) people are still going with the safe choice of pressing red. Therefore, people must also go for this safe choice in a higher stakes situation.
jlt here has the perspective of a stereotypical blue buttoner, he is stating that the risk of pressing red is much smaller in the new scenario with the small amount of money. So in his mind both situations aren’t comparable and it’s logical that people might behave differently in the low stakes scenario because of this decreased risk.
The core difference between the two sides is the assessment of the risk of pressing red in the original scenario.
I have a real life case of a relevant situation where 48 out of 48 people had an issue and filed a complaint against some co-worker of theirs. The issue was real and all those people were correct and justified in filing that complaint.
Once there was the slightest pushback by that co-worker and he asked for a review, which would require those people to simply face that fellow and confirm their complaint that they want the process to be examined by the higher-ups and that the rules of the workplace be enforced, only 1 out 48 appeared. There was literally no risk and still they chickened out.
Me, the supervisor that took those humanoid chickens seriously, was left out to dry.
Fortunately for me, I had investigated the issue and had found independent evidence of the wrong-doing, so I didn’t need any of those pathetic people to confirm anything and did my job anyway. But I learned a valuable lesson that day.
So, that’s the anecdotal evidence I have, therefore I’ll roll with that and say 1 in 48, which is around 2.1%. Is it too low? Yeah… But it is what it is.
I’m kind of repeating myself but like cannot really stop myself from saying that.
For the clearity of my point, assume the population is 8 billion. And rather than making the craft with the percentages, we make this graph with actual numbers.
There is 1 point on the entire graph that you can save 4 billion people with choosing blue.
There are 4 billion points on the graph that you can save 1 person with choosing red. (In the OG question, that would be yourself. In follow up experiment, on experiment 2 that would be a random person.)
The risk assesment comment is interesting, because that reminded me something I read a long while back. (Because I forgot the name for it I’ll explain it with an example in the following sentence:) For most people, the feeling of difference between something having 0 odds and low odds are bigger than low odds and double of that odds, especially if the question in odds is something with permanent effect (e.g. death). In other words, when you compare 0% chance of death vs 0.2% chance of death and 0.2% chance of death vs 0.4% chance of death, despite the difference between chances being equal, the difference between 0 and 0.2 feels bigger in a subjective risk assesment.
Although I’m unsure, I think the other part that affects risk assesment is the threshold being at 50-50. That central point makes people think it’s likelier that the numbers go closer to 50-50 rather than something unbalanced like 90-10, because it fits people’s past experiences and how most things usually behaves. (I wouldnt be surprised if blues sees that more when reds kind of ignore it. I think it doesnt really change neither red’s nor blue’s odds, though.)
That doesn’t really have anything to do with what I talked about, but still an interesting point. It does indeed seem pretty significant from a human perspective to go from impossible to possible.
I tried to do that, but matplotlib makes it really hard to get a nice plot with 10-figure numbers, so I ended up switching to percentages.
There is also one point on the graph where you can be the deciding voice that kills 4 billion people when choosing red.
In fact, we’re not very far from that point in the poll at the top of this thread. We’re at 40%. If just a few more people vote red, suddenly all the blue voters are going to die.
Do you really want to be part of the group that brings us over the threshold and kills all the blue voters?
We were safely into the blue zone. Why are you trying so hard to bring us into the deadly red zone?
There are certainly people that have different propensities/characters even as infants, but this is mostly a social issue, not a genetic one.
It is a known fact, after all, that most people as they grow older become more callous and more cynical. As the life experiences mount, so do the callouses on your mind and soul are adding up.
Most of us here are people of a few decades and I think that if we look back there are many instances of things which, at the time, we did willingly and eagerly, while now upon reflection we try to remember “what on earth was I thinking when I did that? Good God!” and we wouldn’t really take the same actions/risks anymore.
For example:
Wouldn’t they be starting to sweat now, if it was real?
If Blue wins this time and the experiment was repeated next year, wouldn’t a lot of “blue voters” think “oh, boy, last time we almost all died. What happens if people get scared and switch to red? Blue might lose! Should I switch to red to be sure?”
And let’s say blue wins again, but with an even smaller number. What happens next year?
Genetics are one thing and certainly important, but most of our behaviour is learned, not inherited.
