The actual numbers matter a lot in this context. (I didnt really blame you for not making the graph with actual numbers since I guessed it would be hard, but like it isn’t that hard for reader to imagine the graph like that)
If the experiment was done with 8 billion people and end up with 40% red to 60% blue result, that would mean there is 1.6 billion people difference between votes and for the bad result at least 800 million people would have needed to change.
Even if the votes were 49.9% to 50.1%, there is 16 million people difference, which isn’t a lot when you think about world population but it is still way way greater than 1 vote I’m casting.
I saw someone create this image in response to that:
(Warning: The image might be considered a little inappropriate/brutal/provocative but I think it should be fine and I tried to blur it somewhat, if you are very sensitive do not proceed to look at the image please)
That is indeed what many people tend to believe. Nevertheless, there are many modern scientific studies that say otherwise. According to this meta-analysis from 2018
Human personality is 30-60% heritable […].
Another big meta-analysis from 2015 is coming to the conclusion that it’s about a 50/50 thing.
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Since there are a bit more than 50% blue votes (perhaps 60%) when the threshold is 50%, I doubt there will be more than 50% blue votes when the threshold is 60%. Let’s make the assumption that the population is 1001 (including me). Let p(k) be the probability that the number of blue voters among the other 1000 is k. If my goal is to maximize the expected number of survivors, I’ll vote blue if 599 p(599) > p(1)+…+p(599).
In the case of a gaussian distribution with mean 500 and standard deviation 50,
the quotient 599 p(599) / (p(1)+…+p(599)) is 0.67, less than 1. So I would choose red.
So I guess my threshold is somewhere between 50% and 60%, perhaps about 55% or slightly higher.
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Okay but what we didn’t tell you is the psychopath has a cyan button and a rose button. If you don’t press any button he presses the rose button, but if you do he presses the cyan button. The rose button crosses the wiring in another person’s buttons, making the outcome for them the opposite of what they intended, and the cyan button corrects the wiring for a person who had their wiring messed up.
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Thank you for providing a source, but unless my “science-speak to normal language” translator is not off, it doesn’t “say otherwise”. 
Such research, after all, is always written in a vague way to allow for more future research and so that scientists can “cover their credibility” in case of mistakes. Let’s just see the intro/claim (bold added by me):
Starts with “substantial”, immediately backtracks with the “however, who knows?” and things “remain uncertain, despite advances”…
That’s the most “water is wet” statement ever.
Well, that doesn’t seem to tell us a lot then… if different genetic networks can generate the same outcome, maybe the outcome is mostly influenced by other factors? 
Challenges indeed. And “30% to 60%” in a paper like this is a wild variation of outcome, of in this case it is “science talk” for “we think it is significant, but we have no way of quantifying it, sorry!”
Most of… is likely and multiple… so, nothing is really concrete at all. Indeed they clarify that right after:
Despite best effort… few significant associations… frequent failure. 
Maybe it is just not there? Sometimes if you get a grant to find something, you are pretty desperate to find it, since your grant depends upon it… 
Two domains, out of how many?
Also, it is still a hypothesis… it hasn’t moved into being a “theory” yet.
The claim that brain networks are associated with out character is something that is practically self-evident. That those brain networks are also somewhat genetically prewired and that affects our personality is also reasonable. But within this paragraph it doesn’t claim that genetical prewiring of those networks is more significant to the phenotype of each person, than the learned experience it has received (also known as, the training of those brain neural networks).
Using “not missing” instead of “evident” was a nice touch.
So, that final bolded part is science-talk for:
“Genetics are one thing and certainly important, but most of our behaviour is learned, not inherited” which was my point exactly
Maybe I am reading this wrong:
But it is not conclusive, at all.
But they did quantify it. They are saying that there is indication for it being between 30-60%. While that is indeed a relatively large range, they are saying that based on the science they reviewed it’s probably not 20% or 70% or 90% but somewhere between 30-60%.
That’s not at all what this is saying. What it’s saying, and afaik that is also the direction most modern scientists in that field lean to, is that it is often difficult to clearly split the share of “nature vs nurture” but that instead these variables are interacting. That does not at all mean that “most of our behavior is learned”. It rather means that the way we learn our behavior is also determined by our genetics.
I don’t even understand how such studies could possibly have any way of finding evidence for that question?
I mean, a human is born, grows up, and has a personality. Then you do some statistics and you conclude “oh yeah, his personality is 35% genetics and 65% the environment he grew in”. How can that possibly work?
Sure, looking at adoptions and twins could be interesting, but even then I find it impossible to draw conclusions. “Oh, this kid was adopted, and he has a different personality from some other kid who wasn’t adopted, therefore it must be genetics”? That’s not convincing at all.
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Indication and “probably not”. So it could be anything, but there are indications that is within a percentage that covers 30% of the available scale.
It is like me looking outside my window and predicting that there are indications that tomorrow the temperature will be between 10 and 20 Celcius. I am not sure, it could be 8 or 22, it might even snow, but I just don’t think so based on the indications I have, but it is not certain. Thankfully meteorology has advanced quite a bit since I was a kid and now they can accurately predict even very local weather, for a very specific timeframe. Until science like that gets that sort of accuracy, I’d take it with a grain of salt.
As I said, those papers are always written with a certain flair of vagueness, by design because you need to generate the urge for future research and grants and also you need to be “covered” in case peer review torches your paper.
So, as far as I am concerned, in terms of science, I’ll wait for more conclusive research.
Till then, since it is a very practical issue, I’ll go with the data I’ve gathered during my few decades of life and as far as I can tell, there is an observable amount of hereditary character traits (me and almost everyone I know has personality traits that their parents possess and you know that they are not learned, because in case of siblings that grew within the same family, you can see one child resembling the character of the mother a lot, while another resembles the father. If those traits were learned, then both children should exhibit some combination of them, but in most cases they do not), however those are subject to change radically, depending on the environment the child grows and the experiences it will go through life.
And since genetics happen once and the environment happens constantly (think of it like leaving a nice statue out in the sun, wind and rain, for years. The erosion will chip away at it and alter it beyond its original specs/shape, after some time), the amount of influence the genetics has on your character’s phenotype at any given time, is in an inverse analogy relation with the time you’ve spent alive.
So, if you are 5 years old, your character is probably going to be mostly influenced by your genetics.
If you are 45 years old, you have amassed enough life experience that now your phenotype character is mostly based on learning.
Easy, reasonable, observable.
The brain is a neural network. That’s how those tend to work anyway.
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But that’s not what you are doing though. You just claim otherwise with absolutely no evidence:
So while I share some of your skepticism regarding the presented science. You are literally just writing down your opinion without any basis.
I understand what you’re saying but the science clearly indicates that there is interaction between genetics and learning. So even if you are 40 years old, when any event X happens, then that might cause person A to change in a certain way, while it would cause person B to change in another way. So both A and B change through the experience but they change in different ways based on their genetics.
… made up.
If I had told you that I am “30% to 60% certain” that there are indications that what I said is correct, would you call it “conclusive”?
Easy to say you’d press blue. Almost everybody, if they were actually faced with the choice of certain survival against likely death, would press red. It’s not even a choice unless you’re suicidal.
I’d like those scientists or you, to get the map @gennan posted:
…and explain it then, without sounding racist.
That would be fun to read.
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I don’t follow that argument at all. How do you know those traits are not learned?
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They are siblings that are close in age, are raised in the same house, by the same parents, go to the same school and generally have the same environment and receive very similar input.
One child behaves from early age like its father. The other child behaves early on like its mother. In many cases they even visually resemble the parent they share most personality traits with.
As they grow up and meet more people and gain more life experienes, those similarities smooth out and those children deviate from those initial characteristics.
It saddens me deeply whenever I read something like this. Not everyone is selfish, and trying to convince yourself that everyone is selfish to justify your own selfishness is really sad.
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That post you just wrote sounds to me like a great argument in favour of “this behaviour is learned, not genetics”
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Yes, why would it not be?
My point is that there are some characteristics and behavioural patterns that we probably inherit genetically, but as time goes by, since we experience life and we are our own individuals, most of the character we have is more and more based on learned behaviour, as they years pile up.
That also explains @gennan’s map perfectly, since it is a social/environment issue.
That’s also why Greeks that go to live in the Netherlands become more trusting and “common good oriented”, while Dutch people that come to live in Greece become more guarded and individualistic. When either of those groups returns to their homelands, they tend to re-adjust to that environment, as well. Humans are adaptable creatures.
I am not sure how this is controvertial (or “made up”), at all.
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I don’t think that’s true. While I agree dynamics would change between a hypothetical and real life, I also believe there are a good deal of people who
a) can’t fathom the idea of billions dying
b) think there’s a solid chance of blue winning
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Just want to point out that for cultural or social behaviors to persist, the type of group cooperation vs. selfish freeloading social norm requires repeated “tests” and facing the pressure of competing groups.
We can easily perceive that in the past, when groups of people faced a crisis have to decide either to work together to have a higher chance of survival as a group, or be selfish and hoard the resources, or flee/avoid conflict and have a higher chance of immediate survival (and expect everyone else would do the same).
In a world where there are plenty of resources with places to hide/retreat, the selfie and risk aversion behaviors indeed would likely become dominant, where small groups of tightly bound clans just roam around and avoid any risk. However, when the population grew, and societies settled, where resources are not just gathered/hunted, they would need to face choices not just their immediate survival, but also repeated tests in the long run. A small settlement might be fine in the immediate run when they volunteer not to fight and just surrender or run for the hill and return for another day. But in the long run, they would just become weaker as other, more “united”/socially coherent groups outgrow them or just target them every time they avoid fighting (you can run for now, but cannot run forever).
This doesn’t even need to be about pure survival situations, but also opportunities, like for example, a few hunters found a potential hunting ground, they know they can individually hunt small game and gain immediate gains, but if they call for the whole tribe, they will be able to bring down large game and make everyone have a share for the whole community (even the freeloaders). I suspect that when the resources are plentiful or the competition between groups is rare, selfish behaviors become dominant, but when resources are scarce, if you don’t exploit the resources when you find them, other groups will take advantage of them when they are united and take a larger share, making survival easier in the long run.
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It’s not a matter of selfishness, it’s survival instinct. You vastly underestimate it.