so if everyone presses red everyone survives?
The dichotomy of this experiment is…selfishness guarantees that people will die. But, altruism only works when the majority are altruistic. As soon as there are more selfish people than altruists, the altruists will be killed, leaving only the selfish. That is a downward spiral.
I think it’s fair to use this as a test, and simply remove the selfish ones from the equation, altogether. If you aren’t willing to help the rest of us, why should you benefit from our help?
I’d argue that there are good reasons other than selfishness for pressing red. But even if not, an experiment where everyone wins if everyone acts “selfishly” is not designed well for the supposed purpose of showing that selfishness is bad. (Not saying that it isn’t but that’s beside the point.)
What “good reasons”, other than pure self-preservation? Anyone pressing the red button was looking out for themselves only, and banking on the idea that everyone else would do the same thing. That’s what selfishness looks like.
not so. it logically follows that if everyone presses red then no one dies. Its illogical to me to press blue. blue would be something to press to put youself in the dead pool.
Statistically speaking, there’s no feasible scenario where everyone chooses the same option. That means that if more than half choose red, then everyone else dies. Choosing red may guarantee your own survival…but it also guarantees that someone else dies, if the majority all choose to save themselves.
The only way for everyone to survive is if more than half chooses blue. Even if it’s only 51%, everyone lives.
but its not a rational decision when everyone choosign red is a a guaranteed win. Choosing blue is like choosing to veer into traffic. Statistics is fine if there is no rationality behind the decision but once you take it into accoutn it should be completely feasible that everyone would choose the same option. The one that guarantees a win. This would be far different if the scenario was like red will only die if 100% choose red and then 10% will randomly be killed. In that scenario choosing red is more likely to have you survive but since people will now die at 100% red then blue is the only way to guarantee no one will die. As set out though the easiest way to make sure no one dies is for no one to press blue. People pressing blue might as well be pressing a kill me button.
but its not a rational decision when everyone choosign red is a a guaranteed win.
For you. It’s only a guaranteed win, for you. There is no guarantee for anyone else.
Statistics is fine if there is no rationality behind the decision but once you take it into accoutn it should be completely feasible that everyone would choose the same option.
But, expecting everyone to choose red is not rational. At best, there’s only a 1% chance that will happen…and in reality, it’s even lower than that. Therefore, choosing red is the same thing as choosing to save yourself at the cost of someone else’s life.
Choosing blue is the only option that actually saves everyone, even with a simple majority…which is far more likely than 100%.
Choosing blue is choosing death for yourself. Its possible you may not die with blue but definate you will not with red as will anyone else that chooses red. No one who chooses red will die. Why would anyone assume others would make a choice of death. Choosing red is the only logical choice in this scenario. It would need to be modified a bit for red to not be the obvious choice. Like allowing for a choice not to be made or for some red to die if to many press red. Blue is a choice to kill yourself from some misguided quest to save folks from killing themselves.
Like I initially did, you’re hitching a moral generalization about the world onto a simple problem.
This isn’t like “everyone can choose how much tax they pay, and if everyone paid no one would be left without, but if the majority didn’t pay, those that paid would be too poor to live”.
This is like “you can be on the train or you can be on the tracks, but if too many people are on the train it can’t stop before it hits the people on the tracks”.
Do you volunteer to stand on the tracks so the train can stop before hitting people on the tracks? Or do you not stand on the friggin’ tracks?
It’s only a “simple problem” if you ignore the consequences of your choice.
In the case of the analogy you provided, the obvious choice would be to ask people to risk injury by jumping off the moving train, in order to lighten the load enough for it to stop in time. If enough people chose to take that personal risk, they would save everyone on the tracks.
But, if everyone chose their own personal safety instead…then the train would not stop in time and all those people would die.
No, in my analogy, no one is on the train or on the tracks to start out, exactly like the button question.
The question isn’t “a load of people pushed the blue button, or are in a blue button state through no action of their own, would you press the red to save yourself or the blue to try to save everyone?”
No one is on the tracks or on the train. The train will move down the tracks. It can stop if it is empty enough. You must choose whether to be on the train or on the tracks. That’s the question.
Choosing the tracks is objectively fruitlessly dangerous. Don’t stand on the tracks
Then the analogy doesn’t fit. On the button scenario, your choices affect the other group. It isn’t a simple binary decision. You either have to risk yourself to save the others, or save yourself and risk the others. That’s the choice. That’s why it’s a moral dilemma.
In what way does the analogy not fit? You either choose blue to try to protect everyone else choosing blue, or you choose red to not be in danger in the first place.
Imagine you’re with 2 other people. You don’t get to discuss or know the choices of the other 2. Do you stand on the tracks and hope one of them is with you, or do you hope they’re all smart enough to not needlessly put themselves in danger.
The other people only need to stand on the tracks if you’re foolishly standing on the tracks in the first place! And if they chose train, you’re the one putting blood on their hands, so to speak.
The philosophical question is “are you morally responsible for someone else’s bad decision?”
In your analogy, there is no options for saving the people on tracks. They are simply deciding to die, and your decisions to be on the train has no impact on their survival.
That’s not how the button problem works. You either press blue and save everyone…or you press red and only save yourself. And your decision to press red, is what kills actually everyone else.
The moral dilemma in the button problem is, “are you willing to risk your own safety so that everyone survives…or are you going to choose your own survival at the expense of other people’s lives?”
To reiterate and clarify my train analogy, the train stops if there aren’t too many people on it (as in, less than 50% picking “red”), so no one dies.
No one dies if everyone picks red. Only blue choosers die unless enough of them are willing to die to change the state of every blue choice to be as if they picked red in the first place. It’s literally choosing red for everyone but with a substantial risk of failure.
But after rereading the original post, I can see that I am bringing my own assumption to the table: that everyone understands the question and is making a willful choice. Are babies choosing at random? That hardly seems like a choice, so it really puts half of all babies randomly assigned to blue and not willfully choosing blue, but then yes, you really should be on team save half of all babies, even if it means risking your life.
Id argue selfishness guarantees no one would die.
How do you guarantee that everyone will choose to save themselves? If even one person chooses blue, they will die. Your choice to push red will kill them.
The only way to guarantee that everyone survives, is if the majority choose blue. Then it just requires a simple majority to save everyone, rather than 100%.
Its the simple logic of it. Anyone who reads the scenario can see that no one will die if everyone presses red. Therefore pressing blue is essentially like just choosing to die. Its choosing unnecessarily to put yourself to death. Yes you might not die but everyone pushing red is the most rational way to make sure everyone lives who wants to live.
If I see you going for red I’m killing you so factor that in
Without reading the article first because it probably covers similar ground, here are my thoughts after hearing of this thought experiment somewhere else recently: The relevant question is the likelihood of a blue majority. I consider group A, the people who will press red in any case to save themselves. That’s probably a large percentage but might not be 50 %. But then I have to add group B, people who might have pressed blue but believe A to be over 50 % and because of this press red. Next is group C following the same thoughts, believing A + B to be over 50 % and because of that press red, and so on. All of this makes a win for blue almost impossible, leading to almost everyone pressing red. There will probably some remain who press blue either because they’re not thinking it through or because they, falsely in my opinion, would have taken on moral responsibility for “blues” dying and want to avoid that.
While this is an interesting experiment, I don’t think it can be used as direct analogy for anything like elections in real life because those are rarely life-and-death decisions, so trying for a better but less likely outcome is viable. More importantly communication is possible.
Edit: I just noticed that here it’s not stated that people cannot communicate. With communication it’s actually less interesting. You can try to convince everyone to press blue or everyone to press red. Both would have the same outcome if perfectly successful but with red people are more likely to do it and there’s no catastrophic failure if 50 % isn’t reached.
See knowing the rules it seems to me the logical choice is everyone press red. everyone knows it will allow them to survive and if everyone presses it no one dies. Blue seems iffy but red seems like a sure thing.
This is a really interesting hypothetical, because you are either choosing blue because you’re dumb, or because you want to protect people who are dumb.
If you knew everyone had 110+ IQ, you’d almost certainly pick red, as would would everyone else.
Im going back and forth with some folks and man this thought experiment I think very much makes me realize why the world seems nuts to me. Im not sure if they read the blog post as its example of the jammed gun is as good as any rephrasing I have done. Honestly even the blog gets into things that to me are just pointless. Its a straight forward logic problem that has only one conslusion. Pressing blue may cause deaths while pressing red does not. Only those who press blue may die. Im pretty sure the large majority of people though can’t grasp that. They want to second guess everyone and try to make up for others mistakes or whatnot. Its a case of every person who makes the wrong choice for the “right” reason just makes the situation worse and worse. ugh. I need to lay down.
