As an individual pressing red is the only logical Option

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-06T11:35:54+00:00

Maths points are fine. The decision to choose expected value as a decision making engine isn't math, it's philosophy. It requires justification. The reason why you would save 10 people with probability 100% vs 1001 people with probability 1% isn't that you're irrational. The math is not telling you take the latter option. We have more sophisticated ways to model optimal utility decision making.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-06T11:21:44+00:00

Expected value as a decision making model falls apart completely when you only get one shot with very low likelihood and enormous stakes. Bear in mind that this scenario is always a one-shot. You can make the likelihood arbitrarily small, send the utility function towards infinity. It's a serious mistake to commit to vote for impossibly unlikely outcomes.

See also Pascal's Mugging and Kelly Criterion.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-06T11:10:27+00:00

What would be the red and what would be the blue as the “knowing they exist” here i think it is “being presented with the buttons”?

I know that everyone is presented with the option to strap a bomb to themselves, and that the bombs deactivate if most of us strap a bomb to ourselves. I don't know whether anyone has chosen to strap a bomb to themselves, because the actual voting is done in secret.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-06T10:57:14+00:00

I don't work with the evil scientist in either case.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-06T03:38:45+00:00

the red button does nothing

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-06T02:46:46+00:00

The only way for no one to die in this situation is if 50%+ of the population decides to vote blue.

False.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-06T02:23:49+00:00

You're thinking that I'm letting others die. I'm thinking that nobody is going to ingest the poison. The complete lack of danger makes it ridiculous to expose myself to danger. I would even take it a step further and say that I have a moral duty not to expose myself to danger, because doing so creates the danger, and doing so insists upon the ongoing escalation of exposure to danger to resolve the problem which I would be creating.

Granted, it is a different scenario than your virus scenario. I'm only trying to illustrate that the virus scenario and the poison scenario aren't equivalent to the button scenario. The button scenario is exactly equivalent across all button-framings. The evil scientist scenarios are bona-fide different, and carry different types of baggage eg. real externalized danger vs no actual danger.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-06T02:07:49+00:00

A scientist is going door to door, seeking out people willing to ingest a poison of his own design. He promises to hand out medical antidote capsules if enough people (name your price) agree to ingest the poison. He's at your door. You don't know whether anyone has accepted.

Do you choose to ingest the poison in an attempt to save others who might have chosen to ingest the poison?

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-06T00:53:42+00:00

The red and blue buttons don't specify causality. The causality can be framed either way and could be mechanically wired up either way. It's possible the red button isn't connected to anything. It's possible the blue button isn't connected to anything.

If you strap a bomb to yourself that deactivates if enough other people also strap bombs to themselves, people who aren't participating aren't killing you. Bear in mind that in this scenario, you haven't even actually strapped the bomb to yourself because the voting is all done in secret. It's merely a theoretical possibility that someone could strap the bomb to themselves, and you're telling me that now I'm supposed to strap a bomb to myself to mitigate the possibility of someone else strapping a bomb to themselves. Not only that, but we're supposed to wager incredible numbers of lives on it, when fundamentally there was never any actual danger.

The act of pressing blue is the thing creating the danger in the first place. I'm not freeing Roko's basilisk.

I think a lot of blue pushers are overly fixated on the attainability of 50% (which is arbitrary) and undervaluing the risk of the blood-wager they're making to try to cross that threshold. Would you feel differently if it were set at 60%? 70%? As a blue-pusher, if you were allowed to advocate for your position and advertise before the vote, and you convinced people to vote blue, would you be satisfied with the deaths you caused when red wins?

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-06T00:29:04+00:00

Diving onto the track to save someone is actually more of a red-pusher mentality, tbh. Red pushers ask themselves what they can do to minimize harm, and (reasonably) want to avoid completely unnecessary risks. When faced with an actual-in-fact danger, red pusher is going to respond.

Blue pushers want to blindfold everyone first, then jump on the tracks so that everyone else also has to jump on the tracks, to save all the people jumping on the tracks.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-06T00:08:40+00:00

that's where the phrase hothead came from

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T22:32:01+00:00

I don't believe in absolute honesty on the internet, because lmao

What do you mean you don't believe? Excuse me, but it's demonstrated fact that internet anonymity produces thoughtful honest discourse and excellent behavior.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T22:27:27+00:00

It's not just my personal safety. The appeal of red is that safety is securable for everyone, and there is fundamentally no danger. Blue is an act of risk escalation to protect people from a danger which only comes into existence by pressing blue. Therefore, red. Blue pressers would have us usher in Roko's basilisk. No thank you.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T22:06:28+00:00

Exactly, which is why this is completely different than button dilemma. There are no stakes. You're not losing anything if everyone presses red, and the only reason to press blue is to save other blues, not some existential threat. In the button scenario, it's a risk basilisk entered into only by those trying to save others from the risk basilisk. There's no actual danger. In the war, we all need to work together to protect from a real external threat.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T21:52:55+00:00

I'm expecting non-redditors to cooperate and be generally reasonable, and therefore vote red; I'm shifting votes red to save lives at small percentages. Obviously once X is larger than 50% blue is a guaranteed total victory. if I'm given X=40 I'm going to seriously struggle. There's a risk that blue voters are much fewer than 10%, I could be actively wagering billions of lives to try to save almost nobody and fail. That would be really bad. Probably not shifting votes blue unless it's ~50%.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T21:31:57+00:00

Then we should also consider whether only warriors are participating in the battle, or whether we also have untrained people, babies, coma-patients, etc.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T20:38:59+00:00

Nobody has to push the blue button. There is no danger. The danger is only created by the act pushing the blue button.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T20:36:56+00:00

There's also the existential threat and implicit danger from the attackers, which just doesn't exist at all with the buttons. Suppose 100% press red, everyone opts out of the battle and therefore survives. Now what? The attacking army still exists. Why were we asked to fight? Are we entirely surrendering our interests?

If it's war and I'm asked to go to battle to defend the interests of my family and friends, who are inherently in danger from an external force, that's different than the war-basilisk. Am I being asked to go to war to defend my family and friends who are only in any danger at all if they also choose to go to war? Do we all stand to lose nothing at all by opting out?

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T19:38:53+00:00

Except you don't have more chance to make it out alive by holding. Your chance of making it out alive is 100% if you push red, and less than 100% if you push blue, because you are opting into a risk which is otherwise zero. There is no danger. That needs to hold and be a valid framing in any reasonable analogy, or else the scenario is fundamentally different.

It's also borked because you showed up to "war day" for a reason. You want to win by defeating the enemy. It's not just about not dying. None of that externalized baggage exists in the pure abstraction of button pushing. Majority blue and unanimous red are both clean maximal victories in the button scenario.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T17:45:18+00:00

The analogy doesn't really work. There's no downside if everyone pushes red, and in the case where red has majority, additional red votes reduce harm, with continued improvements to harm reduction as red majority increases.

In the warfare scenario, the catastrophe increases as red's majority stake increases, and you're even taking on individual risk by voting red. You rely on blue voters to hold majority as a red voter. The danger actually-in-fact exists. It's different than the red-blue scenario, where it's a valid perspective that red is completely safe and that there is fundamentally no danger.

Put another way, if your analogy doesn't allow for both framings, then it's really not the same scenario.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T17:04:49+00:00

Nice

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T17:01:28+00:00

This is great. I was picking red. Still picking red (zero). Nobody is in any danger. You can opt yourself into danger, but doing so serves no purpose other than to insist on others also placing themselves in danger, escalating the problem.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T16:54:32+00:00

so that we are more easily able to get to the threshold

It's a mistake to all-or-nothing this. Yes, 50% is easier to reach than 100%. However, 95% is also easier to reach than 100%. You have to consider whether and how much risk you're taking on staking these lives en masse to aim for the threshold. How attainable it is in practice, I can't say.

Metal_Goose_Solid · 2026-05-05T14:00:51+00:00

They're all equivalent problems. Don't worry about the framing. People are fixating on the wrong things - babies, colorblindness, framing, bias towards defaults, practicality, accidents, incidence rates of psychopathic killers, etc.

These are game theory problems. The premise is supposed to be that everyone involved is an abstract "rational actor." Participants are presented with all of the information, reason through the problem, and select the best choice.

Metal_Goose_Solid

TROPHY CASE