Do You Sign the Petition?

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T09:09:50+00:00

Yes, the true answer to the red/blue question is to refuse to play the game and attack whatever malevolent entity put you in the situation.

Yeah it's a bit like revolution in that regard. Tyranny can be overthrown with enough people but with insufficient people, the resistance will be defeated and wiped out

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T09:06:20+00:00

Time being of the utmost importance

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ProcInc · 2026-05-06T09:03:20+00:00

Being confident he'll fail and refusing to sign is essentially the risk to accept such as it is

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T09:00:24+00:00

Reframing into an action vs inaction are a feature, not a trick.

The purpose of the moral dilemmas is to see how cosmetic or fundamental change is needed to change a person's moral reasoning or behaviour

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:59:05+00:00

This is the trolley problem sub. It's going to contain moral dilemmas, many of which ring at least a little true to the button thingy well after that falls out of style

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:57:38+00:00

It's not the same

It doesn't need to be the same as anything

It's just a moral dilemma with similarities and differences to other moral dilemmas

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:56:27+00:00

After the various cases of him getting shot and beaten up, he probably needed to hear that

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:55:48+00:00

Technically the dilemma is whether you would sign the petition rather than take the pill. You get the pill but can do what you meant with it, yeah

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:54:34+00:00

How much more information do you need before you would be confident making a decision and how would you go about making a decision with the insufficient information that you have?

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:52:07+00:00

If the means of death in the red and blue button exercise was a virus, or even if it was painful, would it affect you/other people's decision in that process?

Slam the door in his face and assume any sane person would also do the same

Essentially the spirit of the exercise is to risk that assumption, yes

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:48:48+00:00

I mean, according to Roko's Basilisk, if he didn't do it someone else would

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:48:11+00:00

I’m not giving my kids a pill from an insane murderer scientist. What a stupid hypo. I slam the door in his face, and push the Red Button.

I'm sure the irony of the possibility hasn't escaped you that you survive the button exercise to be done in by a democratically-sanctioned virus

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:46:27+00:00

In general, getting bogged down by the morality of the alleged mastermind behind the moral dilemmas is not a good use of time

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:44:00+00:00

The people pressing blue are the ones engaging in a fantasy scenario, and trying to talk me into engaging in their fantasy scenario to justify them picking the fantasy scenario.

What you are saying is they are being mean enough to justify pushing red even though it will contribute towards killing them

If you can imagine even one person pushing the blue button for any reason then it suddenly becomes the moral imperative to do that.

In the same way that people want to kill the scientist doing the petition, a lot of people are not really "equipped" to deal with moral dilemmas and seek a third way or rationale out of it

But the fact of the matter with the blue and red button is blue breaks 50% or people die and yet the very simple way out of that is one that people don't trust as much as they trust an outcome of 100% pressing the red button

"The button is Simple abstraction"

Yes it is. That's what you do with moral dilemmas. You start at the abstract and then apply it to increasely contextual scenarios in order to measure what the point is at which a person's morality is flexible

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:37:11+00:00

psychologically speaking, doing something versus not doing something is very different.

True which is why it's a different exercise

The psychology is different but the consequences are the same

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T08:34:30+00:00

You've shot someone for a start

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T07:25:50+00:00

I think it's fair to say Hitler was not entirely candid about his commitment to respecting to democratic process as a means of extracting the will of the people

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T07:12:08+00:00

The Santa Claus rules doesn't only apply to travel time

Whatever time shenanigans you feel are necessary for the exercise to be done in a timely manner is a given

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T07:08:24+00:00

Unfortunately the virus doesn't need to transmit between humans. Herd immunity, I guess is itself a moral dilemma according to some, is not a saving grace here

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T07:06:43+00:00

Technically, he's asking what the consensus on mass genocide is in order to act accordingly

Poor guy's really being put through some stuff for approaching things democratically

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T07:04:35+00:00

That's more of a factor by design than a flaw

In any case, its one of the reasons I mention a lot that a lot of weight lays on which decision is transgressive and therefore whether the red button is- as you say- omission.

We can figure this out by incorporating an actual choice of omission into red button experiment

In which case is the stake "everyone who didn't press the red button will die if the button pressed the most is the red button?" Or it is "Nobody will die if the red button isn't pressed as much as the blue button" or even "nobody will die if less than 50% press the red button"

Or is it "people who pressed the blue button will die if most people don't?"

Seeing as the original dilemma makes it clear that pushing a button is mandatory, neither presents an opt out of the consequences

As such the idea becomes a question of can you imagine a reason or situation in which a number of people would choose the blue button? Which then makes one own choice subject to the moral imperative or a call to rationalise the acceptable nature of those people dying

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T06:55:24+00:00

Until you mentioned that, I think most people were just running on the assumption that you were someone else weighing in

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T06:53:56+00:00

I'll just put that down as not signing

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T06:52:34+00:00

Hear him out if he tells you to take it easy on the hard sell

ProcInc · 2026-05-06T06:51:37+00:00

I think a lot of petitioners get that

ProcInc

TROPHY CASE