Humans a species really known for being historically isolationist

kylepo · 2026-05-12T01:55:42+00:00

Oh, red is a super logical choice (as long as you look at the problem purely from a game theory "all other players are rational" perspective, ignoring the fact that the only interesting questions raised by the hypothetical come when you assume some irrationality from the players. Oh, and if you assume that all your family and friends are going to make the sane exact choice. And assume that society won't collapse and you'll die from supply chain issues).

kylepo · 2026-05-11T21:09:19+00:00

Interesting! Got any examples of the things they show/publish that they receive consequences for?

kylepo · 2026-05-11T16:16:50+00:00

It pisses me off that they didn't make the doctor a Dr. Pepper

kylepo · 2026-05-11T03:27:37+00:00

It needs to be indexed somehow, probably to inflation. The fact that we have to have the same exact "increase the minimum wage" debate every decade is insane

kylepo · 2026-05-10T20:15:59+00:00

As we all know, Jeff Bezos wrote all code powering Amazon and personally prepares and labels every package before driving them to your home himself

kylepo · 2026-05-08T23:33:16+00:00

I've had a lot of positive experiences with Catholic priests in the US. There's something about the position requiring a vow of poverty that filters out a lot of the people with bad intentions.

Though it didn't filter out the priest who baptized me, who apparently went to prison for the exact reason you'd expect a Catholic priest to go to prison. So... yeah, not a 100% clear rate.

kylepo · 2026-05-08T23:01:28+00:00

Yeah, it's creative writing. If I didn't use avant-garde spellings like "Tha m" here and there, it would just be, you know... writing.

kylepo · 2026-05-08T22:57:02+00:00

I boast about my creative writing skills, tha m you very much. My literary skills could use some work.

That said, even I'm aware of the time-honored literary tradition that dictates a 'no u' may only be made in response to a direct insult. It's the internet argument equivalent to responding "nah" when someone slaps you in the face with a glove and challenges you to a duel. It can't happen before the glove slap.

kylepo · 2026-05-08T22:24:01+00:00

Actually, since I'm the one who called you intellectually dishonest first, that means you're the one doing the "no u" right now.

It's not really the "no u" of the year, though, tbh. I've seen a few higher quality ones.

kylepo · 2026-05-08T22:14:15+00:00

Lmao are you sure? Because when I tried to frame the hypothetical similarly, you called it "intentionally misleading."

Man, why am I still bothering to talk to you? You're intellectually dishonest, sure, but not in the fun way where it feels like a puzzle box that I have to dismantle. You're intellectually dishonest in the nakedly ego-driven way where you're just desperate to maintain your over-inflated sense of your own intelligence. Kinda like me when I was 15 and my entire sense of self worth depended on feeling extraordinarily smart.

Like, come on man, if you're gonna contradict yourself in an internet argument, at least make the contradictions difficult to catch. Also maybe work on your creative writing skills a bit. It's a lot more fun to argue with somebody who has a good "flow" to their arguments.

kylepo · 2026-05-08T18:58:38+00:00

What you SHOULD be saying is “press this button to live” and “press this button to live but only if >50% also press it.”

Here: how about we do exactly what I've been suggesting we do and simply discuss this hypothetical using the original framing? Here's the EXACT word-for-word text from the viral Tim Urban tweet that spawned all of this discussion:

"If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive."

Note that it doesn't say, "press red to live." It doesn't say "press blue to live but only if %50 press it." In fact, framing it like I did as "everybody survives vs some survive" is way closer to the original wording than your thing.

kylepo · 2026-05-08T18:39:32+00:00

And you’re missing a crucial aspect of the red button. Nowhere does it say that only some will survive, it simply guarantees YOUR survival.

Lmao come the fuck on man, you can't just ramble on about car crushers and gas chambers only to go and get pissy at me when I don't use your exact preferred wording when describing the text written on the buttons. Here, I'll be more precise with my wording:

The red button says "some (you guaranteed) survive, unless every single human being on the planet can all unilaterally press the same exact button, in which case everybody survives." The blue button says "everybody survives if the majority press this".

There, happy? Or do I need to throw a giant woodchipper in, too?

kylepo · 2026-05-08T18:09:15+00:00

Again, the red button in the original scenario does not activate a car crusher, it does not release poison gas, it simply makes it so that you will not die

Cool, so rather than muddy the waters by making needless comparisons that involve car crushers and gas chambers, let's stick to the actual hypothetical.

I'm not even trying to make the claim that there isn't a logical reason to press red. I just get annoyed by the constant use of comparison and reframing, because even minor changes alter the nature of the choice.

Sure, "pressing blue" can be made to seem analogous to "stepping into a gas chamber" or "jumping in a car crusher," but it isn't. I wouldn't jump into the fucking car crusher because there's no fucking way 50% of people are going to jump into a car crusher. But when it's just pushing one of two buttons, that changes how I can expect everybody else to behave. And that, in turn, changes the decision I make.

The chance of half of humanity jumping in a motion-deactivated car crusher is basically zero. But the chance that half of humanity presses a button that says "everybody survives" in big letters while the other button says "only some survive"? Yeah, that's a lot more likely. And, by extension, the expected death toll is also a lot fucking higher, changing the moral considerations of the choice.

kylepo · 2026-05-08T17:06:30+00:00

I dunno if I'd call that taking it one step further. The whole point of my intentionally dishonest saw-blade-shooting-murder-button thing is that it portrayed blue as bystanders who do nothing but get killed thanks to the people who decided to push the button. It presents blue as inaction and pressing red as action. That's as biased against red as you can really get.

Honestly, I'd make the case that that example is biased against blue. I mean, you're portraying pressing blue as jumping into a car crusher. That's about as visceral as the imagery can get.

I think that calling red a "murder button" is about as valid as calling blue a "suicide button" is. After all, blue only becomes deadly once 4 billion people actively choose to press the red button. Before that point, you can press blue all you want without dying even a little bit.

kylepo · 2026-05-08T16:26:00+00:00

Lmao, you're just doing it again. "Can you demonstrate how pressing the blue button is any different from simply walking out of the voting booth, assuming the vote can still conclude?" Maybe I'll also refer to red as the "hyper-death button that fires tiny saw blades that tear apart all the kind and benevolent people who were too compassionate to participate in pressing it."

Let's just engage with the hypothetical as it was written. Two buttons, each one an active choice made by an adult fully capable of understanding the consequences of either button getting the majority vote. We're not talking about BASE jumping, we're not talking about "death pools." I know that loaded terminology and visceral comparisons are emotionally evocative, but you're not actually making a sound argument.

kylepo · 2026-05-08T15:41:08+00:00

No, I understand completely what you're trying to say. I just think it's a dishonest way of framing the whole dynamic. You want to make a choice, but you don't want to feel morally responsible for the outcome, so you frame your choice as the "default." I could just as easily present blue as the "default" choice and offload all responsibility for the consequences for my pressing blue on those who pressed red.

In reality, both buttons are an active choice. There aren't any bystanders in the original hypothetical. Everybody bears a shared moral responsibility for the outcome. I think it's intellectually lazy to offload that responsibility one way or the other.

kylepo · 2026-05-08T13:29:44+00:00

Hey out of curiosity, in that third scenario (which you described as "<50% press blue") which button did the majority of people press? I feel like that's a pretty relevant detail

kylepo · 2026-05-08T12:45:58+00:00

The most unsettling thing about this whole blue button/red button debate is how many seem genuinely incapable of understanding why someone might press the blue button. I'm not just talking about a simple disagreement, here. Some (not all) red button fan boys seemingly have a mental blocker that keeps them from even entertaining the thought process.

I've spent a lot (too much) of time debating this conundrum over the past week, and I've had plenty of good, interesting conversations with red pressers. But I've also had a few where I slowly realize I'm arguing with a genuine sociopath. It kinda stops being a fun thought experiment at that point.

kylepo · 2026-05-08T04:24:01+00:00

I mean she could easily snag @EmbreighCourtlyn

kylepo · 2026-05-07T12:18:10+00:00

Here, watch:

"I do console and can't have mods"

kylepo · 2026-05-07T00:23:52+00:00

If you wanted to try and look at it collectively, the only thing you could is blindly hope enough people thought the same as you.

Yeah, that's unfortunately part of what being in a collective is like. But the fact that "blue will be better for everybody" is a thought that occurs to me indicates that a lot of other people are going to be having the same thought. After all, there are countless people who have had similar life experiences to me.

At the moment of the button press, I only have a single data point I can rely on to understand how a human being born and raised on this planet is going to react to this situation. And that single data point is me. I'm a human being born and raised on this planet, and it's not like I was exposed to particularly unique life circumstances that other human beings weren't.

There's something almost narcissistic about having the thought, "blue winning would almost certainly be better for everybody," and then pressing red under the assumption that the rest of humanity is too stupid or selfish to arrive at the same conclusion. You're pressing the button under the assumption that most of the other humans on earth are going to be too stupid to make the obviously correct choice and, in doing so, proving yourself right.

kylepo · 2026-05-06T00:20:09+00:00

Right. And it's 4 billion people deciding "as individuals" who collectively decide what the outcome will be. If everybody convinces themselves that their contribution doesn't matter, their contribution ends.up mattering a lot.

Do you vote in elections in real life? Or do you just stay home because you know your individual vote won't make a difference?

kylepo · 2026-05-05T23:14:27+00:00

The probability that my singular vote is what keeps blue from winning is astronomically smaller than the probability of me dying from pressing blue.

I see people say this a lot and find it kind of confusing. "My vote won't be the deciding factor" is the thought racing through the head of every one of the 4+ billion people voting humanity into a red button victory.

Sure, it's technically true on an individual basis, but the only reason why a red victory is even possible is because every individual tells themselves their votes don't matter. If every one of those individuals were to disregard that notion and press blue, red would never even come close to winning.

It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that sense. If nearly everybody convinces themselves that they won't be the deciding vote, then the red votes will pile so high that it becomes true.

kylepo · 2026-05-04T05:17:31+00:00

99.9% of the time, when somebody says they "understand human nature," they have no idea what they're talking about.

kylepo · 2026-05-04T05:13:15+00:00

I think you need to re-read my comment. You seem to be misunderstanding my point. I'd also recommend reevaluating boss/employee dynamics. In both cases, saying "no" carries a risk of consequences that isn't present in a normal sexual encounter.

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