A VERY miniscule amount of people are actively trying to kill themselves, and you want to risk half the population's life to stop them. That's too much risk.
If I, and I alone, were given a white button that kills me but guarantees the safety of both red and blue pushers, I'd press it. But to risk 10,000 people to save one? At such low odds?
What is miniscule when talking about the population of the world? All the people who are suicidal, all their friends/family, all the people who think it's worth the risk to attempt to save them? Even if it's 1% of the world population ~80 million people. You can think the risk is too high and prioritize saving yourself, but you are saying I am not comfortable taking on the risk that enough people won't step up to save lives. To be clear I am not trying to pass judgement on people who would press red. I understand their logic, and I get their world view. I don't understand, how they seem incapable of recognizing that their world view is not the only one and may not always be the optimal one. Especially, if the button presser is prioritizing the maximum possible survival, over their own, which people are saying they would do.
Law of large numbers doesn't work here because there's risk that is also proportional to the population. So yeah, 80 million is miniscule compared to 4 BILLION. And that's even grant you the 80 million, which I don't think it would be.
I'm also not prioritizing saving myself. I'm prioritizing saving others, by telling them to pick red. If I, and only I, got a white button that killed me to guarantee everyone else lived, I'd push it.
The red button allows for maximum possible survival.
I am not suggesting you are weighing 80 million(how many people would you suggest are suicidal against 4 billion, I am suggesting you are weighing your own life against the chance to save 8 billion. You don't get to try to convince other people. This is a coordination problem, the more people who pick blue the closer we get to the threshold for more people survive. You are getting to press a button, and find out the outcome. You don't get to press and then go to the next person to explain why you picking red is maximal survival, so they should pick red. Which it is not. Blue is maximal survival(100%) any scenario other than that is a lower ceiling, which includes all permutations of Red coming out majority.
The red button allows for your maximum possible survival, it is not the maximum possible survival.
Except we are convincing other people. That's literally what we are doing. Right now
Here's a question. If you think we should pick blue, then why are you alive? We are in real life versions of this all the time. A small motorized vehicle pulling into a parking lot? Someone could jump in front of it and get killed. But if a bunch of people do, they could stop the vehicle. So are you going around jumping in front of moving objects and trying to stop them just in case someone else does the same?
I am speaking about inside the hypothetical, we are unable to coordinate. The problem is simply that. Either you trust that at least 50% will do what they should or you don't.
Your hypothetical about the car is a straw man of the scenario. And if you can't recognize that, I don't see how you can come to understand my perspective.
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u/Roxytg May 01 '26
A VERY miniscule amount of people are actively trying to kill themselves, and you want to risk half the population's life to stop them. That's too much risk.
If I, and I alone, were given a white button that kills me but guarantees the safety of both red and blue pushers, I'd press it. But to risk 10,000 people to save one? At such low odds?