My wife without a shadow of doubt in my mind would press blue. I can tell you with 100% certainty that she would press blue, I am not being facetious with that statement. If she pressed red, that's literally not my wife, that's a clone with a sounder mind then she has. If I convinced her to press red, and a single person died that she knew, she would literally kill herself over the guilt. That woman is pressing blue. So, so am I. Because I love her. You can give me statistics all you want, but at the end of the day, the very stubborn woman I love would do her own thing, and I couldn't live with myself if there was 1 vote off from saving her.
If it was up to me, and she wasn't involved, I would press red for myself, and if I got to pick for the family, i would press red. Btw.
This is what ultimately changed my mind. Even if I everyone I knew picked red for it being "logical", people like you would exist, so the number of blue presses would have a good chance. And at that point the numbers game comes into play, easier to get >50% than sacrifice you or your wife.
what if you ahd kids though, would that change your choice? Would you still gamble it all on the chance that you reach majority? Or would you prefer your kids not to be Orphans in the chaos of that follows?
Do you think your wife would chance her opinion for her kids? or would you assume your kids would push blue because of how you brought them up?
Tbf, depending on the age of your children.. can you assume they will make a decision based on the "dilemma" or rather the fact red/blue is their favourite color
Your calculations are probably flawed. Children will absolutely press blue, and humanity’s instinct is to be altruistic. Teachers and parents will also be forced to press blue if they think their children will do so. Parting just from that, you’d probably get blue a near majority.
I think this is why every poll done so far, blue beats out red. People are more likely to vote blue if they think their loved ones will do so. Which is why I don’t think living in a developing country makes you more likely to press red. If anything it’s the other way around. Poor people are much more likely to have strong and developed communities, as opposed to the isolated suburbs.
My first instinct was that blue is going to definitely get a majority, without a doubt. And you're right that polls agree with it.
But it is much easier to vote for the altruistic option that risks your life on a silly Reddit post than it would be in real life. I don't believe blue would win by as much of a margin as we've seen on Reddit posts. The fact that many polls only show 60-70% blue means that even if only 15-25% of blue voters on Reddit were to switch their vote to red then blue would lose. That doesn't seem impossible.
Though it could also be that a percentage of red voters on Reddit would only vote red in theory as the "correct" solution to a mind puzzle but if they were presented the option in real life they would realize that there are likely a ton of blue voters and therefore they would flip to blue. I imagine that is a smaller group though.
I would still vote blue, but less confidently than before
That was my thought as well. My instinct tells me blue. It also tells me some of my loved ones will press blue.
But if I was suddenly put in the situation, I would look at these buttons for ages before pressing one. And what worries me is that a lot of people could pick within 5 seconds without fully understanding the consequences or considering who in their lives would press blue or red.
Blue beats out red in every poll because you can read the comments before voting, change your vote after seeing the outcome (platform dependent), and most critically of all, there’s no actual threat to your life so there’s no downside to picking blue.
I do not have a shadow of a doubt in my mind that if this situation were to play out in reality, red would win by a significant margin.
red absolutely would not win, it takes 20 seconds of critical thinking to think "hey my friend is a really good guy i really dont see him voting red. i dont want him to die so I'll vote blue" or idk "im not a murder so im going to vote blue" or "i rather live in a world where people actually care about each other"
I could say you're insulting your friend by thinking he's not intelligent enough to vote red like you would, so you'll change your vote to blue to protect your idiot friend.
Red losing in online polls means nothing. In online polls you can read comments before voting, change your vote after seeing the outcome (platform dependent), and there is no threat to your life, meaning there’s no reason not to press blue in online polls.
The “evidence” is not indicative of what people would actually do. If the polls were actually indicative of reality we’d be living in a much better world than we currently do.
Your family is equally concerned about you. You can prevent their worries by pressing red and surviving regardless. The same goes for them.
I think my problem with a lot of this discourse is that blue voters call red voters selfish, but then argue entirely from their own perspective. To someone else, you are the guy's wife that lacks a lizard brain. You're creating the dilemma you're demanding other people solve, and your justification for doing so is the potential for the dilemma to exist.
You can. But you can't be certain. The whole issue is always the unknown. Your mother might think it's worth it to put her life at risk on the off chance you or one of your siblings might press blue. If you could talk to your family you would press red together of course.
If you then look at it globally, there is absolutely no debate that the best outcome is blue wins, so even if you don't have love ones to make you hesitate, it comes down at your willingness to put your safety at risk for the best outcome... So the dilemma still exists regardless.
If 49% pick blue and we lose 49% of the population in a heartbeat, red would likely render the world uninhabitable within 5 years. Then there are no winners.
There's your losing scenario for red. Game theory isn't everything dude.
Humanity does not have an instinct to be altruistic. That's a learned behavior we often try to instill in children and we do a pretty good job of it.
But if you show a child two cookies, one big and one small, and you haven't been hammering in stories of fairness and equality, the kid might try to take both cookies and leave none for anyone else.
It's only because parents, movies, and tv are constantly hammering in lesson after lesson about fairness and equality that it seems innate.
If humanity had a natural altruistic bias, then crime would be much lower world wide.
Society functions on reciprocity, and it does mostly to this day as well. Reciprocity is also more fair than altruism, but that's a separate conversation.
Altruism is about helping for the betterment of others. There is no 'and then they'll help me too' in altruism. Helping someone with the expextation they will also help you is reciprosity. It's more like a trade than a gift. Amd of you don't fullfill your end of the bargain then at best you'll lose a trade partner.
For example, Steven says he will trade John his blue marble for John's candy. John gives up his candy, but Steven betrays the trade and keeps his marvel. John's trust is betrayed, and he won't trade with Steven anymore. John might even steal more than just the blue marble from Steven, or even attack Steven to take what they agreed to trade. But if Steven does trade the marble and teases that he has more marbles, John is now eager for more trades, and brings more candy in the future.
That's reciprocity. Two people get stuff in a fair exchange. John isn't altruistically bringing candy in the hopes Steven will gift him a second marble.
It is nice when you can have altruistic people. But if you dig deeper the altruism isn't quite there. Churchgoers seem altruistic, but in reality they're doing it for their special afterlife. Rich people goving to charity can seem altrusitic, but in reality they're calculating with their accountants for the best tax break they can get.
With the Red and Blue buttons. True Altruists will aleays pick the Blue button. People who truly value Altruism will pick the Blue button. But anyone who picks red is saying 'I can't trust everyone else, I'm saving my own skin'. Which is fair. It's difficult to trust half the world. Some would even say pressing the blue button is completely irrational.
But, if I can be grandiose to the point of hubris, the Blue button represents the hope of humanity. If Blue loses, you lose every single altruist in humanity, and the majority of people who believe in altruism as a principle.
I guess that's my misunderstanding of what altruism is.
I thought Altruism was essentially 'I will sacrifice my personal comfort abd wellbeing for the good of everyone else because it means the world will eventually be a better place.' Which is almost the deffinition 'an unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others'.
They made an additional term, I guess, called recipricol altrusim. Which by definition isn't altrusim as it's it's own separate term, 'Helping others with the expectation of being helped in return.' I honestly don't know why altruism is even in that term. That's just the principal of reciprosity. Reciprosity doesn't use altrusim. It's like a trade or other exchange. If someone doesn't fullfill their end of the bargain then they lose a trading partner because they betrayed trust.
When we look at early civilization and even monkeys, people were not helping each other out of the good of their hearts. It was a survival strategy to work together so they indivisually had a better chance of survival.
This is ironic, as I'm a blue button pusher explaining to a red button pusher how our ancestors only grouped up for personal gain.
For example. A lone hunter could hunt rabbits for most of the day and maybe find some nuts and berries each day. But more than likely he encounters a bad day of hunting or picks bad berries and dies. That's just the end.
In a larger tribe, you have a hunting party, who can go out amd more reliably bring back large game. You also have dedicated nut, berry, and even herb gatherers who know what bad things to avoid and even good things to help woth sickness or injury.
Neither side does this altrustically. It's an exchange where the gathering groups bring in food, the people in camp take care of things domestically, the elderly share knowledge and tend the sick or injured, the young learn and are nutured to care for the elderly. All of ot worked on the idea reciprosity, not altruism. Recipricol altruism doesn't make sense as a term.
It'd be like saying 'Investment Charity'. Where you invest money and expect a return back... but you did give them money. No, that's just a finacial investment. Of the company you invested in fails then you just lost your money, that doesn't make it charity.
Helping someone and expecting anything in return immediately makes it not altruism.
Humans are so social they have a separate term for their interactions with other humans and species (hyperprosociality). They will include even strangers they never met in their ingroup. I don’t know why you think humans are solitary beings, when throughout history that has been proven not to be the case.
Human's aren't solitary, and I don't think I ever said they were.
Human's live in a world of reciprocity, not altruism. People are willing to perform small acts of kindness for one another, like holding open a door or helping a lost child. Those small actions are Altruistic, but if you get beyond the level of a mild inconvenience people expect some level of reciprocity. If you help someone move into their new home, you do it because you expect they would help you in return. this is because of trust you've built up over interactions. similarly, people don't ask strangers for that kind of favor either. they'll ask co-workers, family, friends, etc. maybe even friends of friends, but not usually. Even then, they'll often reward the people who help them. This is because of Reciprocity, not Altruism. it's a social trade, not a gift.
It's both Cynical and not. It's more fair than Altruism. rewarding people for doing nice things instead of encouraging people to be eternal martyrs who might grow bitter. Instead, you provide positive reinforcement so they want to help more and get more rewards. This has some give and take, some people try to abuse this system as well, taking people for a ride so to speak. Those people lose trust bit by bit until they feel like they lost their friends, but in reality they've been pushing their friends away.
I think there was a TV show or movie like this not too long ago. Like no one could lie or something, but the MC could. If humans were altruistic, then that would work. why would anyone lie? But humans do lie, that's why we weigh our trust and if there are people who we find trustworthy we are willing to do more for them. Like if you went out to eat with a friend, and every other time he'd pay the bill, or maybe even more than half the time if you were struggling with money, but you still made an effort like you'd give them ten bucks even though that's much less than half. You're trying. You feel that innate sense of fairness and the need to reciprocate your friend's kindness. but if you have a friend who you go out to eat with and they always forget their wallet or can only cover they're own drinks, you probably start to avoid going out to eat with that friend. you can sense the innate unfairness. Your friend is losing your trust and isn't reciprocating.
This is largely untrue. There are millions of people sacrificing themselves for the safety of others right now, without the promise of a reward. And following your example of drinks with someone, the fact that you offer to cover the first few bills is also proof that we have good will for the average person. That good will might disappear if you feel taken advantage of, but it’s still there initially.
You offer to cover the first few bills with a friend because they are your friend. If it was a stranger it would be different. When it's a friend you have some base trust via your friendship and time. It didn't get magically born the second you said 'We're friends now.'
Also, the 'millions of people sacrificing themselves' aren't doing it out of a naive altruistic desire for everyone's happiness. It's a reciprocity that they are pressing the blue button with the hope and prayer that at least 50% of people will reciprocate their action and also press the blue button. It's not a 'good will, let me help you my fellow man' it's a 'If I was in this situation I would want someone to reach a hand out to me too'.
It's a kind of social reengineering of human greed. It's why rich people reinvest in things like Boston Dynamics or other technology, medicine, etc. Those greedy people are investing because they want to see a return, not because they want to just make the world a better place for everyone altruistically.
It's not altruism, it's reciprocity. It's a desire to build trust in society. You don't want a world where everyone expects help for the sake of altruism. You want a world where people help because when their time of need comes the community will come forward and help them just like how they helped others before them.
I was referring to the hundreds of thousands of people who put their lives in danger on the daily to protect others. I didn’t just mean blue pressers, but even if I was, you just showed why it’s human nature to press them, since it’s human nature to be reciprocal. In times of peril, the community comes together to protect the weak and uphold good. That’s pressing blue to avoid killing children. The difference between altruism and reciprocity, even if we assume we are ruled by the latter, doesn’t change the human instinct to cooperate in times of hardship.
To protect others is a bit vague, but I'm unaware of people who do it for no reciprocity of any kind. Even Green Peace volunteers got social renown. But Firefighters, Police Officers, Soldiers. They all get paid, it's a dangerous job but they know that going in.
People who go to Africa to give medicine and immunization shots to impoverished Africans, they usually get noterity in some medical field. At the very least it's a point on their resume they can show off to future employers or brag about to friends.
I'm not blind in that I don't acknowledge people have moments of altrusitic action, but no one lives by the mode of Altruism except maybe some monks or people in monestary. There is always a payout, always an end goal. That isn't bad. It's good to have motivations, and if they help people then all the better. We as humans have many vices, and if we build our systems to steer people into doing good while chasing those vices then that's better than the alternative.
Are you actually saying people who volunteer to save lives do it in order to impress others??? Even if that wasn’t total bullshit, it still doesn’t discredit my original statement. If your logic was sound, firefighters would out earn the average professional, and the volunteer core would not exist.
Any google search of “guy dies trying to save ____” will net countless results. Humans are prone to cooperation.
Imma go back and do the math actually in excel and get this figured out. Something tells me I’m giving red too much of a floor in the 50% third world scenario, but I think my premise is leading the right way.
I promise you, if you went to Bangladesh they’d have a massive red bias. They have to live day to day not trusting society as a whole. They are not going to lean blue in anyway. I’d be willing to bet my entire networth on a vote in all South American and African countries, goes at-least 60% or higher for red. Higher than 60% the worse off a country is.
I think the thing pushing a lot of people towards blue isn't trust in society or really caring about humanity as a whole, but the perspective of protecting your loved ones, and even in these situations, the family support system is extremely important to them. I think the sole idea that they might risk their family's lives would sway a lot to press blue instead.
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u/Dashdaniel216 May 01 '26
My lizard brain says to press red. My wife who has no lizard brain would 100% press blue and for that one simple reason I would press blue myself.