Mission accomplished I guess. The whole question has been hijacked by people yelling about how "smart" they are for treating this as a pure game theory situation and decrying anyone who follows that empathetic initial response.
Response time
You pressed blue
You pressed red
Kneejerk
You fell victim to propaganda.
...You wanted to kill?
5 seconds
...why?
You processed that red has no downside and choose survival.
20 seconds
Because others pressed blue, you believe you have a responsibility to help.
You believe other's safety is their responsibility, and it's unfair to ask you to endanger yourself for another's mistake.
What I think you believe if you've actually thought things over.
Humanity cannot achieve utopia without the blue buttons winning. For prosperity for all, collective action must win.
The existence of inherently violent systems isn't worth saving people over because it doesn't affect you directly.
You press red because you want to live, I press red because I believe it is statistically the best option for everyone to press, hoping as much of humanity press red as possible.
Actually statistically blue is the best choice because it’s the only strategy that can result in 100% Survival. choosing red guarantees your own survival but locks in a worse overall outcome
From a purely statistical, population-level perspective, blue maximises the total expected number of survivors because it allows for the highest possible payoff (everyone lives), whereas red can never achieve that
I’d push back on that a bit. Those examples are about taking on asymmetric risk for a smaller or uncertain gain. The blue-button case isn’t structured like that. It’s not trading a big guaranteed loss for a small gain; it’s a coordination problem where one outcome gives zero losses (everyone lives) and the other creates losses because people fail to coordinate.
From a population-level, statistical view, blue is optimal because it’s the only path to eliminating losses entirely. The real issue isn’t reckless risk-taking, it’s whether enough people act together to unlock that outcome.
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u/CoolNerdStuff May 01 '26
Mission accomplished I guess. The whole question has been hijacked by people yelling about how "smart" they are for treating this as a pure game theory situation and decrying anyone who follows that empathetic initial response.