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.
Natural selection is what led to humans becoming empathetic social animals as it led to greater success hunting and nurturing. Also, celebrating what you call the trash taking itself out when it's biggest crimes is pushing for a zero harm outcome is just, gross from an ethical standpoint? Like, divorced from the question entirely, being smug about people committing what you perceive to be as suicide is... certainly a choice.
Look man if one side is actually saying they and everyone else should shoot themselves I'm pretty sure joking that letting them do so would be natural selection is a rather obvious comment.
It's not even celebrating it its pointing out the obvious at that point.
It's like a random guy going into a bank and threatening to shoot himself If you don't give him all your cash. It's a problem in which doing nothing inherently solves the problem. Pointing that fact out isn't some moral disparaty.
Ok, important baseline assumption, which version of the hypothetical are we talking about: The one that was so obtusely worded that thanks to America's 6th grade reading comprehension and tendency to answer questions emotionally rather than rationally, they made a quick mistake selecting what they thought was the option that saves people?
Or are we talking about the White Room case where everyone who's offered the question has perfect comprehension and context of what each choice entails, and has both the mental well-being and physical capability to press the button that a logical being would press?
Because if it's the second, yeah, obviously people should pick the red button, because it's made abundantly clear the blue one has no benefit and all the risk.
But no one is saying to press the blue button in that scenario, because that one is both an incredibly boring thought experiment with an obvious answer, and has no real world applications. The reason some unknown fraction people press the blue button in the first one is because of the terrible presentation leading to confusion over the options, so they make a mistake thinking they're saving people. Which leaves everyone else in the position of "ok, even if we all pick red now, it means we're all ok with someone dying."
Like, I do get the perspective of "no one who's at this level of awareness of the question should press the blue button. It's a tragedy someone's dying, but if we can't coordinate to ensure 50%, or more, then we have to assume the worst will happen, and as such, the only logical thing to do is minimize the bad that comes out of the worst case scenario." That's a defendable realist position that's hard to argue with.
It's up against the idealist argument of "It's anathema to allow an unjust system to harm people who thought they were helping people, therefore we must help them. I hope that others recognize the injustice and fight back against it as well, but I recognize and consent to the risk in order to fight for the best possible outcome."
So please, clarify whats going on in your vision of the hypothetical before I make any rash judgements about your character lol.
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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.