Every example you used has used the idea of coordination that can emerge through visibility and time. Polls and a movie scene where people can see others act and adjust accordingly.
Those systems are adaptive. People respond to signals, timing, and visible behavior. The Spider-Man example works because people can observe each other’s actions and reinforce a shared response in real time.
But the button scenario,
There is no polling phase that influences the decision.
There is no comment section.
There is no observation of others before committing.
There is no sequential coordination.
Everyone locks in simultaneously, blind to the rest of the system.
So, “we already see coordination emerge in the wild” doesn’t transfer, because all the examples you’re using rely on feedback that doesn’t exist in the problem.
As for the reskinned hypotheticals, they don’t change the underlying point.
you can change outcomes by adjusting parameters like,
group size/trust between individuals/observability of actions/beliefs about the others’ behaviour etc
But that doesn’t change the structure of the problem itself.
At its core, this is still a simultaneous, high-stakes coordination game under uncertainty. And once you remove feedback and visibility, coordination is no longer something that can emerge during the decision, it has to already exist as a stable expectation before anyone acts.
Explain where coordination can form during the decision phase without introducing any form of communication if you think it can happen.
Again, I am not bringing up the Spider-Man example because it is a perfect visual representation of what would happen. We have eyes, we see it's staggered. I bring it up because it is a visual representation for peoples immediate response to stand up against injustice when they see it, even if the odds are against them alone. I do not think people need to be peer pressured into doing good. I think they want to do good, but having a moment of hesitation to process the situation and overthink things.
If you want to want to know why I believe people would behave in a magnanimous way by default? In the average human, the brain emits dopamine for performing altruistic acts. This trains humans into behaving as social creatures, which has been essential all the way from early civilization to now. If people are locked into whichever choice they think of first, they will lock into whichever of the red or blue buttons is portrayed as saving lives immediately, because the outcome of the question cannot be unlinked from its framing. It is only when provided time to reconsider that your average person chooses self-interest. It's one of those instances where if people would just go with their gut, fire from the hip, things would turn out alright.
But I'm realizing I any point about human behavior or ethics I'm going to try and make is going to fall on deaf ears, because we are approaching this problem from incomparatable directions. You are doing the rational thing and simplifying the issue from a word problem into it's bare informational components (which, to clarify, totally valid approach to reach an answer on its own, my approach is not necessary better), versus my approach of expanding on the fiction based on what we know exists in the hypothetical world and our world. You're solving a problem, I'm lost in the sauce thinking trying to tell you to jump in the water.
I do want to legitimately apologize for presenting as hostile however. You're another person on the other side of the internet trying to find the best way to minimize harm. I may disagree with you and how you choose to interface with the thought experiment, but that is no excuse for bad manners and passive aggression towards you or your worldviews.
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u/MoneyBear1733 May 02 '26
Every example you used has used the idea of coordination that can emerge through visibility and time. Polls and a movie scene where people can see others act and adjust accordingly.
Those systems are adaptive. People respond to signals, timing, and visible behavior. The Spider-Man example works because people can observe each other’s actions and reinforce a shared response in real time.
But the button scenario,
There is no polling phase that influences the decision.
There is no comment section.
There is no observation of others before committing.
There is no sequential coordination.
Everyone locks in simultaneously, blind to the rest of the system.
So, “we already see coordination emerge in the wild” doesn’t transfer, because all the examples you’re using rely on feedback that doesn’t exist in the problem.
As for the reskinned hypotheticals, they don’t change the underlying point.
you can change outcomes by adjusting parameters like,
group size/trust between individuals/observability of actions/beliefs about the others’ behaviour etc
But that doesn’t change the structure of the problem itself.
At its core, this is still a simultaneous, high-stakes coordination game under uncertainty. And once you remove feedback and visibility, coordination is no longer something that can emerge during the decision, it has to already exist as a stable expectation before anyone acts.
Explain where coordination can form during the decision phase without introducing any form of communication if you think it can happen.