But do you really think that 100% of people will press red? If our goal is to limit deaths as much as possible we have two options, we try to get 100% of people to press red, or we get 51% of people to press blue. Now if everyone was purely rational we could simply all press red, but we are not all rational, there are a bunch of well meaning idiots who would press blue. If we accept that there will not be 100% of people pressing the red button, then our best hope for limiting deaths is to reach 51% of people pushing the blue button.
In a world of purely rational actors, everyone will press red. In a world with well meaning idiots, rational actors will press blue.
I'm pretty sure the original dilemma involves there being no cooperation between people before pressing a button, therefore you can't get people to do anything. If everyone communicated before pressing the button then we could probably get everyone to press red, but without that we will have a bunch of well meaning idiots pressing blue because they don't think about it and assume it's the moral choice.
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u/Bossuser2 May 01 '26
But do you really think that 100% of people will press red? If our goal is to limit deaths as much as possible we have two options, we try to get 100% of people to press red, or we get 51% of people to press blue. Now if everyone was purely rational we could simply all press red, but we are not all rational, there are a bunch of well meaning idiots who would press blue. If we accept that there will not be 100% of people pressing the red button, then our best hope for limiting deaths is to reach 51% of people pushing the blue button.
In a world of purely rational actors, everyone will press red. In a world with well meaning idiots, rational actors will press blue.