Button Poll #2: Only those with normal cognitive capacity are given buttons.

[Emily's Cat]

Right, it took you a while to realize the game theory involved. We saw it on first reading. Then we applied practicalities, and decided on Blue. You applied practicalities and said "◊◊◊◊ 'em, I like mass graves and global meltdowns. To each his own paradise, eh?

Would you mind terribly NOT being intentionally insulting to your fellow forumites?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Ok. Worlds easiest challenge.

Of the two choices offered, only one incorporates a risk of harm to the voter, and that is Blue. Red cannot be harmed by their choice, but Blue can. Therefore, each and every voter has the option of bringing no harm to themselves, and should vote that way. Risking death when there is a perfectly safe alternative is contrary to any sane concept of self preservation, which is a primary drive for any member of the species.

While red is the guaranteed safe choice, there's a risk that someone the voter cares about might choose blue. Empathy and a willingness to risk oneself to save others is a characteristic that benefits society as a whole. Therefore, it's in the interests of the species as a whole to be willing to sacrifice oneself if you believe that others will be saved by doing so.

How'd I do? That is called "responding to a challenge", which a person of integrity does without hesitation. You have multiple challenges put to you where you have not shown the same level of integrity. Hop to it.

Bud, are you even capable of not being a douche about this? Because what I just said above is something I've said repeatedly throughout the entire discussion.

I've even gone so far as to ask the follow-up question - when there are no babies, why do you believe other people would risk their lives when nobody's lives need to be risked at all? Those with integrity would understand that this is not opposition to your choice, it's an effort to understand your theory of mind.

 

[Emily's Cat]

As I pointed out already, that is the same wording you used in your own goddamned OP.

It is not the same wording. The OP is available for you to reference all by yourself... but here you go:

Similar situation, with some added information. Everyone on earth who is capable of reading and thinking about the choice must push either a red button or a blue button - no babies will be given buttons! Everyone's buttons magically appear before you, all at the same time, and you're each shut off from everyone else until you push one or the other of the buttons. You're unable to discuss the matter with anyone else, and you can't see what anyone else has chosen; you're completely ignorant of everyone else's actions.

Anyone who is incapable of understanding the questions or is cognitively incapable of making an informed choice will live, regardless of the outcome of the button-pushers.

If less than half of the candidates push the blue button, everyone who pushed the blue button will die. If more than half of the candidates push the blue button, all of the candidates live.

Which button do you push?

And in case you've lost the thread, I will refresh your memory of the framing being used:

If enough people (i.e., more than 50%) press the button labeled "Everybody survives", then everybody survives.
If enough people (i.e., more than 50%) press the button labeled "Only red voters survive", then only red voters survive.

The labels are correct.

It is quite apparently and verifiably NOT the wording I used in the OP.

 

[Lithrael]

I still genuinely wonder what the voting spread would be if you had only one button. Instructions are, everyone (adult of normal cognitive capacity) has the choice to press this button or not. If you choose not to, nothing will happen to you. For those who choose to press it, you will die unless over 50% of those who have been offered this choice also choose to press it.

Framing is everything, and I strongly suspect you'd get very few takers for this framing, even though it's the same as the OP.

It isn't the same. It's a choice between action and inaction instead of a choice between two actions. I can imagine practically everyone on earth choosing to keep on not doing a thing they were already not doing. I cannot imagine everyone on earth making the same choice of what to do out of two things they have never done before, where the result is delayed and neither certain nor obviously illustrated.

 

[Rolfe]

It's the exact same choice, except that in one framing the choice not to do anything is presented as a positive action, while in the other it's presented as it actually is, a do-nothing option. It's fascinating the way this changes people's perceptions.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The person I was responding to stated that blue voters were too dumb to live and had no one but themselves to blame. No one has pointed out the daylight between such sentiments and thinking that blue voters deserve to die.

Is there no scenario you can imagine in which a person is fully accountable for the outcome of the choice they themselves made?

Ferexample... If you tell someone "don't bet your mortgage on the roulette wheel", and they do it anyway, do you think they have a reasonable argument for blaming someone other than themselves when they lose their house? If someone decides to take up machete juggling, and ends up chopping off a finger on a fumble... who do you think is to blame for their unplanned amputation? If a full-grown cognitively competent adult took Trump's advice and drank bleach to stave off their developing case of covid, are they not arguably too dumb to live?

I understand that a lot of the sparring in this thread is hyperbole. But at some level there's also truth. It's great that some people are willing to risk themselves to save others from the consequences of those other people's actions... but if they fail to save them and also die in the process, aren't they responsible and accountable for their own decisions at the end of the day?

 

[Emily's Cat]

And maybe that's the evolutionary advantage that has catapulted H. Sapiens to the top of the food chain.

To an extent, I think so. I have said so previously, but it bears repeating: We need both characteristics. We need people willing to risk themselves to save others... but we also need people who see an obvious risk and avoid it completely.

 

[Lithrael]

While red is the guaranteed safe choice, there's a risk that someone the voter cares about might choose blue.

Close; there's a risk that enough people choose blue that a blue loss would result in anything from a downturn to a catastrophe to society. It doesn't take the deaths of many blue-pressing caretakers or people with critical duty positions dying at once to do this. And caretaker types are exactly the sort of people whose idea of how the game theory of it would play out might lead them to believe pressing blue is the world's safer real-world bet for achieving no deaths.

Caretaker types excluding, of course, those whose first instinct is 'well I must stay alive to continue doing my caretaking' of course; but that is not going to be all of them.

 

[Emily's Cat]

No, it really isn't. Lots more advantages outweigh that one. Although I concede that it's important. Society can spare males much more than it can spare females. In really bad times it's having enough females that makes the difference between the population recovering and not.

Society also has need of males mad enough to be ready and willing to risk a horrible death to defend the community. This cohort is provided by the young intake, who have an invincibility complex and a belief that they will never die. The ones who survive become the crafty, experienced leaders and the fathers of the next generation.

It makes much better sense for the females to prioritise their own safety and the safety of their children (born or not yet conceived). But at the very last, you bet they'll risk everything. That has been proven time and time again.

But lots of animal communities have similar arrangements. It's not our secret weapon.

Most social animal communities are far less balanced than humans. Most social animals have far more surviving females than males, despite having about a 50% chance of either sex being conceived.

 

[Lithrael]

It's the exact same choice, except that in one framing the choice not to do anything is presented as a positive action, while in the other it's presented as it actually is, a do-nothing option. It's fascinating the way this changes people's perceptions.

Right, except in one scenario you can make the choice by doing nothing, and that is going to change what people will tend to do. And the dilemma is about guessing what people will do! If I thought everyone would pick red I'd pick red, but I don't. If you change the dilemma to make it more likely that everyone will pick red, I'll also be more likely to pick red, because I am a people.

 

[Rolfe]

Thank you for explaining my point in words of one syllable.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It isn't the same. It's a choice between action and inaction instead of a choice between two actions. I can imagine practically everyone on earth choosing to keep on not doing a thing they were already not doing. I cannot imagine everyone on earth making the same choice of what to do out of two things they have never done before, where the result is delayed and neither certain nor obviously illustrated.

It's an immaterial difference. The red button is perfectly equivalent to "nothing happens". It could have been framed as "push the red button and nothing changes, push the blue button and you risk death" and it would be entirely the same trade-off.

I find it kind of fascinating how sensitive people are to the narrative involved. Structurally identical choices are treated as if they're completely different... when the only actual difference is what words a person anchors onto, what they add in their own minds, and the story that they tell each other.

There have been several framings presented, where they ALL boil down to:
Option A: Avoid risk completely
Option B: Take risk and maybe things go bad

It's fundamentally risk avoidance versus risk mitigation. Risk is my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's always better to avoid risk than it is to mitigate; you mitigate only when the risk cannot be avoided.

The original poll question presented a situation where the risk was arguably not completely avoidable - where there was the possibility that 'babies' could be exposed to risk. In that situation, mitigation is a perfectly acceptable approach, and very realistically the better option in aggregate. But in this scenario, that has already been controlled for. Mitigation isn't necessary at all, as the risk can be avoided in its entirety.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Close; there's a risk that enough people choose blue that a blue loss would result in anything from a downturn to a catastrophe to society. It doesn't take the deaths of many blue-pressing caretakers or people with critical duty positions dying at once to do this. And caretaker types are exactly the sort of people whose idea of how the game theory of it would play out might lead them to believe pressing blue is the world's safer real-world bet for achieving no deaths.

Caretaker types excluding, of course, those whose first instinct is 'well I must stay alive to continue doing my caretaking' of course; but that is not going to be all of them.

I understand that. Now humor me: If everyone is as stipulated a cognitively capable adult of sound mind... why are so many pressing blue?

By what reasoning would a caretaker responsible for a 'baby' push the blue button? You say they would... but why would they choose to risk their life and the life of the person who depends on them instead of avoiding the risk?

As Rolfe has mentioned a few times... there's a very real difference between how people behave in hypotheticals and how people behave when the rubber meets the road. In real life, if through some magical twist of Thanosity, this magical scenario were to magically become real... why would a caretaker forsake their duty in order to gamble?

One of the other considerations that I end up thinking about is that >50% picking blue is a plausible outcome in developed democratically-based nations and cultures. I am not so certain that it would play out that way if it actually included the world's entire population. Not all cultures have the same hierarchy of values.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Thank you for explaining my point in words of one syllable.

Hey now, several of those were multisyllabic.

 

[Lithrael]

Thank you for explaining my point in words of one syllable.

If it's so obvious, why does it look so much like EC is still missing the point? Framing does affect how people react to a dilemma, people don't have a straight logical reaction to game theory questions, the dilemma is about guessing what people will choose, and ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ of people will choose blue, no matter how good the straight logical case for red may be.

I'm gonna find it pretty incredible if you can look around at the world and the choices people make in it every day and tell me you think so many of them are going to pick the option that is better by straight logic, that we can let anyone who isn't, die, secure in the knowledge that it was their own fault for choosing the wrong button.

 

[Rolfe]

Hey now, several of those were multisyllabic.

Fair point. I was being rhetorical.

 

[Rolfe]

If it's so obvious, why does it look so much like EC is still missing the point? Framing does affect how people react to a dilemma, people don't have a straight logical reaction to game theory questions, the dilemma is about guessing what people will choose, and ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ of people will choose blue, no matter how good the straight logical case for red may be.

Framing is exactly what EC is interested in. That's why she was proposing a series of polls with different framing, to see how the answers changed with the framing. I don't know why you aren't seeing that.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If it's so obvious, why does it look so much like EC is still missing the point? Framing does affect how people react to a dilemma, people don't have a straight logical reaction to game theory questions, the dilemma is about guessing what people will choose, and ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ of people will choose blue, no matter how good the straight logical case for red may be.

My point would be that framing alone shouldn't have as much influence as it does.

2+2=4
7-3=4
42/7*3-14=4
SQRT(-16)*i=4

The ramifications are the same, they are structurally equivalent.

Consider, if you will... if the framing in this silly internet poll makes so much difference to people's choices, as well as the vehemence with which they cling to those choices... in what other aspects of life has framing biased and manipulated our choices?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Framing is exactly what EC is interested in. That's why she was proposing a series of polls with different framing, to see how the answers changed with the framing. I don't know why you aren't seeing that.

That was my original intent. I even said so in my very first post on it:

Everyone on earth has to press a red or blue button. If <50% pick blue, only the red survive. If >50% pick blue, everyone survives. Choose wisely.

This is from the dreaded twitter, but it spawned a surprising amount of discussion, and some really interesting assumptions made by each side. I'm very interested in what assumptions you're making that lead to your choice, and what assumptions you're making about the other side.

I have some speculation of my own, that I'll bring up once a fair number of people have voted. I'm hoping to daisy-chain some slightly altered polls as well, because I think relatively small changes to the starting conditions would result in very different results.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's sufficient sample size to make it worth while. And since a lot of people have completely avoided answering questions about the inflection point around the % needed for blues to survive, as well as completely ignoring alternate framing... I'm afraid there's not really a point to the daisy-chain I was so interested in.

Perhaps some day I'll win the lottery, and I can commission a forced-choice survey of a representative sample with randomized questions. Then I'll write a paper and win a prize

 

[Lithrael]

????
I am responding to ideas around framing.

God. 'Framing shouldn't have as much influence as it does?' Yeah and sugar, fat and salt shouldn't be so delicious now that they're easy to get! Let me know when you've figured out how to remove 'having a human brain and body' from influencing the choices people make.

In the recent example, the likelyhood of people given two choices choosing actual inaction over people given two choices choosing to press a button labeled 'inaction' is significant enough that it's important to take into account. Whether it's stupid or not.