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

[Emily's Cat]

In the real world, I would expect that hypocrisy should be seriously counted too. Assuming you're not an elitist psychopath who actually wants the population to dwindle, and not a suicidal person who wants to be among the dwindled, you should, if you can, mount a concerted campaign to get everyone to vote blue, but vote red just in case.

Lol, that might be the best strategy put forth so far... if not necessarily the most forthright one!

 

[bruto]

Out of curiosity I'm wondering if anyone else was surprised about their answer? As I was reading the dilemma I expected I would pick red, after all I consider it to be a rational choice, logically it means I survive no matter what, but when I thought about what my answer would be I realised for me the answer is blue. And that surprised me. One of the reasons to consider such a dilemma is to test your own thinking and this one did that for me.

Yes, I think the decision to vote blue comes after some thought about the meaning of what you do, more than simply the outcome. On the other hand, there's still a little room until the moment the button is pushed. I can, despite myself, see myself touting blue till I'm blue in the face, and at the last minute deciding "oh I dunno, maybe a lot of people will end up pushing red at the end, so I might as well."

 

[Lithrael]

On the other hand, there's still a little room until the moment the button is pushed. I can, despite myself, see myself touting blue till I'm blue in the face, and at the last minute deciding "oh I dunno, maybe a lot of people will end up pushing red at the end, so I might as well."

See, I'm the opposite, I could see picking red as a reasonable possibility until I saw how consistently it loses; that leaves me really pretty convinced that a red win would result in more deaths than a) I could stomach and b) society could reasonably cope with. So now I'm more motivated to pick blue than I was originally.

 

[Emily's Cat]

See, I'm the opposite, I could see picking red as a reasonable possibility until I saw how consistently it loses; that leaves me really pretty convinced that a red win would result in more deaths than a) I could stomach and b) society could reasonably cope with. So now I'm more motivated to pick blue than I was originally.

If blue consistently gets well over 50%, and there's no downside to red, why would it shift your selection?

Honestly, it's like me voting for a 3rd party candidate when I used to live in Washington. The state was going to go Dem no matter what I did... that didn't motivate me to pick a candidate I disliked just to fit in.

 

[Lithrael]

If blue consistently gets well over 50%, and there's no downside to red, why would it shift your selection?

Because there's a gigantic stonking downside to red and I want to help it lose on the 50/50 vote?

Look, I know my individual vote doesn't count for much but the idea that an aggregate isnt made of individuals seems a little dodgy to me.

 

[bruto]

If blue consistently gets well over 50%, and there's no downside to red, why would it shift your selection?

Honestly, it's like me voting for a 3rd party candidate when I used to live in Washington. The state was going to go Dem no matter what I did... that didn't motivate me to pick a candidate I disliked just to fit in.

If blue always wins you can vote either red or blue without consequence. It's a secret ballot after all. You compare it to a political race in which various issues of policy and character are in play, but your thought experiment contains none of that. It is simply a matter of life and death for a possible and unknown quantity of people. There is also no mention of a history of past events or trends.

In this case, assuming the ballot remains secret, and you do not wish to crow about your choice after it's over, there is truly no reason at all to vote red! The only reason to vote red is if you fear blue losing. And if you think you are sure blue will win, vote red just to be contrarian, and turn out to be wrong, and if enough others like you do the same, then you get the greater of two evils. Protest votes have a tendency to fly out of control. No matter how you slice it, the result here depends heavily on the behavior of a group of which you are, like it or not, a member, and on the accuracy of your guess.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Because there's a gigantic stonking downside to red and I want to help it lose on the 50/50 vote?

Look, I know my individual vote doesn't count for much but the idea that an aggregate isnt made of individuals seems a little dodgy to me.

It's the prompt to switch that I'm not following. If I read you correctly, you said you would be inclined to push red as your starting position, and would only change if it looks like blue is pulling ahead.

Based on how you frame your reasoning, though, I would expect it to be the opposite - that you'd be more inclined to switch to blue if blue were falling behind, in order to help it get over the line.

 

[Thermal]

It's the prompt to switch that I'm not following. If I read you correctly, you said you would be inclined to push red as your starting position, and would only change if it looks like blue is pulling ahead.

Based on how you frame your reasoning, though, I would expect it to be the opposite - that you'd be more inclined to switch to blue if blue were falling behind, in order to help it get over the line.

I'm reading Lithrael's post as Red being a legitimate logical option, until you really start thinking about what a Red win would look like- then you realize you need to do your part to stop it, like everyone needs to {eta: or, more accurately, 51% of us need to}

If enough voters think 'my vote doesn't matter so I'll vote for whats in my personal best interests', then it just might get enough votes to tip the scales and land a Red win. Then the Reds would be all kinds of "How the ◊◊◊◊ did we get here? I thought you blue mother ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ were going to do the right thing and keep us all safe?"

Which would be kind of ironic.

 

[Lithrael]

It's the prompt to switch that I'm not following. If I read you correctly, you said you would be inclined to push red as your starting position, and would only change if it looks like blue is pulling ahead.

Thermal read me correctly; I don't mean that I personally would be inclined to choose red, but rather that I would initially see a red chooser's logical point, that is, I'd think 'fair enough, you want to guarantee your survival and you see choosing blue as a gamble with literally no upside.' And if very few people would choose blue, fair enough, sucks to be blue, but red gets what motivated them: guaranteed personal safety.

But as the polls roll in and suggest a lot of people would choose blue, the state of the world the reds would be left with in a red win condition starts to look dire. And I'd vote blue (even more confidently in the hopes of helping to avert that).

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Serious question for the Red Pushers:

What do you think will happen to the world in general, and you in particular, when Red wins and, saye, a third of the world population is gone?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Serious question for the Red Pushers:

What do you think will happen to the world in general, and you in particular, when Red wins and, saye, a third of the world population is gone?

Realistically… it’s going to be rough for a few years, but the species will survive just fine.

Are you assuming they all just drop dead and start rotting in place and nobody does anything about it, rather than cleaning up and reorganizing to fill the gaps?

Aside: this is sort of like my complaint with the Fallout games. 200 years after a nuclear war, with people still living and reproducing, and farming, and trading, with at least some advanced technology… but nobody has bothered to sweep the floor or mend the holes in the wall? That’s stupid.

 

[sphenisc]

Serious question for the Red Pushers:

What do you think will happen to the world in general, and you in particular, when Red wins and, saye, a third of the world population is gone?

The world population at 1990s levels? Job opportunities would lead to near universal employment, the housing crisis would end, wars over resources,(also known as wars) would be greatly reduced, and the world would unite in hunting down whoever set up the buttons in the first place and bring them to justice.

 

[bruto]

Of course if you look far enough into the future, after some event like the great blue-button massacre, everything will eventually be OK again, but that argument can be made for any trail of tears. Not everyone would consider it a good one.

 

[Thermal]

The world population at 1990s levels? Job opportunities would lead to near universal employment, the housing crisis would end, wars over resources,(also known as wars) would be greatly reduced, and the world would unite in hunting down whoever set up the buttons in the first place and bring them to justice.

You forget that it's only the Reds that survived. They'd enslave and/or eat you. The team players are dead.

 

[bruto]

You forget that it's only the Reds that survived. They'd enslave and/or eat you. The team players are dead.

But there's no "you" left to enslave except other red pushers, all of whom likely see themselves as the masters. I predict a bloody civil war, in which the same old masters battle against the "RINO's) (red in name only of course), reds enslaving each other. Either that or, perhaps after said war, they all stand there stunned and half starved with holes in their roofs and nobody to fix the fences, muttering "who knew?"

 

[Thermal]

But there's no "you" left to enslave except other red pushers, all of whom likely see themselves as the masters. I predict a bloody civil war, in which the same old masters battle against the "RINO's) (red in name only of course), reds enslaving each other. Either that or, perhaps after said war, they all stand there stunned and half starved with holes in their roofs and nobody to fix the fences, muttering "who knew?"

I see it as the truly psychopathic Red voters eating the short sighted ones. The latter doesn't think things through and makes them easy prey.

Also, it would be very close to 50/50 for Red to win at all, so there wouldn't be any functioning society left, no utilities working, no food chain or distrobution, and no Netflix (well, maybe Netflix. They got a little evil streak going on).

 

[Emily's Cat]

I never would have envisioned a situation in which avoiding an unnecessary and easily identifiable risk to one’s life would be called evil and psychopathic.

How do you rationalize this degree of contempt, disdain, and condescension toward other people… and still think of yourselves as morally superior and empathetic?

 

[Lithrael]

Actually, I think they were done with the semi-serious psychosocial analysis and had moved on to the riffing.

 

[Helen]

I never would have envisioned a situation in which avoiding an unnecessary and easily identifiable risk to one’s life would be called evil and psychopathic.

Maybe because it's a situation where you can avoid an unnecessary and easily indentifiable risk to the lives of everybody else as well?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Maybe because it's a situation where you can avoid an unnecessary and easily indentifiable risk to the lives of everybody else as well?

I think none of you are familiar with the concept of value-at-risk.

Or perhaps you just don’t value your life very highly.