2023 LC Thread - It was predetermined that I would change the thread title (Part 1)

You also still want to be careful with Red Dye #40, I still think the FDA stance on that is misguided.

2 Likes

I would consider it a net positive for the human race if everyone who eats a suicide pill because they can’t do basic reading comprehension and logic dies. If you’re wondering whether I’m joking, I’m not sure.

I agree it’s a much less interesting problem if you actively want people to die.

EDIT: A modification that shouldn’t be interesting, but actually is, is to imagine that you’re told in advance how many other people took the blue pill. In that case, I assume red pillers will take the blue pill iff they are the deciding vote?

The deaths themselves also not equivalent, much rather get poisoned then literally blended to death with a billion people. Truly horrifying.

Or even better, that the initial returns are 50% - X blue, with Y > X left to vote.

If people thought their lives were on the line the vote would go completely differently

games

3 Likes

This is like a prisoner’s dilemma except with no personal benefit to coordination. What is there to coordinate? Choose blue and maybe live, maybe die seems strictly dominated by choose red and definitely live

1 Like

Modify it so that blue >50% = live and get $X and it might be interesting. What value of $X is high enough to risk your life? What value of $X is high enough that you think >50% of people would risk theirs?

We had an exercise like this in a negotiations class I took in my MBA program. I don’t remember the exact rules - it was a weekly assignment that lasted a couple months. It was something like you decide if you want to “cooperate” or “compete.” If everyone cooperates, everyone gets a B on the assignment (I don’t recall the exact rules on the grades, but it’s close enough).

Anyone who competes gets an A. The more people who compete, the lower the grades of the cooperators goes (it didn’t go down to failing - it was a C or something). Again, I might be wrong on the details, but it was something like that.

We had a class message board/Slack-type thing where we could discuss strategy and everyone wanted to cooperate. My friend and I decided to compete (without telling anyone or lying about it) just to see how long we could do it before everyone competed.

It lasted maybe three weeks or so before others started turning. One guy was furious with us, absolutely going off on us in the class chat. Some people were annoyed, some people thought it was funny, but most didn’t care. It was a game.

Then, as luck would have it, I got paired with that ONE guy in a one-on-one negotiation activity that counted as a quiz grade. He flat out refused to negotiate with me, willing to tank both of our grades out of spite. I talked to the professor about it - he said he monitored the class chat and was very aware of how the guy was acting - and he let me do another assignment to make up for the lack of negotiation.

2 Likes

In pure self-interest terms its just math, but as long as the lives of other people can be in your payoff matrix its not obvious (or maybe even obvious the other way).

Example:

The three voting participants are a mother, a father, and a mentally challenged child. The mother and father have a freeroll to save everyone’s lives as long as they take blue. Seems obvious. So what if its not their child its their cousin. Again, even though a cousin is not as important as a child its still a freeroll. The same applies to a stranger, and even two strangers. But if its 3 cousins or strangers or whatever all of a sudden your majority is at risk. I think in society it should be understood to take blue in order to save the lives of irrational randoms, but its also pretty important to have a population read that you’re realistic in achieving that, otherwise situation could be way worse.

1 Like

Sure in the condition where the results are exactly 50/50 with my vote left I would take the blue pill to save everyone.

But uhhh in a situation where let’s say we are just told the tally is close as some members are still voting, I have to imagine a lot more presumed bluepillers will start switching than redpillers.

I’m gonna show my ass and say when I first read the post I immediately thought blue pill and red pill choosers were evil.

Then I read the second part and immediately said don’t step in and this that did were idiots.

How I manage to dress myself in the morning is a mystery

1 Like

Rare good comment section

https://twitter.com/ChayaRaichik10/status/1691219598081773568?t=1xHGoTNES2bAE6NEkfugJw&s=19

1 Like

Given the way the question is framed even the slightly differing percentages make sense to me. In my first reading of the question, this was my impression:
Step into the blender, I could die: 22%
Take the red pill, I could kill someone: 35%
Take the blue pill, we likely live: 65%
Don’t step into the blender, I live: 78%

The crux for me is the red pill. It could just as well be read (or more accurately read) as: ‘Take the red pill, I live’, but for whatever reason it isn’t.

If the first poll said, ‘If you take the red pill obviously nothing bad can happen’, I think the percentages for both polls would be similar.

Yea I think the takeaway here is the way language shapes our moral decision making.

2 Likes

In completely other news, I’ve been in this job for 3 months, my last day is Aug 31, and I just learned that one of the Senator’s Sacramento communications staffers was a Disney Channel child star. :exploding_head:

1 Like

We knew that anyway because of the amount of care that goes into the wording of referenda.

1 Like

Let’s see if the majority of Unstuck can get this question right:

The majority of people selected “No”
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

1 Like