It’s not different priors. I also thought blue was the obvious choice when I first saw it and gave it no thought at all.
And then I gave it thought.
And found that all the presuppositions you’re baking into your analysis are factually wrong.
It’s not that it’s “obvious”, in that plenty of intelligent people are getting the wrong answer. The reason it’s hard isn’t that it’s logically complicated, or that the game theory is hard, because it’s not. Again, it’s stag hunt without the stag.
The difficulty is that it’s that it’s political, and therefore kills mind through the power of motivated (lack of) cognition. Getting it right, if you happen to have the political alliances that make Blue the default answer, requires something else. Conditional on your current answer being morally wrong, and the answer you view as morally wrong being correct, what is the experience of changing one’s mind? What is it like to face friends, coworkers, with this new belief? What might happen to other beliefs entangled with the socially-approved-but-now-distrusted original beliefs? What’s it say about you as a person, that not only did you get this wrong but you got this wrong in the way that you did? How fun is that, and what motivations can you find to compel you through it?
You reached for political alliances to explain my view, because, by your own explanation, it’s what explains yours. This allows you to not engage with the substance, which protects your political alliances from being threatened.
The challenge presented by this puzzle is a fun one, and well worth grappling with if you can trust yourself to not run amok with a partial answer. Lots of people can’t, or don’t, and that’s worth respecting.
The question that will be waiting, should you want to resolve this tiny note of discord, is “Why didn’t I engage on the object level?”
It’s not different priors. I also thought blue was the obvious choice when I first saw it and gave it no thought at all.
And then I gave it thought.
And found that all the presuppositions you’re baking into your analysis are factually wrong.
It’s not that it’s “obvious”, in that plenty of intelligent people are getting the wrong answer. The reason it’s hard isn’t that it’s logically complicated, or that the game theory is hard, because it’s not. Again, it’s stag hunt without the stag.
The difficulty is that it’s that it’s political, and therefore kills mind through the power of motivated (lack of) cognition. Getting it right, if you happen to have the political alliances that make Blue the default answer, requires something else. Conditional on your current answer being morally wrong, and the answer you view as morally wrong being correct, what is the experience of changing one’s mind? What is it like to face friends, coworkers, with this new belief? What might happen to other beliefs entangled with the socially-approved-but-now-distrusted original beliefs? What’s it say about you as a person, that not only did you get this wrong but you got this wrong in the way that you did? How fun is that, and what motivations can you find to compel you through it?
You reached for political alliances to explain my view, because, by your own explanation, it’s what explains yours. This allows you to not engage with the substance, which protects your political alliances from being threatened.
The challenge presented by this puzzle is a fun one, and well worth grappling with if you can trust yourself to not run amok with a partial answer. Lots of people can’t, or don’t, and that’s worth respecting.
The question that will be waiting, should you want to resolve this tiny note of discord, is “Why didn’t I engage on the object level?”