It’s interesting that you regard it as obvious that one should choose red. I gave the conundrum no thought at all when I first saw it, it was “obvious” to me that blue is the natural choice. Why would I choose the option in which people get killed for no good reason? It did not even occur to me that one would choose red out of fear for oneself, until now.
So we are using different priors and they are probably indicative of different life circumstances. My first thought is that I’m Australian and you might be American. Australia is a welfare state and offers a relatively forgiving existence, America is far more social-darwinist. My second thought is that you might be Israeli or Jewish, with a long tradition of “save myself, even by killing them, before they kill us”. My third thought is that you might be neither of those, but you’ve just thought this through, and decided on red since you always get to live that way, even if it’s at the expense of innumerable innocent blues...
The issue is that the only reason to choose blue is to rescue the other people who chose blue. If you know that some people will choose blue (children, people who didn’t think about the question very hard, &c.) and are confident that a majority will coordinate on rescuing them, fine. But in a situation where the stakes were real (such as the war march in the post, as contrasted to a Twitter poll with no real-world consequences), it would be harder to coordinate to rescue people who did something there was no other particular reason to do! That makes getting as many people as possible to save themselves and push red seem like a more attractive strategy.
I can see why you’d say that, but I don’t think it works because of the asymmetry where the safety of red is unconditional, which makes red weakly dominant in terms of protecting yourself.
To be sure, if you’re trying to coordinate on blue (to rescue the inevitable blue-pushers), then you might construe red-pushers as blameworthy for undermining blue coordination, but I don’t think “protecting yourself from other red-pushers” works as a casuistry for the blame because of the logic of dominance; the blame has to be about failing to protect others.
Red isn’t weakly dominant. Suppose you know that you get the tiebreaker. And you care at least somewhat about protecting others. Then red is worse. Red is only “weakly dominant” if you don’t care in the slightest about the lives of anyone else.
At least part of this problem is about the balance of selfishness vs altruism.
Lets suppose all people involved are perfectly altruistic.
Or, equivalently, that if the majority pick red, then a randomly selected set of people die. (Equal to the number of blue’s)
Would this random-death variation change your view of the situation?
I specifically said weakly dominant “in terms of protecting yourself”, and pointed out that the case for blue depends on a form of altruism (“the only reason to choose blue is to rescue the other people who chose blue”). Please exercise better reading comprehension.
I agree that the random-death variation would make it vastly easier to coordinate on blue. The reason the dilemma is so controversial is because the perception of what other people will or should do is so susceptible to framing effects. It’s a lot easier to coordinate on red in the blender variation.
Consider the second-order effects. Suppose a starting state where everyone, or very nearly everyone, picks red. Now, if I pick blue, or make it clear that I’m inclined to do so, I’m not just endangering myself. My immediate friends and relatives might feel the need to pick it too, and to try to convince others to do the same. Assuming they don’t succeed, my decision was responsible for their deaths.
In the practical, non-hypothetical world, we do see situations like this—people who want to be heroes going into dangerous situations, getting hurt or trapped, and forcing first responders to put themselves in additional danger in order to rescue them.
That’s right (blue is altruistically motivated, red is selfishly motivated), but I’m saying that the reason the other people are in danger of being killed is because they picked blue. If they had picked red, then they wouldn’t need altruists to make a risky choice in order to not kill them. That’s why I concede that, if you know some people will pick blue, it makes sense to want to coordinate on blue in order to rescue them. But if it were a switch that started in the red position rather than a pair of buttons, there would be no reason to be the first person to flick the switch to blue. (No one needed rescuing until you flicked your switch!)
How likely is it that choosing blue or red correlates with different psychological traits? On the one hand, if most people choose blue, then defectors don’t die, meaning that blue could correlate with openness to new ideas and with lack of cowardice. On the other hand, choosing red could correlate with individualism, healthy scepticism about coordinating on risky ideas and with being susceptible to problems like supporting dictators or evaporative cooling of group beliefs...
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 interesting that you regard it as obvious that one should choose red. I gave the conundrum no thought at all when I first saw it, it was “obvious” to me that blue is the natural choice. Why would I choose the option in which people get killed for no good reason? It did not even occur to me that one would choose red out of fear for oneself, until now.
So we are using different priors and they are probably indicative of different life circumstances. My first thought is that I’m Australian and you might be American. Australia is a welfare state and offers a relatively forgiving existence, America is far more social-darwinist. My second thought is that you might be Israeli or Jewish, with a long tradition of “save myself, even by killing them, before they kill us”. My third thought is that you might be neither of those, but you’ve just thought this through, and decided on red since you always get to live that way, even if it’s at the expense of innumerable innocent blues...
The issue is that the only reason to choose blue is to rescue the other people who chose blue. If you know that some people will choose blue (children, people who didn’t think about the question very hard, &c.) and are confident that a majority will coordinate on rescuing them, fine. But in a situation where the stakes were real (such as the war march in the post, as contrasted to a Twitter poll with no real-world consequences), it would be harder to coordinate to rescue people who did something there was no other particular reason to do! That makes getting as many people as possible to save themselves and push red seem like a more attractive strategy.
And the only reason to choose red is to protect yourself from other people who chose red.
I can see why you’d say that, but I don’t think it works because of the asymmetry where the safety of red is unconditional, which makes red weakly dominant in terms of protecting yourself.
To be sure, if you’re trying to coordinate on blue (to rescue the inevitable blue-pushers), then you might construe red-pushers as blameworthy for undermining blue coordination, but I don’t think “protecting yourself from other red-pushers” works as a casuistry for the blame because of the logic of dominance; the blame has to be about failing to protect others.
Red isn’t weakly dominant. Suppose you know that you get the tiebreaker. And you care at least somewhat about protecting others. Then red is worse. Red is only “weakly dominant” if you don’t care in the slightest about the lives of anyone else.
At least part of this problem is about the balance of selfishness vs altruism.
Lets suppose all people involved are perfectly altruistic.
Or, equivalently, that if the majority pick red, then a randomly selected set of people die. (Equal to the number of blue’s)
Would this random-death variation change your view of the situation?
I specifically said weakly dominant “in terms of protecting yourself”, and pointed out that the case for blue depends on a form of altruism (“the only reason to choose blue is to rescue the other people who chose blue”). Please exercise better reading comprehension.
I agree that the random-death variation would make it vastly easier to coordinate on blue. The reason the dilemma is so controversial is because the perception of what other people will or should do is so susceptible to framing effects. It’s a lot easier to coordinate on red in the blender variation.
The random death version does feel different. Interestingly, blue becomes “murder a random person unless too many people pick blue”.
The reason to choose blue is to not kill other people. The reason to choose red is to not be killed yourself.
Consider the second-order effects. Suppose a starting state where everyone, or very nearly everyone, picks red. Now, if I pick blue, or make it clear that I’m inclined to do so, I’m not just endangering myself. My immediate friends and relatives might feel the need to pick it too, and to try to convince others to do the same. Assuming they don’t succeed, my decision was responsible for their deaths.
In the practical, non-hypothetical world, we do see situations like this—people who want to be heroes going into dangerous situations, getting hurt or trapped, and forcing first responders to put themselves in additional danger in order to rescue them.
That’s right (blue is altruistically motivated, red is selfishly motivated), but I’m saying that the reason the other people are in danger of being killed is because they picked blue. If they had picked red, then they wouldn’t need altruists to make a risky choice in order to not kill them. That’s why I concede that, if you know some people will pick blue, it makes sense to want to coordinate on blue in order to rescue them. But if it were a switch that started in the red position rather than a pair of buttons, there would be no reason to be the first person to flick the switch to blue. (No one needed rescuing until you flicked your switch!)
How likely is it that choosing blue or red correlates with different psychological traits? On the one hand, if most people choose blue, then defectors don’t die, meaning that blue could correlate with openness to new ideas and with lack of cowardice. On the other hand, choosing red could correlate with individualism, healthy scepticism about coordinating on risky ideas and with being susceptible to problems like supporting dictators or evaporative cooling of group beliefs...
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?”