Apologies in advance for not addressing your analysis of the whole family of variations, but only speaking about the original.
Staunch Red here, and have been since first learning of the puzzle.
Framing is irrelevant. Isomorphic puzzles have isomorphic answers. If someone’s answer is changed by the framing, they are not thinking properly. If they notice that they are swayed by the framing, that is their chance to become stronger. As you are doing by analysing all those variations, but I can’t face going through them all, because formalising the problem requires some sort of reflexive decision theory, which is an unsolved problem. There is no way to define a probability distribution of button-presses, because people’s decisions can depend on the distribution they anticipate.
Philosophically it seems to be the same kind of question, but it feels very different for some of us Blues. There’s something obvious about this choice of Red. All of a sudden, Red no longer feels like defection.
It never was.
But since people do appear to be influenced by the framing, here’s another. But first, I want to go to a place where you change the problem:
Children do not participate.
No. Let’s not exclude the part where children are choosing as well. It’s a crucial part of the problem for some others, who justify blue by saying, “but think of the children (and the feeble-minded, etc.), the poor children who will just press blue by chance, think of all the children, you must want them to die if you don’t press blue, what sort of monster are you, die scum etc. cont. p.94”.
How are the children going to make that choice? Not in a vacuum. Their parents will advise them, or tell them which button to press, or press it for them. That is one of the duties of parents, guiding their children through the hazards of early life.
You want everyone to press blue and in this article you are trying to persuade them to (despite refraining-not-refraining from giving your own attitudes, in footnote 9). Therefore that is what you will be telling your own children or making them do. You will be risking their lives in order to get the virtuous thrill of saving their lives.
Would you urge your children to run into the traffic, so as to pull them back at the last moment? Push them out of a high window, to catch them just as they begin to plummet?
The virtuous thrill is trash. Look at the real outcomes, not the feels. Before: everyone is alive. After: everyone is alive. Nothing positive is achieved in the end, any more than from a chain letter. A chain letter of virtue signalling.
If my post acts as an attempt to persuade others to join the Blue team, or if it carries a subtext of that flavor, then I need to improve my communication skills.
While writing this post, I would regularly notice little phrases, graph choices, etc. which communicated an unnecessary Blue bias. To the best of my ability I’ve tried to minimize all of that. Alas, eliminating one’s bias from one’s communication is a continuous process. There will always be more.
I’ve raised my Blue heart to the sky, that any bias I’ve overlooked might be made obvious to others. If you’ve found it, then I’ll at least consider that last part a success.
Still, I’d like to emphasize: I do not want to persuade you to change sides. Adjusting the outcome of a sawtooth problem might be but one path toward safe resolution. If there are other paths, I expect them to be much easier to walk—provided we can find them.
I meant it when I described Red as a kind of fallback strategy for the overall population. For most of my life, I’ve seen a world drowning Blue shades of coordination failure. By looking at it through the framework of sawtooth space, I feel like I now see vast swaths of Red picking up the pieces of Blue hubris.
I think safely resolving a dangerous sawtooth problem essentially involves smoothing it out, such that the Threshold disappears and our choice of color becomes irrelevant.
Would I like it if you voted Blue? Of course I would. I’m a Blue. But I really don’t want you to change your vote. It feels like it would be dangerous for me to want you to change your vote. If I succeed in persuading you, and Blues nevertheless fail, then all I’ve managed to do is drag everyone a little further into the Threshold. Stay Red. The world might need you.
Apologies in advance for not addressing your analysis of the whole family of variations, but only speaking about the original.
Staunch Red here, and have been since first learning of the puzzle.
Framing is irrelevant. Isomorphic puzzles have isomorphic answers. If someone’s answer is changed by the framing, they are not thinking properly. If they notice that they are swayed by the framing, that is their chance to become stronger. As you are doing by analysing all those variations, but I can’t face going through them all, because formalising the problem requires some sort of reflexive decision theory, which is an unsolved problem. There is no way to define a probability distribution of button-presses, because people’s decisions can depend on the distribution they anticipate.
It never was.
But since people do appear to be influenced by the framing, here’s another. But first, I want to go to a place where you change the problem:
No. Let’s not exclude the part where children are choosing as well. It’s a crucial part of the problem for some others, who justify blue by saying, “but think of the children (and the feeble-minded, etc.), the poor children who will just press blue by chance, think of all the children, you must want them to die if you don’t press blue, what sort of monster are you, die scum etc. cont. p.94”.
How are the children going to make that choice? Not in a vacuum. Their parents will advise them, or tell them which button to press, or press it for them. That is one of the duties of parents, guiding their children through the hazards of early life.
You want everyone to press blue and in this article you are trying to persuade them to (despite refraining-not-refraining from giving your own attitudes, in footnote 9). Therefore that is what you will be telling your own children or making them do. You will be risking their lives in order to get the virtuous thrill of saving their lives.
Would you urge your children to run into the traffic, so as to pull them back at the last moment? Push them out of a high window, to catch them just as they begin to plummet?
The virtuous thrill is trash. Look at the real outcomes, not the feels. Before: everyone is alive. After: everyone is alive. Nothing positive is achieved in the end, any more than from a chain letter. A chain letter of virtue signalling.
As Insanity Wolf might put it:
HAS CURE FOR DISEASE
SPREADS DISEASE TO CURE
WANTS TO FIGHT OPPRESSION
CREATES OPPRESSION TO FIGHT
WANTS TO SAVE THE CHILDREN
JAMS A BLENDER WITH THEM
If my post acts as an attempt to persuade others to join the Blue team, or if it carries a subtext of that flavor, then I need to improve my communication skills.
While writing this post, I would regularly notice little phrases, graph choices, etc. which communicated an unnecessary Blue bias. To the best of my ability I’ve tried to minimize all of that. Alas, eliminating one’s bias from one’s communication is a continuous process. There will always be more.
I’ve raised my Blue heart to the sky, that any bias I’ve overlooked might be made obvious to others. If you’ve found it, then I’ll at least consider that last part a success.
Still, I’d like to emphasize: I do not want to persuade you to change sides. Adjusting the outcome of a sawtooth problem might be but one path toward safe resolution. If there are other paths, I expect them to be much easier to walk—provided we can find them.
I meant it when I described Red as a kind of fallback strategy for the overall population. For most of my life, I’ve seen a world drowning Blue shades of coordination failure. By looking at it through the framework of sawtooth space, I feel like I now see vast swaths of Red picking up the pieces of Blue hubris.
I think safely resolving a dangerous sawtooth problem essentially involves smoothing it out, such that the Threshold disappears and our choice of color becomes irrelevant.
Would I like it if you voted Blue? Of course I would. I’m a Blue. But I really don’t want you to change your vote. It feels like it would be dangerous for me to want you to change your vote. If I succeed in persuading you, and Blues nevertheless fail, then all I’ve managed to do is drag everyone a little further into the Threshold. Stay Red. The world might need you.