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Comment by riffraff | Hacker News Reader

But why would those pick blue? They have the same incentive to just pick red.

Or maybe the colors were chosen knowingly to mess with the minds of the US voters? Me as a non-american I would choose blue, damn those mind games I'll go with MY beliefs that the world deserves a chance - and die by them if need to. Because the whole rationalization in the post just underlines the feeling I have about US politics nowadays: let the world burn if I can get once more mayo on my burger.

PS and the whole article may be bait to trigger exactly this kind of proofs.

I wonder if red choosers really don’t understand that they are choosing to live in a world where half of all people, the more selfless half, are dead. It’s like living through a nuclear war except all of the nice people are gone, not just a random sample

Technically for red to win the number of dead people will be between 0% and 49.999% of the population.

The entire reason to campaign for red is to reduce the dead percentage.

If your goal is to reduce the number of dead, is red really the one to campaign for?

If we imagine people will ignore their real-world political tribalism:

Voting blue is voting to possibly die, either because you want death or in risky solidarity with others who voted to possibly die, who may have chosen by mistake. Voting red is voting for those interested in death to die, along with those who chose blue by mistake, and along with anybody who voted blue in support of those who voted blue by mistake.

So we can have a blue campaign that says "we must not allow even one voter to die, we must all pull together and vote blue", and a red campaign that says "please don't be a giant crowd of idiots who risk death, just accept that maybe two voters aren't going to make it because one was depressed and the other had an involuntary hand movement, and everybody else play it safe and vote red".

This is a ridiculous situation, and Jonathan Swift unfortunately died in 1745, so the best commentary I can offer is "I don't know".

I guess you base that surprising "half" on the transparent analogy with politics, and so you think real-world Democrats will press blue to assert their Democrattiness. This is probably true. However, since this is the internet, and being a Democrat is associated with being online and living in a city, there are probably more than 50% blue-pressers, as shown in the poll. Just like in the real world, you won't change that ratio whichever way you vote in the poll. If swaying opinion is within a voter's control, then your "choosing" is meaningful but the "half" becomes meaningless. If swaying opinion isn't within the voter's control, it's "choosing" that becomes meaningless, and the fate of the half is already sealed by cultural forces beyond our control.

I disagree that the hypothetical maps onto politics. Voting for democrats is mostly a vote for someone else (billionaires, etc.) to shoulder additional burdens to achieve some positive end. By contrast, this game involves serious risk to one's self and family. Lots of people would vote to raise corporate taxes to increase funding for schools in Baltimore. But those people aren't going to move their kids to Sandtown to help increase the property tax base.

I think if you played the game for real, blue would get maybe 5% of the vote, tops.

I don’t see them as selfless I see them as unintelligent.

The end of the article mentions it. Some people are not purely rational decision makers, some people are altruists who know others are not purely rational, etc.

By choosing red you will kill some people.

Or choosing blue allows them to feel self-righteous while not actually at any risk since this isn't real. Virtue signalling is the ethic of our day.

Maybe people who choose blue do so because they assume there’s some kind of monkey paw involved in the choosing the red option, like your wife and kids die or something like that

Bringing rationalism - or whatever - clouds the discussion.

Blue is purely a win-win for me, so it's rational to only choose blue. Reds have their own value judgement.

"Rationality" is a useless quality to debate here.

> Blue is purely a win-win for me

Dying is a win for you?

Either everyone lives or you don't get to experience the mess that follows when red wins cause you're dead. Sounds like a strictly better option indeed.

Same as with the original dilemma. Most people are not sociopaths and will choose to cooperate with empathy for everyone else. That's just how species survive and adapt. (1) Alternatively, some people believe that sustained cooperation is in itself a sustained equilibrium. (2)

Most of the world is not as individualistic as Silicon Valley engineers believe in their own ivory towers after decades of reading Ayn Rand.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolut...

(2) https://www.optimallyirrational.com/p/the-true-story-of-the-...

but in the original dilemma you have an advantage by taking a choice at the disadvantage of the other.

But there is no advantage here to pick blue, nobody should pick blue because if we all pick red we all win.

Somewhat true, though in my view ensuring everyone lives sounds like a fair advantage. An interesting variant would be if >50% vote red, only those who voted red die.

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