This question has multiple layers of thinking:

1. People who can't read pick randomly.

2. People who can read, but are too dumb to model or care about other people pick red.

3. People with enough intelligence for basic cognitive empathy pick blue.

4. People a little smarter and think through game theory overall pick red, and think they are smart for doing so.

5. People smarter than #4 and capable of seeing the big picture realize they don't want to leave people who choose #1 and #3 dead, so they pick blue.

6. People who realize the game theory optimal strategy is to announce you're pressing blue and convince everyone else to press blue, but privately press red.

There are probably more layers to this but the whole debate involves people getting upset at each other and accusing people of being in groups they are not. Red group #4 accuses blue group #5 of being #3 (not thinking beyond basic cognitive empathy). Blue group #5 accuses red group #4 of being group #2 (too dumb to model how others act). It's almost a perfect ragebait question.

As for which camp I am in, I am pressing blue and think you should too.

The framing in terms of colors helps the reader to interpret the thought experiment in terms of "groups" or "teams" — as if there's a "blue team" that you can join by helping, and help by joining. Many readers will quickly [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect ] intuitively choose to join the blue team, and then rationalize their choice as a strategy to help their blue teammates.

But in fact the thought experiment doesn't say there are teams or groups at all! The reader imposes that part on their own, unconsciously at first, because of the description's emphasis on colors.

I predict that running the same Twitter poll with flipped colors — so that red means "I die, unless a majority of my fellows pick red" and blue means "I survive no matter what" — would yield a majority for blue too. What was previously justified as the "virtuous" choice (blue) would now be justified as the "only intelligent" choice (blue).

Your entire logical chain, and your self importance, well, it explains why I'm always picking red. If you win and most pick blue, I'm safe, otherwise, I'm also safe.

You get to feel intellectually superior choosing the only option that can lead you to die. The simple answer is everyone should pick red.

(6) isn't correct. Left alone, everyone rational would pick red because it's the only logical option. You trying to convince them otherwise might end up getting 49% of the population killed.

You should try to get everyone to pick red, not blue.

You've structured ways to think about the problem in a hierarchy of intelligence, which is a classic economics mistake. People are not rational actors, and the primary factors determining who pushes the button will be self-preservation or group-preservation. Emotional factors.

Also, I think that's a simplistic view of intelligence.

You have two buttons. If you press that one, you might die. If you press the other one, you won't die. Which one do you press?

You're missing the seventh group: trolls/assholes who will always press red but try to convince/muddy the waters about the blue button aiming to get a not-insignificant amount of <50% blue pushed to get people killed.

Prime candidate pool: 4chan.

If the question was restricted to local communities with 0 internet access, I would be more inclined to press blue.

But on a global scale? No fucking way.

I was thinking that if some evil god could credibly force this sadistic choice on humanity we’re all in trouble, regardless of the button you push.

I’d probably turn my mind to resistance and refuse to push any buttons if possible.

> 6. People who realize the game theory optimal strategy is to announce you're pressing blue and convince everyone else to press blue, but privately press red.

A lot of this analysis depends on accurately guessing how people will react, so it's probably hard to say any strategy is game theory optimal without a lot of unrealistic simplifying assumptions.

In a world where you're able to convince a lot of people anything, it might better to convince everyone to press red. If it looks like 99.99% of people will press red without your influence, you're probably best off spending your time convincing the .01% who might press blue not to do so.

It also has the upside of not making you a dirty liar. I wonder, what would Kant think about this hypothetical?

So… you're 6?

Missing the layer where blue is my favorite color and therefore I will always choose blue. From this perspective, all other reasonings lack basic empathy and/or intelligence.

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