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I think the moral dilemma is "Should you put yourself at risk to help people who endanger themselves foolishly?"
If you assume 20% of people will pick blue because they misunderstand the question then the moral calculus is very different.
Please, please explain to me what the type of person it is that has two buttons in front of them, one which grants them a 100% chance of survival, and the other which grants some uncertain chance of survival, and then, from pure ignorance (not making any complex moral calculation) picks the second button.
Because there are a lot of other things that this person's existence would imply.
I have a genuinely hard time believing that this person exists. And if there are enough of these people who can't comprehend the question, I'm DEFINITELY picking red because they might very well be making their choice at random, in aggregate.
Since we're asking what happens if this person misreads the question, we can't assume that they understand that one of the buttons grants them a 100% chance of survival.
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https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/little-child-pushing-menu-button-260nw-1319473658.jpg
for one
...or anyone who accidentally presses the supposedly "bad one"
I am having a very hard time believing that there is actually anyone who is faced with two pills, one which is clearly explained to them "YOU WILL SURVIVE 100%" and intends to pick that one would accidentally screw it up at the last second.
And if we add in children who pick at random we have a new problem. IF we have a high enough number of these kids, it increases the uncertainty that enough people will end up picking blue.
Like, adding in people who can't comprehend the question posed makes it worse, not better.
For the absurd example, imagine that you play this game with 99 people who will pick at random (will literally flip a coin) and then there's you, who can make an informed choice.
You gonna bet your life on where on the probability curve they land and pick blue?
The only way to make blue more attractive to me with these added assumptions is to lower the threshhold. If blue 'wins' if 2% of people choose it, I might assume the risk.
But it just seems impossible under any fair interpretation of the hypo that you can be certain that enough people end up choosing blue to save the day, and red is inherently the certain, predictable choice because you don't HAVE to model millions of other strangers.
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Hmm, when you put it like this I think using this poll would work extremely well as a political compass test for communities. Right leaning communities are going to go red while left leaning communities are going to go blue. Just increases my curiosity in how the Motte would vote as a whole.
I do wonder if they made the colors the yellow pill and the orange pill if the outcome is different. By using blue and red along with the blue pill that at a cursory level appeals to communitarian values the thought experiment is stacking the deck to get unrealistic answers.
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I don't think so. Rights donate more to charity and in many other ways cooperate more than lefts. This association seems to be reversed online, where at the extremes the right-wingers are very antisocial and the left-wingers are very pro social.
Right wing philosophy is “the individual is the agent and is responsible for himself which enables communities.” Left wing philosophy is that “the agent is society so it is only when the community acting together changes can there be change.”
Practically, I think that ends up with right leaning people being community focused (ie my actions damage or benefit my community) whereas left leaning people being more individually focused (ie my actions are immaterial to my communities outcome and therefore I will do what benefits me but say loudly what I think the community needs to do in order to change).
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