alt Hacker NewsThis is like a prisoner's dilemma, but with no payoff for the risky option.
In a prisoner's dilemma, you can choose a risky option (stay quiet), but the potential reward is that if the other prisoner also stays quiet then you both go completely free. But if one prisoner instead speaks up and accuses the other prisoner, the accuser gets a short sentence and the one who stayed quiet gets a max sentence.
But in this scenario, there's no payoff whatsoever for the risky option (pressing the blue button). 100% of people choosing blue and 100% of people choosing red lead to the exact same outcome. So why would it ever be rational to choose blue?
This "dilemma" would make more sense if getting over the 50% blue threshold caused some additional positive outcome, like world peace or a cure for cancer.
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The downside of redding is that some portion of the world probably dies and you now have to live in that worse world that if you and 50% of the rest of the world has just blued, would not have happened.
The dilemma is that there are some people who are not smart enough to understand this and will press blue.
In The Prisoner's Dilemma, the point is that the best option (Both Cooperate) only works if people are willing to work together. It almost always ends up in the worst option (Both Defect). What this points out is that purely selfish actions can lead to non-optimal results for both the collective and the individual.
This expands on The Prisoner's Dilemma by increasing the population and increasing the stakes. We're still thinking about cooperate/defect actions, but we're also forced to acknowledge that not everyone is a rational actor and we cannot relay on the all-defect option as would be the expected outcome of The Prisoner's Dilemma.
Exactly, if choosing blue would allow you to wear a blue badge which would raise your happiness level or otherwise affect your utility function, then it might make sense. Otherwise it just doesn't.
Red is optimal from a self preservation perspective but is also the antisocial option. Picking blue saves everyone.
You have it backwards. In prisoner's dilemma if both stay quiet they are still punished, just less so.
They payoff is, you know you are not the reason why the people who pressed the blue button died.
Blue risk their lives to safe others, red safe themselves.
Blue won’t get survivor’s guilt
They’re different scenarios. The prisoner’s dilemma is purely selfish. How do I maximize my own return? Cooperation is an option, but it’s still about maximizing your own return. This scenario leaves it open for people to choose to act selfishly by maximizing their own return, or selflessly by attempting to got maximize total return for everyone. But the choice required to maximize total return isn’t clear.
The dilemma is that a lot of people will press blue so if red gets above 50% a large number of selfless but not game-theory aware people will die.