I’m about a year behind on this tweet, but it’s been itching my brain for a while now. Like so many things involving hypothetical choices, killing strangers, and pills of many colors, it seemed to attract the worst people you met in your undergrad math classes a wide variety of opinions. One thing that jumped out at me was the clarity and complete lack of self-doubt of people who voted for the red pill. I agree that, in the presented model, red is the clear and obvious choice. Gun to my head, I’d make that choice also! Unfortunately, “real life” does not come in neat, easy-to-model, one-size-fits-all, insert-cliche-here examples. Acting in your own rational self-interest always benefits you; that is, after all, the definition of the phrase. But how many of us live in a reality where our decisions don’t cascade outwards to everyone we know & love (and people we’ve never met!). Perhaps some of the game theorists who immediately jumped to the rational conclusions don’t have friends who are color blind? I can’t say for certain. What I can absolutely say for certain is that a world where everyone only acts in ways that benefit themselves sounds like it suuuuucks.
I wanted to write short prompts that conform to the red pill-blue pill model & each of the expected outcomes. I’m not sure I did the best job, but the diversity in the examples shows how we can reduce radically different moral questions into a fairly-uniform theoretical model. In my opinion, we lose a significant chunk of our humanity (for better or worse) when we do that reduction. But enough blathering! Let’s have some examples!
Case 1 Link to heading
You find yourself in a small, well-lit room. You are sitting in a comfortable office chair behind a table. On the table there is a machine that sort of looks like a gumball machine, along with a placard with the following text:
- All humans are being tested alongside you
- The machine in front of you dispenses red or blue pills
- Twisting the knob clockwise will give you a red pill; turning the knob counter-clockwise will give you a blue pill
- You may only turn the knob once
- If a majority of humans select the blue pill, everyone lives
- If not, everyone who selected the red pill lives and everyone who selected the blue pill dies
- Your test will end after you have selected
You can’t be sure that everyone else got the same message (Is it always in English? What about people who can’t read? Or people who don’t have hands?!), you can’t be sure if any of this is real or just a dream! But there are no doors or windows in the room, only the chair and the table and the gumball machine. What do you do?
Case 2 Link to heading
You’re in a fortified shelter with one way in or out protected with a double-door airlock. Only one person can fit in the airlock at a time, and the airlock may leak after an opening-closing cycle due to the age of the seals. You have been told that there is a surely-fatal threat outside the outer-most door (poison gas, a complete lack of oxygen, monsters with a taste for human flesh, etc.). If what you’ve been told is true, stepping outside the airlock will kill you. But you haven’t been outside the shelter in years which has pushed your sanity to the brink. What do you do?
Case 3 Link to heading
A wildfire is encroaching on your town. If enough people stay and work to create firebreaks, put out hot spots, etc., your town will be saved. If you flee, you are guaranteed to find shelter away from the fire. However, if enough people flee the town may fall to the flames. What do you do?
Case 4 Link to heading
A fatal neurological condition is spreading through communities near communications infrastructure, including fiber optic cable, microwave antennas, satellite dishes, etc. The causal link between the presence of the infrastructure and the condition has been confirmed independently by respected scientists. Expensive shielding will provide protection to homes & businesses. However, the less fortunate cannot afford the shielding & would be doomed to slowly die. On the other hand, abstaining from using digital communications & helping to dismantle the infrastructure would guarantee the end of the condition. What do you do?
Case 5 Link to heading
You live in a country with an extensive welfare state, including direct annual monetary benefits of approximately 10% of the annual cost of living for citizens who create works of cultural significance. However, voting for a specific political party may lead to that benefit being eliminated & the resulting tax savings being passed along to all taxpayers. The risks to the other elements of the welfare state would not be affected by your vote, but the artists who depend on that benefit may be at risk of going hungry or losing their homes. What do you do?
Case 6 Link to heading
You are part of a band of survivors after a global catastrophe. Food & supplies are dwindling, but members of your group think there’s a very good chance of finding supplies nearby. However, the location is a 2 day walk from your current camp, which is near-impossible for most of your fellow survivors. You are the most able-bodied and have been tasked with making the trek to recover the supplies. If you do not get the supplies, at least half of your group will be at risk of starving. What do you do?
Case 7 Link to heading
(Based on a real story!)
You are a captain on a nuclear missile submarine. You are far outside the range of surface communications, and communicating with your headquarters is difficult and prone to errors. You have access to an experimental radar that is specifically designed to detect missile launches by the enemy. However, the radar has only been tested in computer simulations as your enemy has not launched any missiles recently. Suddenly the radar alerts you to 3 missiles coming from the enemy base. You have the ability to launch countermeasures which will destroy the (hypothetical) missiles. But even if they’re successful, the launched missiles might crash in a populated area. And if there was no actual enemy launch, your missiles will end up hitting the missile silos in enemy territory. What do you do?
Summing Up Link to heading
I really don’t know that there is one, best answer. I know that’s not the payoff we wanted! But unfortunately our philosophies are only guidelines, our core values are more malleable than we’d admit, and some of us are not honest about our level of selfishness (in both directions!). I think the best thing is to make the next, best decision for who & what you care about, and try to leave the world in a better condition than you found it.