u/QQXV

I've tried a lot of reformulations to get people to begin to see why blue, for me, isn't just the compassionate choice but also an incredibly obvious, logical, and safe one.

Consider this: the buttons are very simply labeled

GET $50

versus

GET $0. ALSO, IF MOST PRESS THIS, EVERYONE WHO GOT $50 DIES.

Time and again, red-pressers turn down the $50 because "the risk is too high". But... the very presence of such a solid nudge toward blue means the risk melts away to practically zero! If you're still scared to press blue now, you should be scared to leave the house. You're just not thinking straight about how other humans work and what to expect when all the voting has happened and the dust has cleared. It'll be well over 7 billion people $50 richer and you looking like a chump. The price point at which you'd switch to blue shouldn't even be that (though I can see your point of view if it were a mere dollar, say), and certainly it shouldn't take the tens of thousands I've seen most red-pressers claim would be needed.

How about these as the buttons that all of humankind are shown:

DRINK A GLASS OF WATER

versus

DRINK A THIMBLE OF URINE. ALSO, IF MOST PRESS THIS, EVERYONE WHO DRANK THE WATER DIES.

This one... actually seems to be clearer to red-pressers, and I'm not entirely sure why, but it's probably either making a mental distinction between opportunity cost and explicit cost or a mental distinction between monetary and other costs, and somehow, that causes the click "Oh, a majority doing this is highly unlikely". If it still doesn't make sense ("I value my life, see!"), mentally increase the amount of urine until it does, or change it to feces, or imagine that pressing red costs one finger, two, etc. A world of over 4 billion people all having sliced off a finger and eaten a turd and volunteered for a terrible haircut for no real reason starts to look astronomically unlikely.

In any case, it's kind of amazing to me how many self-declared rationalists completely fail to think straight on this. Even a version of the problem where pressing blue gets you a penny, and it's just you and 10 other rational people, all of whom discuss it beforehand, should easily, easily be a win for unanimous blue, because whatever game theory supposedly told you before (it told you to coordinate around "nobody dies", but whatever), it now tells you to take the free money. And yet.

Suppose that pressing red costs 1 cent, while pressing blue is free. If you were a red-presser, would you switch from red to blue? Think really hard about this, because it also relates to why any imaginable reframing of the problem makes a difference in the ideal strategy for it.

Conversely, suppose that everyone who presses blue gets 1 cent. In effect, this is the same, just as an opportunity cost for red instead of an explicit cost.

If a penny wouldn't be enough to lure you, what would be? Is it no price at all, because you value your life more than money? Really think about it.

Of course, the same question can be asked about blue. I'm very much a blue-presser, but I would waver if red-pressers got even 1 cent, and I would switch (while lamenting the fate of thousands/millions) if they got like $100 each. This is not because I value $100 more than I value the lives of thousands.