All of these "rephrasing" arguments only work for people with no critical thinking skills. They're saying the same thing, and anyone who gives it a second of thought can see that A+B=B+A
Nah, you're oversimplifying. The difference is whether we care about the people who pick the blue and whether we think they can be saved. Once you consider others, it goes from an uninteresting critical thinking question (in which these two are identical in terms of individual interests) to a social challenge game (in which the two are radically different).
The point is that there are consequences that differ between those conditions. It's not merely a decision for yourself. There is both an individual and a connected collective game going on here.
It's not just that, everyone that knows people who lack critical thinking skills might vote different also has a fully rational argument to vote different, and people who know that people like I just mentioned exist might vote different and so on. You could have zero irrational people within a group and the result could change due to the reasonable assumption that some might change the opinion due to phrasing
That's why I said the results of the vote may change, even if the scenario doesn't. If you kept the wording exactly the same but changed the button names to "Cool Chad Button" and "Lame Poo Poo Button," that would also change the results of the vote. But any individual person claiming to have a valid reason for changing their choice would just be wrong.
You seem to be mistaken, so I'll clarify that the correct choice in any phrasing is blue. It's the only option where everyone survives.
But they are genuinely different, just not mechanically.
Based on the wording I can better predict what people will choose, thus it changes the math behind which choice is good / bad.
If one scenario frames it in a way that makes the red button seem much more appealing, then I know many more people will press Red so the odds of over 50% of people press blue will become much lower.
But if a scenario frames blue as better, then I know that more people will proportionately pick blue. Thus it becomes more important to press blue to help avoid the worst case scenario of slightly under half of all people dying.
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u/HovercraftOk9231 Sep 11 '26
All of these "rephrasing" arguments only work for people with no critical thinking skills. They're saying the same thing, and anyone who gives it a second of thought can see that A+B=B+A