a button dilemma

[Defiant47]

so you are abducted by aliens. they bring you into a room where there are two buttons.

the red button will kill a 60 year old woman who spent her life working for doctors without borders in ghana and is now suffering of breast cancer which has already developed metastases that were recently found in her lymph nodes.

the blue button will kill a 15 year old boy that you, since the aliens gave you psychic future telling powers on the way to the room, know has a 48 percent chance of running over and killing the woman mentioned above at the age of 16 while drunk driving. you also know he has a 0.5% chance to invent a cure for the common cold later in his life.

the aliens make you press one of these buttons with their mind force ray, which leaves the decision which of them you press to you, but absolutely denies you the ability to not press a button.

which one do you press and why?

Red button = -1 life
Blue button = -1 life + 0.48life - 0.5*n where n=number of lives saved from cure to common cold

Press the red button if the cure for the common cold saves at least 1 person (rounded from 0.96). Press the blue button if the cure saves no persons.

Level 1 answer. (could go deeper)

 

[Mise]

Why are you adding 0.48life to the blue button?

 

[Defiant47]

Why are you adding 0.48life to the blue button?

Holy king's logic is messed up, so I'm just adding it in for good measure. I presume this is the mathematical equation he desired, although the wording means differently.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Wait for the alien mind ray to force my hand. Learning more about it is far more important than these two measly lives!

(Kidding. Red.)

 

[Rashiminos]

My answer consists of three parts, with the second part answering the question in the OP:

Under the auspices of the first, I flip a coin into the air and observe the aliens to see if they have any reaction to their new future. Heads- The lady gets it. Tails- The boy gets it.

Third part: The aliens may die or not die.

The first part to be revealed later.

 

[_random_]

I can't see a reason not to kill the teenaged boy.

He has a lot more potential. Even if it's notably unlikely he'll cure the common cold, he could do some other awesome stuff. The old lady is a dead woman walking as it is. It doesn't justify it, but it'd be the lesser of two evils.

 

[azzaman333]

The red button, because I don't like old people.

 

[Silurian]

Am I missing something, it seems whichever button I press will result in a 0% chance of the boy running over the old woman (as I will kill one of them first.) Doesn't that make that part of the hypothetical kind of redundant, or is it just meant to give the impression the boy is a reckless drunk, prone to running old ladies down?

The OP does not say how soon the two people will die after you have pressed the button.

If you press the blue button to kill the boy he could still run over the women and then be killed a year latter by the aliens.

 

[sophie]

Red button, but only under the proviso that I can pull a young Jimmy Stewart from It's a Wonderful Life (as in stop the boy's near certain drunken, alcoholic streak).

 

[BasketCase]

I'd push either button, secure in the knowledge that nobody will actually die.

Oh, c'mon, y'all knew I was gonna try to gank up the experiment. Here's the deal:

since the aliens gave you psychic future telling powers on the way to the room, know has a 48 percent chance of running over and killing the woman mentioned above at the age of 16 while drunk driving. you also know he has a 0.5% chance to invent a cure for the common cold later in his life.

Obviously the psychic powers the aliens gave me are not working correctly. Otherwise I'd be able to see for certain who would die when, and who would do what when. In fact, I would also be able to see what button I was about to press. Since I can't, it's clear the aliens are lying through their teeth (or whatever they possess instead of teeth).

 

[Monsterzuma]

i'm killing the kid. sounds like an obnoxious brat.

 

[Joecoolyo]

uhhh...uhhh... Pat Buchanan!

The ballot was confusing!

 

[Narz]

Control-alt-delete.

 

[Winston Hughes]

You poor, naive fools. The correct answer is to hit the blue button, since the boy's 'cure' for the common cold will involve wiping out all life on Earth, thus achieving precisely the end that the oh-so-devious aliens were aiming at.

Pro-tip: The key to every alien-based hypothetical is figuring out what's motivating the aliens.

 

[dIZZyBlIZZy]

Obviously the psychic powers the aliens gave me are not working correctly. Otherwise I'd be able to see for certain who would die when, and who would do what when. In fact, I would also be able to see what button I was about to press. Since I can't, it's clear the aliens are lying through their teeth (or whatever they possess instead of teeth).

What if you saw which button you'd push and chose the opposite just to spite your clairvoyance?

uhhh...uhhh... Pat Buchanan!

The ballot was confusing!

Want a hand recount?

 

[Rashiminos]

Obviously the psychic powers the aliens gave me are not working correctly. Otherwise I'd be able to see for certain who would die when, and who would do what when. In fact, I would also be able to see what button I was about to press. Since I can't, it's clear the aliens are lying through their teeth (or whatever they possess instead of teeth).

One of the liabilities of being a determinist is that your grasp of the future would allow for many so-called errors instead of recognizing why such perfect knowledge (at least not linearly) is impossible. Predicting from the present what things will probably happen has no bearing on the improbable. The aliens don't have to be lying, they just give you the best future vision that could be managed from a certain vantage point.

Pro-tip: The key to every alien-based hypothetical is figuring out what's motivating the aliens.

Getting someone to push either button (either is a bad choice) while justifying such a decision. That's it.

 

[BasketCase]

What if you saw which button you'd push and chose the opposite just to spite your clairvoyance?

As I said: that would be proof that the alleged clairvoyance doesn't work and that the aliens are just pulling a prank on me. (instead of RickRolling, would they call it MarklarRolling?? )

One of the liabilities of being a determinist is that your grasp of the future would allow for many so-called errors

If that's the case, then my perception of the fifteen-year-old kid's future could be an error. Which leads to the same deal: my alleged clairvoyance doesn't work, so I might as well just press any old button. Or, in fact, I could simply try to avoid pressing any buttons at all, because now it's possible the alien mind ray doesn't work either!

instead of recognizing why such perfect knowledge (at least not linearly) is impossible.

That would be violation of the law of entropy if I remember correctly. Seeing information about the future and then carrying that information back into the past requires expending energy (when your computer does it, you feel the result as heat coming out the back of the PC case--that breeze of warm air is a steady flow of increasing disorder that's very slowly destroying the universe). Carrying information backwards in time means the entropy of the system has to be higher in the past than in the future, which isn't possible.

 

[Rashiminos]

If that's the case, then my perception of the fifteen-year-old kid's future could be an error. Which leads to the same deal: my alleged clairvoyance doesn't work, so I might as well just press any old button. Or, in fact, I could simply try to avoid pressing any buttons at all, because now it's possible the alien mind ray doesn't work either!

Then you'd be ignoring hypothetical stipulations, and I know you've read Fifty's thread.

That would be violation of the law of entropy if I remember correctly. Seeing information about the future and then carrying that information back into the past requires expending energy (when your computer does it, you feel the result as heat coming out the back of the PC case--that breeze of warm air is a steady flow of increasing disorder that's very slowly destroying the universe). Carrying information backwards in time means the entropy of the system has to be higher in the past than in the future, which isn't possible.

Forwards, backwards, laterally.... So many directions...

 

[amadeus]

If I kill the red woman, how can the blue boy hit her with his car? If I kill the blue boy, he'll never drive his car. Thus, the woman can never be killed by the boy.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Getting someone to push either button (either is a bad choice) while justifying such a decision. That's it.

What's in it for them?