The top concern in the mind of a good person, at all times, is, “how much of a good person am I?” If a person has any concerns other than being a good person, which are not instrumental to their own being a good person, then that person is certainly not good, and is instead evil.
A problem is given us where each member of a population P must choose the item Blue or the item Red. In the event (call it a “Red win”) where more than 50% of the population P choose the item Red, then the ones choosing the item Blue will die; but, in the event (call it a “Blue win”) where more than 50% of the population P choose the item Blue, then no one dies. Either a Red win or a Blue win must happen; there is no third.
Features of a Death Event
If there are any deaths, then, clearly those causing the deaths are culpable for this. The foremost concern of a good person is to be as little culpable as possible. An event where deaths happen is composed of two features:
- Red win (RW): The fact that a Red win occurs.
- Failure of Red Unanimity (FRU): The fact that not everyone chose Red. (If a Red win happens but everyone chooses Red, no one dies.)
In an event that does not have both of RW and FRU, no one dies, so no one is culpable for any outcomes, although they may be culpable for their own intentions. So we can leave those events aside. Who is culpable for the deaths?
Culpability of Blue-choosers
Clearly Blue-choosers are not culpable for RW, since they tried to prevent it. Red-choosers may, however, want to blame the Blue-choosers for the fact of FRU.
However, each Blue-chooser is only responsible for FRU to the extent that he added himself to the Blue-chooser pile. He did not contribute to any other additions to the Blue-chooser contingent, and he did not contribute to RW. Hence, each Blue-chooser is culpable at most for his own death, if for that. (At the time of first posting, I thought this argument was pretty unassailable, but shortly afterwards, a question was raised about it; see the appendix.) Some Blue-choosers may think that they are not culpable even for this, since they may find risking one’s own life to be a blameless act, or they may see themselves as attempting a heroic sacrifice and not intending a RW & FRU outcome. So it is possible that Blue-choosers are culpable for 0 deaths, and it is possible that they are culpable for 1 death, but no assumptions come to mind by which they could be culpable for any other number of deaths. So let us name these possible assumptions:
- Suicide Culpability (SC): In the event of RW & FRU, each Blue-chooser is culpable for 1 death, namely his own.
- Suicide Non-Culpability (SNC): In the event of RW & FRU, each Blue-chooser is culpable for 0 deaths.
Culpability of Red-choosers
Clearly Red-choosers are culpable for RW, although they are blameless for FRU. Since they are culpable for RW, and the event with RW & FRU is what caused all the deaths, it is plausible that they are each culpable for all deaths. Let us call this Damage-Proportional Culpability (DPC): if the number of Blue-choosers in a RW & FRU event is $ B $, then each Red-chooser is culpable for $ B $ deaths.
An alternative is that each Red-chooser is only partially culpable for the deaths, since all the other Red-choosers were necessary for RW. Let us call this Contribution-Proportional Culpability (CPC): if the number of Blue-choosers in a RW & FRU event is $ B $, and the number of Red-choosers is $ R $, then each Red-chooser is culpable only for $ \frac{B}{R} $ deaths. Note that, in cases of murder conspiracies, no legal system on Earth accepts CPC, but someone may possibly think that a death event in this problem is different.
A third alternative is that, since Red-choosers are blameless for FRU, and FRU is just as necessary for a death event as RW, then Red-choosers are culpable for 0 deaths. Certainly all Red-choosers prefer this assumption, although it makes no sense at all. The idea, for them, is presumably that they could only be culpable for the deaths if their action were sufficient for the deaths, rather than merely necessary. So let us call this Sufficiency-Constrained Culpability (SCC): in a RW & FRU event, each Red-chooser is culpable for 0 deaths.
Final comparison of assumptions
The possible choices of assumptions are compared in the table below. The cells are shaded for which choice of item they advantage, assuming that it’s possible that $ B > 1 $ in a death event, and that necessarily (due to the problem constraints) we have $ \frac{B}{R} < 1 $ in a death event.
| Culpability Type | SC (Blues culpable for 1 death) | SNC (Blues culpable for 0 deaths) |
|---|---|---|
| DPC (Reds culpable for $ B $ deaths) | Blues culpable for 1 death; Reds culpable for $ B $ deaths; Blue advantage | Blues culpable for 0 deaths; Reds culpable for $ B $ deaths; Blue advantage |
| CPC (Reds culpable for $ \frac{B}{R} $ deaths) | Blues culpable for 1 death; Reds culpable for $ \frac{B}{R} $ deaths; Red advantage | Blues culpable for 0 deaths; Reds culpable for $ \frac{B}{R} $ deaths; Blue advantage |
| SCC (Reds culpable for 0 deaths) | Blues culpable for 1 death; Reds culpable for 0 deaths; Red advantage | Blues culpable for 0 deaths; Reds culpable for 0 deaths; Red advantage |
I personally accept DPC, although I’m not sure about SC versus SNC; so I think all Red-choosers are evil, whatever the Blue-choosers may be.
Appendix
Ming (@diamondminercat) pointed out a third possible assumption to me regarding Blue culpability, besides SC and SNC. This assumption, which I called Culpability for Others’ Altruism (COA), is that, in the event of RW & FRU, Blues are culpable for $ B $ deaths, since all other Blues would have been at least partly motivated by their estimation of a high probability of FRU, a feature which is only possible due to the existence of Blues.
I do not accept COA because I believe Blues would have been motivated by the fact that they are good persons, and want to minimize their own culpability, regardless of the probability of a death event. But supposing someone accepts COA, it would be strange for that person to think that the Reds are not similarly culpable for the deaths that happen in a death event. So as far as I know, someone who accepts COA would think everyone in the population P is culpable for $ B $ deaths, if any occur. This is still a Red advantage in the sense that Blues would have been risking their lives for no decrease in their own culpability. Due to my coherence concerns about interactions of COA with CPC or SCC, I have not added it to the table, although I thought it was worth considering here.
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