this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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The fact of the game never ending is what made the choice too easy, you're right.
EDITED
For this study you want sociopathy, not psychopathy. I can report from my wasted psych degree that sociopathy occurs in 1-2% of the population.
Binary probability tells us that if you repeat a 1% chance test 32 times, you have a 95% chance of never seeing it.
Don't pull the lever. Sorry for the ninja edit, I misread something.
I'm confused: 0.99^32 = 0.72, not 0.95. And if you know that everyone except the last guy won't pull the lever, that's still a 1% chance of killing everyone on earth (average expected deaths: 70 million) is way worse than definitely killing one person!
(Edit: unless "don't pull the lever" means killing that one person, because it isn't clear which is the default "no action" outcome. In which case, never mind.)
(Edit 2: if you know the 34th and last person might be a sociopath, you're best off if the first 27 people might also be sociopaths.)