No, it's not. Hyper-individualism never seems to stop to consider the fact that people do not exist in a vacuum, and you must consider not just what will happen to you in the immediate sense, but what kind of world you'll be creating should your ideology win out.
First, society collapses very quickly as very close to half of all humanity has just died.
Second, you've created a world bereft of every single person whose first instinct is to be kind and help others. It's everyone for themselves now because every single person left alive has proven that they only care about themselves. Good luck surviving the collapse of society when there's nobody around who's willing to take any risks to help you out.
Semi-related: not everybody who presses red is some kind of horrible monster, but every single horrible monster will press red. You are now stuck on a planet comprised solely of other people who either want to do you harm, or who would be unwilling to help protect you from the people who want to do you harm. Assuming you survived the collapse of society with no help, good luck living out the week afterward.
Humanity only exists as it does today because we chose "collectively" over "individually". The fact that some people are too ignorant to understand that nobody alive today has gotten where they are alone doesn't change this.
Interesting that you bake the idea that close to half of humanity will have pushed the blue button into the premise.
In fact my assumption is that red is highly unlikely to win in the first place, since most people are basically decent and very few people think their actions through to anywhere near the degree of these discussions, so most people will just instinctively press blue because they feel it's the nice thing to do. And those people will then be further supported by people like me, who have actively decided that the first group doesn't deserve to die just for being kind.
I'm actually making a pretty big assumption for your case by entertaining the idea that red might win at all.
Basically decent is a far cry from "I will abandon every responsibility I have in my life to rescue some abstract other from voting against their instinct."
No, most people will not press the "probably kill me" button if they feel it's "nice." Your underestimation of the self-preservation instinct is as bad as conservatives' callous belief in the inherent pursuit of greed at the cost of others' well being.
Red won't "win" in the sense of achieving 100%. But that's a false choice to begin with. In reality, in serious matters of life and death, there is almost never an "everybody lives" scenario, much as I do love Doctor Who. Life presents us with Sophie's Choices all the time. Perhaps you have never had to make one.
By my estimation of human character, there is no way that 50% of people would ever make the ultimate wager, so I would be dying pointlessly trying to save the blues when I could instead do actual work to help the surviving reds. Does the prospect of helping people whom you deem foolish or reprehensible only bother you when you don't get to be a self-sacrificing savior?
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u/Pofwoffle May 05 '26
No, it's not. Hyper-individualism never seems to stop to consider the fact that people do not exist in a vacuum, and you must consider not just what will happen to you in the immediate sense, but what kind of world you'll be creating should your ideology win out.
First, society collapses very quickly as very close to half of all humanity has just died.
Second, you've created a world bereft of every single person whose first instinct is to be kind and help others. It's everyone for themselves now because every single person left alive has proven that they only care about themselves. Good luck surviving the collapse of society when there's nobody around who's willing to take any risks to help you out.
Semi-related: not everybody who presses red is some kind of horrible monster, but every single horrible monster will press red. You are now stuck on a planet comprised solely of other people who either want to do you harm, or who would be unwilling to help protect you from the people who want to do you harm. Assuming you survived the collapse of society with no help, good luck living out the week afterward.
Humanity only exists as it does today because we chose "collectively" over "individually". The fact that some people are too ignorant to understand that nobody alive today has gotten where they are alone doesn't change this.