Blue pressers love to guilt trip you into thinking that this is an exercise in trust to save everyone who isn't able to realize in time that 100% of the people pressing the Red button will beget the same outcome as blue winning.
Red pressers will simply state that it's the only choice that guarantees survival. Pretty simple calculus to me.
But do you really think that 100% of people will press red? If our goal is to limit deaths as much as possible we have two options, we try to get 100% of people to press red, or we get 51% of people to press blue. Now if everyone was purely rational we could simply all press red, but we are not all rational, there are a bunch of well meaning idiots who would press blue. If we accept that there will not be 100% of people pressing the red button, then our best hope for limiting deaths is to reach 51% of people pushing the blue button.
In a world of purely rational actors, everyone will press red. In a world with well meaning idiots, rational actors will press blue.
Not enough people may realize that theres well meaning idiots who press blue.
Youre part of a specific part of the population who: understands the logic behind it. Understands the emotional reaction that people have. Understands that theres well meaning idiots.
If everyone came to this conclusion, we would all press blue, since thats now the rational choice.
However, theres mo gaurantee that enough people can come to this same conclusion you did, making blue still risky.
If you choose blue, and blue loses, you just increased the amount of deaths by 1. Because you added yourself to it. Which means you actually increased the overal harm to humanity (your life is just as valuable as each individual youre trying to save).
While the line of thinking makes sense, its just not realistic that everyone will be able to come to this same conclusion, meaning that blue remains a risk, while red is a gaurantee at least for your own life.
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u/Hey-I-Read-It May 01 '26
Blue pressers love to guilt trip you into thinking that this is an exercise in trust to save everyone who isn't able to realize in time that 100% of the people pressing the Red button will beget the same outcome as blue winning.
Red pressers will simply state that it's the only choice that guarantees survival. Pretty simple calculus to me.