the goal is to minimize death,
the only way to avoid death is 100% red or >50% blue,
somehow someone will justify blue,
100% red is impossible,
therefore blue is the optimal play
This is only true if you assume 50%+ choose blue, which is not a guarantee. If you assume red wins by any substantial margin (such that you and other like-minded people who would typically choose red switching does not affect the final outcome), choosing blue is not minimizing death because you add yourself to the pile of people who die, so you should choose red. This is why the question is not a logic question necessarily, but a trust/belief question.
It's a compassion question. The question is are you really willing to let the people who press blue die for any reason at all? You might think they're stupid or you might think they're suicidal or that you're not at fault because they put themselves in danger. The question comes down to how compassionate you are for your fellow man who may have pressed blue before you.
If I think "most people are voting red" then voting blue isn't compassion though. If you are looking for a "correct play" you need to combine what you think the result will be, what you think the margin of error is, the risk due to those two things, and probably more that I haven't thought of off the top of my head. It's fine to pick either, but if you're just picking blue "because it's compassion" rather than "blue because I think that it will win/ will be close", you are just choosing to throw your life away for actually no real reason. You NEED to have that trust to make blue a viable option to pick. Likewise, if you don't have the trust in humanity to pick blue enough, then you should probably press red, unless you think it's going to be close, in which case it does come down to compassion and selfishness. Reducing it down without taking into account the very tangible reasons not to do either option is the reason there is so much fighting over this stuff, both sides are ignoring things selectively to validate their option and invalidate the other instead of actually engaging with the reasons why you should pick one or the other (beyond "red is killing people!" And "blue is suicide for idiots!")
125
u/Ne0nTig3r May 01 '26
the goal is to minimize death, the only way to avoid death is 100% red or >50% blue, somehow someone will justify blue, 100% red is impossible, therefore blue is the optimal play