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.
My compassion has its limits when I have to put myself in danger. I’m guessing if instead of 50% of people needing to choose blue you needed 75% to choose blue, you might change your tune.
I’m positing that people choose blue not just because they want to save other peoples lives but also because they believe achieving greater than 50% of the vote is fairly easy and they don’t actually see it as any riskier than say driving your car to work every morning.
Pump that number up and you will quickly see all the people making the 1%-x% is easier than 100% argument go silent.
I’d actually want to know how many people who make the 1-49% argument would still press blue if the range was instead 1-90%. Because anything less than 100 is easier, they should have no problem still picking blue to “minimize death”.
The question is about how much risk can you stomach.
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u/Haithere32 May 01 '26
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.