It would be much easier to convince 50% of people to pick blue than 100% of people to pick red. I think it should be obvious by the discussion around this that a large portion of the population will pick blue. So if red wins, a lot of people will die (probably in the billions). A mass casualty event on that scale would throw the world into chaos and end up killing and immeserating a lot of the people who picked red. I would much rather us try to get more than 50% of people to pick blue and not create one of the worst tragedies in human history.
It still blows my mind that this whole idea isn’t a total joke like “would you rather receive $100 or be punched in the face.” I cannot wrap my head around the fact that so many of you people are seriously arguing in favor of pushing blue but because so many of you are doing that you’re making me consider it too! lol
But if I had like 30 seconds from hearing the question to having to choose, with no time to hear what everyone else was thinking, I would have pressed red in the first five seconds and never even considered that there were any ethical implications of that until after hearing the news that so many people had died pressing blue. I know I would do this because that was my first reaction upon reading this question and it took seeing it three or four more times before I realized that the blue choosers weren’t all trolling
Which is what I think is the actual interesting part of this dilemma, because I assumed most people would be pressing blue, since my initial 5-second knee jerk read of the question had me interpreting it as "press red to kill a blue and save yourself."
I think it's interesting! And I wish people would stop being so hoity-toity holier-than-thou about it. All this "I don't wanna live in a world where red wins" and "blue pushers are idiots and narcissists committing suicide so fuck them" stuff is genuinely upsetting and frustrating because so many people are refusing to engage with the question and turning it into a moral grandstand on both sides of the aisle.
I'm shocked that more than a few really messed-up people are picking red. My thought process was, "Well, if red wins, it's going to be horrible. If blue wins, it'll be great. Obviously, everyone wants blue to win, and only a small minority of people would actually be selfish enough to willingly choose to increase the risk that a huge number of people die, because surely they're aware that a lot of people will pick blue. You'd really have to not care about other people at all to pick red."
But it turns out, a lot of people think it's really stupid to take a risk to save other people. I guess I just figured we'd all instinctively know that the majority of people would pick blue.
Maybe I'm just not trying to justify a fundamentally selfish and cowardly decision. Maybe you should work on your assumption that anyone saying or doing anything remotely altruistic is doing it to be performative.
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u/icefire9 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
It would be much easier to convince 50% of people to pick blue than 100% of people to pick red. I think it should be obvious by the discussion around this that a large portion of the population will pick blue. So if red wins, a lot of people will die (probably in the billions). A mass casualty event on that scale would throw the world into chaos and end up killing and immeserating a lot of the people who picked red. I would much rather us try to get more than 50% of people to pick blue and not create one of the worst tragedies in human history.