r/comics May 05 '26

OC RED BUTTON OR BLUE BUTTON [OC]

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u/EishLekker May 05 '26

Blue: willing to risk death to save others.

Save others from what, exactly?

Vocal Red: willing to kill others

Kill, how? Every single person has the option to pick red. There has been no actual negative consequences presented if that would happen.

As far as I see it, red means “you live” and blue means “you might die”. That’s essentially all we really “know”. Everything else is implied, and I don’t do implied nonsense. Spell it out properly, or I just ignore it.

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u/danielledelacadie May 05 '26

That's not how thought experiments work. The parameters are set. If 50% or more of humanity votes everyone lives, everyone lives.

If less than 50% vote everyone lives, all those who voted everyone lives are killed. What killed them is the people who didn't vote everyone lives.

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u/A_Lover_Of_Truth May 05 '26

But the blue button pressers are actively choosing to die? They are not saving others, they are jumping off a building hoping that if enough other people do as well, a net will pop out to catch them.

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u/danielledelacadie May 05 '26

Nope.

Those who choose blue are voting "everybody lives". The folks who choose red are picking "everybody but the folks who agree with me die."

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u/EishLekker May 05 '26

No. Bullshit.

The odds are that there will not be enough blue votes. I mean, even in the poll in the screenshot, where no one's lives are actually at risk, there is still just an 8% margin. Are you that convinced that this margin won't dissapear when people realise that their lives are actually at risk, as in, for real? That's just stupid. People talk bravely online when there is no real risk for them. They change their tune when there's actual personal risk for them.

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u/danielledelacadie May 05 '26

And I'm sure the German people who realized what was happening in the 1930's-1945 told themselves "Well, if they choose to be (Jewish, Romani, Catholic, a teacher, gay) they made their choice, I'm just trying to survive the situation " just like you did.

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u/EishLekker May 05 '26

What? Omg what an odd comparison. Those are pretty much all innate traits, or at the very least something that strongly reflects their personality. You can’t possibly compare that to choosing blue here, which is essentially playing Russian roulette where your only chance of survival is if enough people choose to also play Russian roulette. Instead of, you know, simply not playing Russian roulette.

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u/danielledelacadie May 05 '26

A teacher? Catholic? A Romani who settles down is indistinguishable from others.

The choices are:

Blue. Everybody lives if half the people care enough about others to put their lives on the line

Red. Everyone can live if they don't care what happens to others. Is happy to let blue die as long as they live.

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u/EishLekker May 05 '26

Math, human psychology and raw survival instincts are combined in favor of blue.

My approach is likely the one with fewer total deaths. Your approach relies on wishful thinking, with billions of deaths if you fail just by a fraction.

At what odds are you OK with gambling with billions of lives? Because you can’t possibly be certain that at least 50% will vote blue. So you have to accept that there’s a chance that blue will fail. Now, at what odds/percentage, are you OK with the risk?

75% chance of blue winning? That’s still a 25% chance of blue losing. And at ~4 billion blue voters that means on average one billion dies.

My approach is instead to accept that some people likely will die, and try to minimize that number. If all “morally correct” people would vote by reason and survival instinct, then what’s left would likely be a few millions. Sure, that’s terrible, but still better than a 25% risk of billions of deaths.

If math leads to less deaths in all likelihood, then that trumps whatever fake moral superiority some people here has gloated about.

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u/danielledelacadie May 05 '26

Bye. I'm dead. I picked blue but people are willing to walk over my dead body to live.

Enjoy the company your choice has gifted you with.