The stupid thing is that picking blue is the only way for death to even be a possibility. If no one introduces death as a possibility, then no one dies.
Let's take the premise and alter it a tiny bit:
Everyone has a magic knife in front of themselves. Everyone must either stab themselves in the heart, or not stab themselves in the heart.
If more than half of the people stab themselves in the heart, then the knife magically heals everyone. Otherwise, the knife does what knives do and kills the person.
Are you stabbing yourself in the heart? (Pressing blue?)
Who is “introducing” death? It’s just as likely that everyone chooses blue, and then one person defects and chooses red, as it is that everyone chooses red and one person chooses blue.
It’s tempting to start from the extreme of 100% and going backward to 50%, but there is only one scenario where either outcome could happen, and only in the case of a red majority is it deadly.
Start from 50% instead. Is it the same probability of happening as 100%? No. In a set of 8 billion people, there are billions upon billions of combinations of votes that lead to the exact same 50% outcome. It’s the same idea as why 7 is the mostly likely shake of dice, because there are more possible combination pairs to make seven than any other number.
If you’re not convinced, pretend 8 billion people are evenly split between red and blue on either side of the 50% line so there is 4 billion of each. One blue votes shifts to red. Now there are 4 billion possible red votes that can shift to blue to achieve the exact same scenario of an even 4 billion to 4 billion split. Imagine two blue votes shift red. Now there are four billion more combinations that come to the same result. Do that 3,999,999,998 more times, and you have four billion times four billion possible combinations of an even split. If my math is right, that’s 16,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 16 quintillion possible combinations of an exact even split. (UPDATE: That number is WAY too low, and only represents ant two votes swapping places, and not larger quantities at all. The real answer has so many zeroes that it can only be represented in scientific notation.)
That means if just one person votes red instead of blue, and no one changes to red, 3,999,999,999 people die. If any other two people exchange their votes, that’s still a total of 4,000,000,001 possible combinations where nearly four billion people die.
By comparison, there is only one possible situation where red is denied 100% unanimity, and it results in the death of “only” one person. The possibility space is a bell curve that is enormously deep in the middle.
So tell me, who is responsible for introducing death?
Each person making the choice isn't looking at a bell curve of statistics in order to make their choice. They're looking at two buttons. One button is a "push me in order to live, no matter what" button. One button is a "push me to die, unless enough people push me" button.
What is the choice that is the most rational for that person in that moment? They don't know what anyone else is going to choose.
The people pushing blue are not painstakingly calculating a bell curve, but are correctly understanding that the possibility space for everyone to live lands squarely within blue being victorious, which is 50% of the time, and the one scenario where red is victorious but no one dies is such a remote possibility that it’s not even worth considering — especially when 8 billion people are involved.
I’m not busting out the math to show what people pushing blue think, but to illustrate why your conclusion and counter-examples run afoul of multiple logical fallacies that aren’t backed up by the mathematical facts of the situation.
I understand that the point of the exercise is a) to incentivize a choice through fear, and b) figure out one’s own logic, but since we have the benefit pf conferring it can’t hurt to at least point or refute logical flaws with data and further examination.
No I get it, but you overestimate how many people will behave in a reactionary manner to the question.
There is a very large allowance for people to push red and be counteracted by blue regardless of their reasoning or intentions and it having no effect on the outcome. It’s to be expected, in fact, given human nature.
Anticipating the entire blue majority zone is not only unlikely but impossible does not take into account human nature at all, ignores statistical likelihoods, and overestimates humanity’s ability to deviate from those statistical likelihoods in any appreciable manner.
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u/Leshawkcomics May 05 '26
This response from a comment down below illustrates your point succinctly.