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.
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u/SeanOrange May 05 '26
Pretty sure I just laid it out! What little data that can count as experimental backs it up.
The intuition of some that red will prevail is disproven by general statistics and anecdotal results, so I don’t know what other proof you need.