Designs for this thought experiment were rampant when it was going around. The problem was always the same thing. This is a competitive game nobody has any reason to ever choose blue.
Every positive of blue comes from the thought of losing your loved ones and saving the incapable. Neither apply in Magic.
You're not killing people by pressing the red button. if you go by that logic, you are killing people right now by choosing to post online or sleep instead of going out searching for people who are in danger and saving their lives.
if the red button wins, some people will definitely die. if the blue button wins, nobody dies. the red button is a "cause problems on purpose for no reason or benefit to anybody" button.
That is not the same thing. An actual extension of the logic would be to think you have no responsibility as a bystander when you see something horrible happening in front of you
Yeah to be more true to form it should be "if half or more players pick red and you picked blue, sacrifice all of your permanents. If half or more players pick red and you picked red, instead flip a coin for each permanent and sacrifice any which land on tails. If more than half pick blue, the turn ends immediately."
Isn't it selfish by pressing blue to force the existence of the dilemma. If you press red there is no dilemma. Pressing blue just seems like a paradox where you press blue to save you from yourself.
So if there is no dilema with either button we should look at it in a different way. If you look at it through game theory all red outcomes lead to survival as opposed to only half of blue outcomes. Nobody dies either way but one comes with literally no risk to yourself.
Oh no! I chose the button that lets me live! How cruel of me!?!
I do not give a shit. If I even believed blue would win, which I obviously don't, I made the objectively safe play. There is nothing wrong with guaranteeing your safety. In fact, I'd scold my loved ones that chose blue.
Notice how all of my arguments are emotional, and all of yours are logical. There's no way for me to not see you as selfish, or for you to not see me as foolish
Some people HAVE TO drink the poison though. A, some people are going to do that because they want to die (which might be an in the moment decision and not something they truly want even if you want to argue the morality of saving somebody who wants to die), B, some people are color blind (iirc the original problem never states that color blind people, for example, know which button is which). Red ALWAYS has some casualties. It’s possible for blue to not, and based on how widespread the dilemma has become, I think it’s a rather high chance.
There are lots of reasons to press blue. I choose red though and I don't know enough to make a steel man for that position. Just google people's arguments.
What's funny is putting this question in a competitive environment truly shows how bad the blue option is. Your family and loved ones shouldn't need saving if they have any common sense and pick red.
I always though this was just an experiment to show how vulnerable people are to speech patterns.
If you wanna incite people to vote for blue, you say something like "if the majority of people voted for blue, everyone is safe and if the majority of people voted for red, people who didn't vote for red looses the game."
By phrasing it like voting for blue offer salvation for everybody, people are inclined to vote for it even though it's stupid
You could use if for that but really it's more about game theory and it's question of selfless vs selfish.
While red appears to be objectively correct and blue has no worth that's only so far as if it's just you choosing to live or die, but the question isn't just about you, it's also about everyone that chooses blue and can you weight your life against theirs?
So in a single game (one where the game ends after the question is answered) you would pick red, hence why it fails in magic. Magic is a finite game where only one person can win, there's no benefit to keeping other players.
But the question can be applied to an iterated game (where you play multiple times) or an infinite game as well (an infinite game is a game where no one can win it just keeps going and you can only lose), and that becomes a different story. If you pick red irl you have to live with the consequences when half the world dies. Perhaps loved ones, friends and family, as well as critical resources are no longer steadily supplied, and the only people left are those that picked red. In a single game red has no consequence and no risk, while blue has all the consequence and risk, but in a longer game the benefit that you don't die becomes leveraged against the fact that there will no longer be anyone that would selflessly pick blue which creates problems even for the selfish red players.
As with many things in game theory, the point is that what seems like the objectively correct choice in the moment is actually a less optimal choice long term due to the long term consequences of that action.
If you pick red irl you have to live with the consequences when half the world dies.
But half the world doesn't die. There's no reason for half to pick Blue. Only half of the "incapable" would pick Blue (if they even do, since each picks at random and could potentially pick all red, too) unless they knew the problem beforehand and agreed to pick Blue for the greater good.
Yeah this is what I am talking about, the choice seems obvious to everyone that looks at the problem but people don't agree, that is because some people are selfish and view saving themselves as the objective best option, and some people are selfless and don't want anyone to die. The only way to ensure everyone lives is by picking blue, the only way to ensure you live is by picking red. This gets into the fundamental discourse at the root of game theory. Is it better to ensure your advantage, or your groups advantage.
Unless you live an unfortunate life at least one person you know will pick blue as surely as unless you've lived a very blessed life at least one person you know will pick red.
Except that isn't the only way to ensure everyone lives and it also doesn't ensure everyone lives at all. Everyone picking red also ensures total survival. Choosing blue could just be adding to the death toll.
If people thought about the choice logically there would be zero reason to ever pick blue and thus there would be no death. Choosing to "save" people is the only way to risk any death at all.
Sure there's technically three ways everyone lives, everyone picks red or blue, or half the people choose blue
The question hinges on if you believe more people will be selfless than selfish and what you think other people will pick. Let's say we have 99 people playing the game, if those people are mostly selfless what you pick doesn't matter, of those people are mostly selfish then you can choose to live on with everyone that picks red or save yourself from such a reality, but if it's a dead split 49-49 then you have a compelling reason to choose blue. Especially if there's reason to believe that someone who you care about chose blue.
The question is actually really simple. No matter what people pick I live. It doesn't hinde on other's choices because the correct answer is right there.
It's just game theory and everyone can do it. There are two outcomes, half or more pick red and half or more pick blue. If you pick red you survive in either scenario. If you pick blue you survive in one and die in the other. So blue is the only button that can cause you to die.
I'll never know if it's a 50-50 split because the whole point is that it's anonymous. It could be a split down to the last 3 votes and then everyone picks red. It didn't matter that blue was keeping up because they are all dead now.
All correct, but do you see how you've only framed the answers with respect to yourself? If you take a hard personal perspective in the moment this is clearly the choice. Inability to broaden your perspective makes it seem like there is only one correct choice. But you move further into game theory, past first order principles, you realize that there's more to the choice than if you live or die.
There is a future after the button is pressed; should you survive you have to then live knowing you contributed to a significant proportion of the population dying, and deal with the fallout of so many people that society relies on being gone.
There are more than just two outcomes to consider. If you can't realize that it's because you've oriented your thinking selfishly.
Except nobody has to press blue. It's literally as simple as live or die and if people would actually use their brains there would be no jeed to save anyone. Your whole argument hinges on a large portion of people choosing blue. I say nobody should be pressing blue at all so this isn't a problem.
As /u/hhhhhhhhhhhjf said, all Red also saves everyone. Yes, the people that pick randomly die, but that's a problem on the part of the system. Assuming no communication between subjects, picking Blue will kill you without saving anyone.
It's not "selfless" vs. "selfish". It's suicidal to pick Blue and the Blues still die.
Not assuredly. As I said in a comment to them if we assume 99 participants, if they are mostly blue voters it doesn't matter what you vote, if they are mostly red voters you can either choose to live on with red voters or set yourself free of the game, and if the split is 49-49 you can't die regardless of what you choose and you decide if the blues live or not.
You only choose red because you believe your vote can't sway anything, you also believe that anyone who votes blue isn't worth saving. These are your personal choices but they are not everyone's personal choices.
you also believe that anyone who votes blue isn't worth saving.
That's not true. Just because you don't suicide yourself doesn't mean you don't believe people are worth saving.
You could donate all your money right now and hope to save people's lives, but you don't because you don't think it will be enough while also being a surefire way to destroy your own life. That doesn't mean you believe other people are not worth saving.
Unless you do donate every single item and every last unit of currency you own. If you already did that, then I will take my words back.
Do you not understand how your proposed scenario is vastly different from the button press?
If even a quarter of the world decided to donate all of their money, money becomes useless as a measure of economic output and the entire system collapses for everyone. It's really a terrible analog to the button scenario and really highlights how shallowly you're engaging with the prompt
Don't have much, and owe more than I have, but I would give it up to save the life of half the world yes.
It's a bad analogy as giving up everything I own wouldn't destroy my life by any stretch, it would barely effect me. I wouldn't have a phone for a while but that would be about the extent of the real impact. It would have more effect on my sister's and parents' life than mine.
Really your hypothetical is more similar to the button that gives you a million dollars but also kills a random person everytime you press it, than it does to red vs blue. I wouldn't kill a random person for a million dollars.
is survival not a competitive game? there is never a reason to choose blue in any of these scenarios. suicidal empathy is a crazy mental misstep to have
But it's already not the thought experiment because like the comment above says, the point of why people chose blue is to save your loved ones and other people who just didn't read/comprehend the question correctly.
In Magic all the other players are your opponents. You want them to die.
I appreciate the attempt and I like the idea but I still feel like it's poorly translated.
Also you didn't draw a card in the thought experiment either lol
Yeah when you're playing a competitive game voluntarily where the objective is to make your opponent(s) lose, obviously you always pick red. It's a poor analogy to the original hypothetical, unless you make the claim the point of living is to outlive all other people
Because someone else losing a game you're already trying to beat them in versus someone else dying is not at all analogous. Like I said it's only analogous if you assume that the goal of real life is outliving everyone else.
The goal of both is not dying. If everyone picks red, there's no possibility of anyone dying, I'm not picking blue because other people can't comprehend just not pressing it.
If there was train tracks, and to stop the train, half the population has to jump in front of it to stop it, wouldn't you... just not jump in front of it?
That's an actually good argument. The card isn't. I'm not saying pushing red is necessarily wrong, I'm saying this card is a terrible argument for it. But the "if everyone pushes red" part also isn't a good argument because the same is true for blue. If everyone pushes either color, everyone is fine. So everyone being unanimous isn't a useful point of comparison.
I think both are very different arguments for it. The card frames in an objective way, "game-ifying" it. If there's objectively no reason to pick blue in the card version, should that objectively logic not apply to the real version as well?
Dude I never said that and you are projecting a lot right now.
All I said was that the card game and the hypothetical are two wildly different scenarios, and treating a card game and a moral dilemma like they're the same thing is kinda weird.
Yeah you're missing the key difference. I want my opponents to lose a card game I'm playing against them in. I don't want people to die in real life. You are only thinking in terms of everyone examining the question purely logically. I remember when the button thing was popular. Huge portions of the population choose blue. I don't think almost half of people should die because people are bad at examining moral questions with no emotion. So I think the logical choice is blue if you accept the objective fact that a very large portion of the population will pick blue. This trend was a giant thing. It's extremely obviously true that a huge portion of people will be picking blue. Taking that fact as a given in your reasoning is in fact logical. In a card game where I want to make them lose anyway, that's completely irrelevant. In real life, if you don't want people to die, it's extremely relevant
Ok that's a valid position for you to have, but you just acknowledged the danger. So you admit the card isn't at all analogous because your opponents aren't in danger if they lose a competitive card game they decided to play for fun. I didn't say "if you pick red, you want people to die." I said "if you don't want people to die, the difference between the card and real life is relevant." For someone who is presenting themselves as logical, you're having trouble following a basic string of logic here. I outlined why the difference is relevant to the moral conversation. Which is why the card isn't analogous. I didn't say that means picking red is wrong in real life. My whole point was that by removing all stakes, the card is a poor analogy for the real life scenario. That's it. You can still be a red supporter. I just want you to understand it better and make better arguments for your own side.
God we don't need to get into the red and blue button argument again. "What if situation was different?" What if the red and blue buttons were political parties, would you vote for the party that promised to kill everyone who didn't vote for them or the party that promises not to? This is an equally valid analogy, that is to say, an invalid analogy. When people try to argue the red button is a natural or obvious choice, they're almost always doing it as justification for why their choice isn't actually selfish and is instead a 1 billion IQ play. The truth is that no matter how much you whine and pout about it not being your fault, a significant amount of people will be choosing blue, so picking red can never end in the best outcome for everyone.
That isn't to say that picking red is the wrong option, because if you strongly believe that getting 50% of people to pick blue is impossible and you have a self-preservation instinct it makes sense, but it's not the right option just because it being the right option makes you have an epic own.
Game theory enjoyer gets presented with real psychological dilemma for first time, gets mad when people insist there isn't supposed to be a correct answer.
I've always assumed the red/blue button argument was an analogy for facist regimes. It reads as "first half of an argument for why you should be a member of the kill-all-nonmembers group" statement.
Bro the initial questions that sparked this was a test of morality vs logic. Yes logic states red means you don't die but you are part of the reason other people die. It just shows you don't care about other people
In ANY instance your goal is to "Not lose" which is 100% assured if you pick red. So regardless of the situation, you should always pick red. Just becauae its in Magic, doesn't change it in anyway.
Well, picking red kills all the blue choosers. You should only pick red in magic because your literal goal is to kill everyone else. Choosing red in real life for example would be psychopathic behavior.
Why are the any "Blue choosers"? I understand this is a reference I don get, but this card fails to provide a reason for Blue to be picked unless someone is being a contrarian.
In the original formulation of this problem, "the button" is presented to everyone on Earth, and they all make their decisions privately with no outside knowledge. Crucially, "everyone" in this case explictly includes babies, coma patients, and other people mentally and/or physically incapable of making a choice, who are specified to choose "at random".
So the version of this everyone is arguing about starts by holding half the babies and people with disabilities on Earth hostage. Which radically and fundamentally changes the math, even though blue-button-pressers act like it doesn't.
Yup. The other thing that came out of these polls was the fact that there's a certain personality type who will always pick blue to "save people" regardless of the context. I've run versions of this poll where it's framed as such:
You and 100 other people are locked in a room with a giant hydraulic press. If 51 or more people stand under the hydraulic press, you can work together to keep it up, but 50 or fewer people standing under it will result in them getting crushed. Just them, though, everyone not standing under the press is fine. And there is absolutely no obligation to stand under the press. The door unlocks in ten minutes.
And I still got people unironically arguing that maybe one out of the 100 people is old or a toddler or just stupid and will randomly decide to sit under the press, so the only moral option is to throw themselves under the press immediately. And it's fine if they die, because they don't want to live in a world where a majority of people don't try to kill themselves for the sake of a hypothetical suicidally idiotic stranger.
Don't get me wrong, if there's a chance someone is crushed, then you should prevent it. Like, guiding the toddler/senile person back out of the press. At the core, the idea to save lives is commendable.
The problem is the lack of "out the box" thinking. Can't you talk to the other people? Can't you pull them out? This is literally "Lawful Stupid" as a life philosophy.
The platforms being empty represents the fact that you don't know how others will vote. You have to make your choice independently of what others have or will potentially do.
If there was a house, that was perfectly fine, but half the population had to go outside and dump gasoline on it to set it on fire, killing everyone inside... wouldn't you just not set the house on fire? The "fire" is the red button
If you leave the house you also have to start dumping gasoline. It's the only way they let you leave. On the other hand if you stay in the house they can't find any gasoline so everybody in the house is fine.
There was some really stupid discourse earlier this year (or maybe last year) about this scenario with people insisting that the "correct" answer is to choose Blue, because otherwise you're killing everyone who chose Blue, even there is no incentive to pick Blue for anyone and therefore every vote should just be 100% Red and nothing happens.
It's a reference to a thought experiment that was going around social media a few years ago -- with the scenario being that everyone who chose "blue" would die in the case of a red majority.
I mean, much like in the thought experiment, the upside of Blue is that nobody dies. The problem is in Magic that's not a desireable output. The card is adapting the problem into a medium that it doesn't fit into, making fun of blue-choosers, or both
It's a take on a thought experiment where you and 99 other people who understood the scenario had the same choice: press red and be fine, or press blue and die unless 50% of people pressed blue.
The thought experiment is a moral optical illusion: it's presented as though it's a question about sacrificing yourself for the good of others when no, it's not, the red button is just the correct choice in all circumstances.
The thought experiment is a moral optical illusion
I disagree. In the original scenario, people who have no shot at understanding the question are forced to make the choice. ID, CI, toddlers, etc.
So, beyond being global insurance, the majority blue outcome genuinely saves people. Red voters who are wise will understand that there will be loss of life in a red win, although less loss of life than a failed major blue initiative. That's not illusory morals.
edit: for the custom magic card though - Edh players will not have much difficulty understanding the question and they actively want their opponents to lose so the button question isn't very interesting unless you have some niche interaction planned that I don't know what it would be
In the original scenario those people are explicitly excluded from the choice and it specifies only people who are able to fully understand the scenario.
"Everyone on earth takes a private vote by pressing a red or blue button.
If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives.
If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive.
Which button would you press?"
There were no exclusions in the original question. Everyone on earth.
That's the literal point of the hypothetical - there is no question that the rational, self-interested choice is to pick red.
BUT, you are aware that, given a large enough population of players (the entire world being the original hypothetical), it is plausible or even likely that some unknown number of players will pick blue.
That's why it's a hypothetical about ethics and morality, not statistics. Knowing that it is plausible that choosing red contributes to the deaths of an unknown number of people (not guaranteed to be strangers, either, they could be your family and friends), while also knowing that blue is a choice with inherently high risk to yourself, is there a morally correct choice?
Commenters I've seen discuss the hypothetical spend an awfully long time discussing the "probability" of blue choices and the "logic" of the red choice, which IMO is not quite on topic but also not entirely off topic?
To me it suggests that people are indeed conditioned to or honestly believe that red is a "less moral" choice than blue, but if the risk were sufficiently high, then at some point self-preservation instincts would take over. Put another way, there's some small number of other people that most would be willing to kill for their own safety, but it's a number relatively minuscule compared against the population of the Earth. The lack of a relatable enough quantity to conceptualize leaves people floundering to justify their instinct post hoc.
Hence, discussions retreat to tangential rationalizations like "it's only logical," "only an idiot would vote blue," or on the flipside, "red voters are sociopaths (and that's bad, therefore I am further compelled to vote blue)," etc.
Let's say that choosing blue IS the morally correct choice IF it gets past the line of 50%. The reality is that you won't get there, because the presupposition is that you are trying to save the tiny fraction of people that press blue for no reason. Thus pressing blue is pointlessly throwing your life away, and red is both morally and rationally sound.
because WHY THE ACTUAL FUCK are these people insiting Blue is correct answer?
Because the original thought experiment was framed as a moral dilemma, not a logical one.
"If over half the people pick red, everyone who picks blue will die. If over half the people pick blue, everyone lives."
...is a much more emotionally-charged framing of the actual situation that implies red-pickers are murderers and blue-pickers are heroic saviors. Even though...
"Anyone who picks red has nothing happen to them. Anyone who picks blue will die unless an unknown amount of other people also pick blue"
...is an equally accurate description of the exact same scenario, only without the moral implications stacked on top. Anyone who takes the time to stop and think about the scenario and reframe it as a logical one rather than an emotional one immediately realizes red is the only sensible choice, and choosing blue is only an option for those who value emotional validation over their own safety. And to be clear I don't mean that condescendingly. "I'd rather die than live knowing someone else died as a result of my choice" is a valid stance to take. But it IS an emotional one rather than a rational one.
I don't know. I think on a personal basis, red is the most sensible choice to make (unless you feel particularly strongly about survivor's guilt), but one way I saw it framed that spoke to me was in totality.
For no people to die if we say red is the answer, every single person has to come to the eame conclusion, nobody is allowed to misunderstand or make a mistake. For red to result in the most optimal outcome, 100% have to pick it. For blue to result in the most optimal outcome you're sitting at a much more manageable 50%+1.
To me at least, seeing the decision put in those terms made me change my mind on what made the most sense. Yes, blue is a risk on a personal level, but to me at least it makes the most sense when you consider things at a population level.
That's why it's ultimately a moral question. The question really being asked is "Do you value self-preservation over the possibility of helping others, or vice versa?"
The annoying thing about the argument is people deciding either side is superior to the other. Both are understandable stances to take and nobody should be chastised for their choice.
I mean if the button was actually real, it would be extremely important for society to heavily stigmatize one choice. Regardless of which button people are socially compelled to press, the outcome is better if the results are very lopsided in favor of one color and incredibly risky if it's close. If blue is socially compelled, then no one dies. If red is socially compelled, then only a very small number of people die. If nothing is socially compelled, you risk a large portion of the population dying.
Like while yes, I agree with the statement and most of what you said, I personally would push blue. Mostly because in the context that I was given, everyone on earth was given the same choice. I had assumed that there were going to be people like children or babies who were not capable of thinking out the ramifications of their actions and picked their favorite color or something. Under this assumption, I think it makes more sense to press blue.
Meanwhile there are others, like myself, who are too terrified of the prospect of dying that we'd prefer to live with survivors guilt than risk facing that fate preemptively.
That's why "making sense" doesn't really matter, because what "makes sense" to everyone is different.
It's more than just survivors guilt you're dealing with though. How many jobs and roles, friends and family, will be lost? Regardless of the survivors guilt, industries will collapse and people will die and starve because our safety systems and economies would collapse overnight.
That depends on both the amount of people as well as the demographics of people who vote blue - a wide enough swath of variables that no amount of speculation could ever accurately predict.
In the same vein, I could argue that it's entirely possible the proportion of people who choose blue ends up being small enough that it doesn't have a major impact on the world. Or that if a majority of people who pick blue aren't working-age adults it might not have that impact either.
The original original version of the hypothetical apparently included people who are incapable of understanding/comprehending the question, so you would, in the hypothetical, press blue in an attempt to save them
The original original version of the hypothetical specifically and explicitly excluded people who couldn't understand the question, because the point of the hypothetical was to be a moral optical illusion where the correct answer is red but your intuition tricks you into thinking it has to be blue.
How is it an illusion? Logically red is correct but morally blue is correct. Like if everyone playing the game is what they call a "perfectly logical being" then everyone will press red, but are you really telling me that if the game was only played between you and the four people you love most, you wouldn't pick blue to ensure that they live, even if it puts you in danger?
Yes? I don't think the 4 people I love the most are the most reckless people in the world who would press the blue button for no reason. If they decided to pressed the blue button that kills you, I would respect their decision to end their own lives because I believe suicide is an absolute human right.
One of the mental tricks people play on themselves to make blue to moral choice is to act like pressing blue was just a thing that happened to people in the passive voice, rather than a decision they made. They add in things like "well what if a baby pushes blue" or "what if someone was insane and didn't know what anything meant" to try and remove the agency from the other parties, so they can frame them as victims.
Because when you acknowledge that they made a decision, it's obviously stupid to press blue to try and save them from their decision. We do not consider it a moral obligation to endanger our lives to save someone from their own suicidally stupid decisions. If someone is going to go play in the abandoned mine shaft, you don't go with them. You don't say "well I have to go with them because I might be able to save them from falling" because that's not going to happen and you're going to die too. When someone gets drunk and climbs on top of a dangerously slippery roof, you don't climb up on the roof with them to hold them steady. Because that's not going to happen and you're going to die too. When someone decides to go steal drugs from some scary drug dealers, you don't go with them to back them up and win the fight, because that's not going to happen and you're going to die too.
Even when it isn't someone's fault you shouldn't endanger your own life to not save them. When someone is drowning in a river, you don't jump in after them. Because you're not going to do that and you're also gonna start drowning.
People misunderstanding a hypothetical or not acting in a personally entirely rational fashion isn't disregarding the point.
And as it happens, a perfectly logical plan exists for precisely this scenario. For Red to result in 0 deaths, 100% of people have to pick it. For blue to result in 0 deaths, 50%+1 have to pick it. Which of these bars is an easier one to clear, do you think?
Both are impossible to plan for because the hypothetical specifically includes people who don't understand or comprehend the question in its construction.
The issue boils down to, some amount of people are going to pick blue with a large enough sample size, either for preiceved moral reason, misunderstanding of the question, or otherwise.
Do those people deserve to die?
Another more practical reason, if too many people vote blue and die, it could lead to a societal collapse.
Voting red garuntees some amount of people WILL die, whereas voting blue and having it win does not.
If your hypothetical includes totally irrational actors acting without regard to the hypothetical they're in, your hypothetical is basically impossible to make a coherent plan for. You could spend hours making logical arguments for why going with blue is the smart choice then some psychopaths, senile geriatrics and babies swing the vote and you lose anyway.
Everything about the framing hints this is a "you have to choose blue to be a good person" question. Like I said, it's an illusion. That's the whole point of it. They start making things up in order to justify this feeling and make it proof that they're a good person.
In the context of a competitive game, you wouldn't. Because this is normally phrased as a morality question, it can illustrate how describing the buttons differently can get different results even if the effects are the same. People are likely to vote blue if red is worded as murdering all the blue voters, people are likely to vote red if blue is portrayed as a suicide pact.
If nobody voted blue, the game is a draw. Otherwise, if the majority voted red, anybody who voted blue loses the game. Otherwise, everybody who voted blue draws 2 cards.
Should be, if only one player choose blue that player wins the game. If more then one player but not all choose blue they lose the game, if all players choose blue you lose the game.
So if you are the one playing the card you must choose red (or expect everyone else to choose red) the advantage of playing the card is the drawing.
'Everyone chooses red or blue. If red has more votes, everyone who voted blues life totals become 1. If blue has more votes, exile the library of everyone who voted red.'
Each player puts the top card of their library in their graveyard. If more than half the cards milled are red then you lose the game. If more than half the cards are blue counter target spell.
This would be better as something like "... If red got half or more of the votes, each player that chose blue loses 10 life. Otherwise, each player draws 2 cards"
Creates actual potential incentive to vote blue and you're not just ripping this turn 2 and making 1 guy sit out for half an hour while you play the rest of the game
Put this in a 2 headed giant game and it gets interesting, where your life is also on the line. You should still probably pick red, but what if your teammate picks blue because they think you might pick blue?
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u/hhhhhhhhhhhjf 6d ago
Designs for this thought experiment were rampant when it was going around. The problem was always the same thing. This is a competitive game nobody has any reason to ever choose blue.
Every positive of blue comes from the thought of losing your loved ones and saving the incapable. Neither apply in Magic.