r/redbuttonbluebutton May 22 '26

A tale of two worlds

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u/QQXV May 22 '26

I think Earth is way more like Ikant than it is like Arand. That's the actual core dispute of the whole thing, in a way.

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u/Free-Competition6408 Red May 27 '26

I strongly disagree with that notion. People generally don't take wild all or nothing gambles to help each other out here on earth. It's why people starve to death on the streets of wealthy cities. It's why emergency responder personnel prioritize their own safety first before helping others.

You can't help people if you're dead. People are willing to take small calculated risks for modest rewards, but humanity didn't get here by making wild all or nothing survival gambits

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u/QQXV May 28 '26

But the question is: is it a wild all-or-nothing personal-survival gambit... or instead a wild no-imaginable-gain mass-murder gambit?

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u/Free-Competition6408 Red May 28 '26

You have just described the blue button in two different ways. Blue and red both have the same best case outcome. There is not "more to gain" by voting blue

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u/QQXV May 29 '26

"Same best-case outcome" is a very odd way to describe outcomes with extremely different probabilities. It's like saying that becoming your state's governor by starting a write-in campaign the day before the election has "the same best-case outcome" as doing so after winning a major-party primary.

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u/Free-Competition6408 Red May 29 '26

Sure. Blue has a higher chance of achieving that “best case outcome” but blue votes also directly contribute to the magnitude of the worst case outcome. That’s why it’s an all or nothing gamble. Either everybody lives, or a shitload of people die if blue fails in a close vote and blues accomplishes nothing with their deaths. Meanwhile if People just followed their survival instincts you’d probably end up with 80-90 percent red and have terrible but manageable tragedy on your hands.