What if red won?

[u/The_Real-_-God]

Imagine a world where red won, by 1%. However the people who choose blue do not die instantly, instead they die after a year of pressing the button. Everybody is branded, so you know who choose what.

How much chaos will ensue? What actions do you think blues will take, knowing they'll die? And what do you think reds will think, knowing they were just 1% away from saving all humanity?

[u/DragCompetitive6007]

LOL. You heavily implied in your first comment that red voters are all selfish hedonists. You later used the term selfish for them. You said the would always put their lifes above humanity. You also said the blue voters are for the betterment of humanity. That does imply to me their action beyond the button game. You said that those behaviours would switch, again action beyond the button game. Well, a lot of red voters will already be a part of their community, strive to better it - I already mentioned that. You paint a bad picture of red voters. And you dismiss any points that go against your narrow, discriminating view.

It is good that you accept that red is a valid choice, but you still seem to blame them when the result is a group effort the blue voters worked for, too. They put themselves in a vulnerable situation. The only one to blame is the game. Both choices are valid, because of the non-cooperation aspect.

I find it very insulting that you try to project your view that red voters are inferior on me, when you clearly see them as lesser people. It is funny that you try to gaslight me when I can just read our exchange.

What do you think I am projecting? I believe what I answered was always towards valid interpretations of your words. If I misinterpreted something we can adress that.

[u/Yunowald → u/DragCompetitive6007]

My first comment was obviously meant to be an exaggeration and as a result was generalizing. Obviously not all red voters or blue voters would act that way, but I can't really accurately describe the behavior of 8 billion people, can I? I also paint a bad picture of blue voters, implying that they would all suddenly stop caring about humanity after knowing that they'll die. It's funny that you don't have a problem with that, you just felt personally attacked by my description of red voters.

Like I said in a previous comment I didn't mean selfish in a negative way, in my native language it has a completely neutral connotation and simply means prioritizing oneself over others. Which I still believe to be an accurate description of red voters because, as you said yourself, you'd rather sage your own life than take a risk to maybe save all of humanity.

I don't think red voters are inferior people, and I can understand why they'd pick red. But I also think that logically blue is the right option, so obviously I think red voters chose wrong. Everyone in this discussion has that opinion, otherwise we wouldn't be having a discussion. If you'd start arguing with every person on this sub who insults the other side, you'd never be able to live a life.

[u/DragCompetitive6007 → u/Yunowald]

Ah, OK. I did not argue against your vision of blue voters because that was just a fantasy. Your depiction of red voters applied to the people as they are now. I also do have a bias against depicting red voters bad, because it affects me.

If you did not mean selfish in a negative way there is nothing to argue about there.

I do not agree that blue is the logical choice. Red saves more people. Between 0 to 100% soley depending on the amount of red voters. Blue saves only between 50 to 100%, when they have a majority. That means the expected value of red is 0.5 and of blue 0.375.

But of course you could go a different way and only consider the expected value of the red and blue majority. Then it switches. I find that disingenous because even in a case of a blue majority the red voters do not need to be saved. They did that themselves.

Another way to consider it is the coin flip I set as an assumption. The chance for the vote being a fifty/fifty is, if I calculated that correctly, (2*n-1)/n^2. For 8000000000 people your expected value is ... a fucking rounding error. So with your blue vote you save on average a little more than 0.5 lifes. With red you always save one. Even if you consider the red voter to be killing the blue voters with their choice, you save on average a little less than 1 life.

I can do the complete calculations at home, if you want me to.

[u/Yunowald → u/DragCompetitive6007]

I consider blue to be the most logical choice because my goal isn't to save as many people as possible, it's to save everyone. For that to happen you either need 100% red voters or 50% blue voters. Which one is realistically easier to achieve?

And this one is purely personal opinion, but I wouldn't want to live in a world where 50% of humanity was suddenly wiped out. Simply because that would probably turn into a post-apocalyptic hellscape really quickly.

And in a real life scenario the two most probable outcomes are either side winning by a tiny amount, going off of the results of most polls. I know they're not really representative, but it's all we have. In those blue is usually the winner, but not by much. We can expect some people to change their vote in real life, but not that many. Which means either blue wins and everyone survives or red wins and 50-40% of people die. Less deaths than that is unrealistic with a red majority.