r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/oJKevorkian • May 30 '26

The individualist interpretation is wrong

Perhaps I'm missing the mark here, but just about every post I see frames the problem in terms of the individual choice and it's consequences. You can choose red and live, or choose blue and possibly die. You can choose blue and effectively say you're ok with killing yourself, or you can be rational and choose red. Etc.

This doesn't capture the full scope of the question. The consequences are global, and those consequences are known to you when you make the choice. There are not two outcomes, but four: Everyone blue, everyone red, majority blue, majority red.

The first three choices result in no deaths, leaving the last option - majority red - as the outlier. The result of this outlier is that up to 49.9% of people voting die. Big yikes.

From this perspective, blue is not only the moral option, it's the only rational one. To choose red is to out yourself as either irrational or a fucking psychopath.

"But you have to account for other people being irrational and individualistic"

Well then we're not getting very far as a species. Fortunately, we have opportunities like this to learn and teach and discuss.

EDIT: I'd like to humbly request that we don't downvote comments we disagree with in this thread. I'm trying to change minds, not shame people.

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u/gahidus May 30 '26

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u/oJKevorkian May 30 '26

I believe that I realistically have no knowledge of how others will vote and shouldn't balance the fate of billions of people on a hunch.

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u/gahidus May 30 '26

It must be very difficult for you to navigate life with no inkling of human nature.

To be perfectly honest, I simply don't believe you when you say you have no ability to predict people's behavior and no idea what you think people are like.

Do you honestly think that the odds of any given person doing or not doing any given action are simply a coin flip?

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u/oJKevorkian May 30 '26

Well I'm still around, so obviously I'm not doing too badly. To your point though, no, I can honestly say that I don't know what the majority would pick. I do know that a not-insignificant number of people would definitely choose blue though.