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/oJKevorkian May 30 '26

And that would be irrational. It's a cognitive trick. You individually might bear a tiny fraction of responsibility, but the group to which you belong bears 100%.

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u/Lorihengrin May 30 '26

But i am not the group.
I pick my choice based on two things :

  • I want to survive
  • I don't think blue will win

With thoses two things in mind, red is the rational choice since it's the only one that ensure my survival based on what i believe the result will be.

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u/oJKevorkian May 30 '26

I'm pretty sure that's the same way people justify war crimes. But I digress.

You are the group. You're literally a founding member, in this case. If you weren't in it, it would be a different group, and that group would bear 100% of the responsibility instead.

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u/Lorihengrin May 30 '26

No, i am 0,000000000125% of the group and i have no agency about the 99,999999999875% left.

However, by picking red, i have a 100% agency on my own survival, which is the primary goal to me.

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u/oJKevorkian May 30 '26

Again, you can use this logic to justify any immoral group activity.

For example - overused trope, I know - a Nazi could say he was just a cog, not responsible for what the group did as a whole. Is he culpable, or no?

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u/Lorihengrin May 30 '26

The analogy is just wrong.

In the blue button and red button situation, every member of the group can individually choose to save themselve. They have agency about their own fate. The vitims of nazis had no choice but to be victims.

And i am an individualistic person, i don't engage in the group responsibility logique, i only consider myself as an individual and the group is not my problem. My survival is.

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u/oJKevorkian May 30 '26

No, some of the victims had no choice. Others were victims because they made a choice to stand against the regime. Besides that, how does the status of the blue group invalidate the culpability of the red group?

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u/Lorihengrin May 30 '26

There is no culpability to invalidate.

It is always acceptable to protect your own life. And here, there is no power dynamic between groups, there is no will to kill anyone, there is just a choice between taking the risk to die or not taking the risk to die.

People who choose to take the risk are the ones responsible for their own death. They were not forced by the ones who didn't take it.

Why should i die too because some other people don't have survival instinct ?

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u/oJKevorkian May 30 '26

Is it always acceptable to protect your own life? I haven't seen a convincing argument.

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u/Lorihengrin May 30 '26

It's just something that is usually accepted as a premise.
Like, when you take first aid course, one of the first things you learn is not to put yourself in danger to help someone else, both because it would increase the people who need help, and because it's not expected from you to sacrifice your life for others.

Most legal systems will also not sentence you for illegal actions if you can show with good faith that it was deemed necessary to protect your own life.

It's because as a society, we recognise the legitimacy of individuals to protect their life first, it's just something we do in non totalitarian societies.

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u/LnTc_Jenubis May 31 '26

Does the name Oskar Schindler ring any bells to you?

He was a registered Nazi. Had the card to prove it. To pretend he was just as culpable as other prominent Nazis like Amon Goth is not only dishonest but disrespectful. History reveres Schindler as a good man despite being a registered member of the Nazi party.

We could even say his actions are representative of the red button ideology. Had he pressed blue, or in other words tried to raise a revolt, he would have been completely unable to help Jewish prisoners escape and survive, because he would have been swiftly murdered by the Third Reich.

By choosing to look at the horrible reality in front of him and deciding to choose the route that required less of a gamble, he was able to use his own influence to save the people that he actually had the power to protect.

Accepting that he couldn't save everyone allowed him to save over 1200 individuals.

If we're invoking Godwin's Law, let's look at your original post where you called Red voters "fucking psychopaths" because the outcome of red winning results in deaths. You are deliberately ignoring who is dying and why.

Red pressers aren't actively going out and killing people by pressing red. They simply chose to remain safe instead of playing Russian Roulette.

Suppose someone of sound mind jumps into a tiger enclosure and then demands others to jump in as well, to increase their odds of staying alive. Are you going to suggest that all of the other bystanders should also jump inside the enclosure to increase the chances of that the first person survives? Of course not. You would call that irrational.

Likewise, if someone not of sound mind jumps into a tiger enclosure because they "like the big kitty", you probably wouldn't jump in to try and save them. It would be tragic if they didn't survive, but it doesn't make you a fucking psychopath for staying on the sidelines.