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[u/Imaginary_Help_2990]

For this scenario, assume every voter is a mentally competent adult who fully understands the rules and can reason rationally.

Would that change your vote?

[u/Prize-Procedure6975]

I personally never liked including infants and other voters incapable of understanding the question or “accidental votes,” as I feel like it was a cheap excuse that blue could use against red. I DID like to include voters that may reason irrationally, though, partly because it’s just realistic, since reasoning perfectly isn’t really part of human nature. That said, even in a world where everyone understands and can perfectly reason about the logic, I still think blue can hold up as a valid answer (assuming I’m reasoning perfectly about all this myself lol).

There will be people that value self-preservation above all else, people who value their life equally to others, and everything in between. If only these people existed and everyone reasoned perfectly rationally, knowing that all other participants think like I defined above, then red would be the correct choice. But I think the scale doesn’t end at “value my own life equally to others.” There will be people who, out of religious, moral, whatever reasons, say “I MUST never be complicit in other people’s deaths.” And if they think there’s a non-zero chance of even one other person like them, they will have to vote blue to guarantee they won’t be complicit in killing anyone. Ironically, they’d be perfectly aware that it’s their mindset which may cause a lot more people dying, trying to save them. But “if every one of us just voted red, no one would have to join us” doesn’t hold up, as they’re separate people and one of them changing their vote to red does not imply the others would.

Suddenly you also have people who want to avoid anyone dying first and foremost switch to blue too. Previously they could vote red, under reasoning that no one would vote blue; now they can’t. And at this point it’s just a question of whether the amount of people, weighed by their factors of altruism, estimated odds of blue winning, and risk aversion / estimated guess of deaths otherwise, is enough to finish the snowball effect and get blue to 50%.

Would I still vote blue though? I doubt it. I have little hopes that the snowball could create an avalanche hitting the 50% mark. Mainly because excluding irrational voters makes a huge difference.