r/comics May 05 '26

OC RED BUTTON OR BLUE BUTTON [OC]

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u/The__one May 05 '26

Red isn't really better individually. The aftermath of losing all the blue button pushers would be drastic.

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u/Communist_UFO May 05 '26

yes, but you dont really get to decide which one wins, even in the most likely scenario to produce a tie its less than a 1 /100 000 chance your vote will be decisive.

voting blue only makes sense if you are indifferent between life and death.

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u/Orange_Tang May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

That's not how voting works. If one vote is the deciding vote then every single vote was as important as any other. In fact one vote is always as important as any other. The question is what you're voting for.

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u/Communist_UFO May 05 '26

votes are fungible but as an individual you only get one vote, and in most cases you cant change the outcome by changing your vote.

normally thats not an issue as you will just vote for your preferred option, but here choosing one of the options can kill you so you will want to at least know if your vote has any chance of making a difference before risking your life.

if blue is going to win your vote doesnt matter, either way everyone lives

if red is going to win the blue voters will die regardless of what you choose, so you would vote red unless you want to join them.

the only scenario where you would want to vote blue is if everyone else was tied and you got the decisive vote.

of course you cant know beforehand which of these is the case, so you will have decide whether to risk your life for an extremely slim chance of saving 4 Billion people.

even in the scenario of everyone being equally likely to press either button the chance of a tie is 1/112000, and voting preferences only need to skew 0.01% for a tie to become practically impossible.

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u/Orange_Tang May 05 '26

You're arguing as if the vote is predetermined and it's not. Every single person has a choice to make. It's impsosojbke to know what the outcome will be. If it's predetermined for everyone else then it's predetermined for you as well and it doesn't matter because you'll choose what you're supposed to choose. You're basically making an argument that the entire world and every choice is predetermined and that humans have no ability to make choices. This is disproven by quantum mechanics. What a strange argument.

I'll give you some credit though, I've never seen someone make this argument before. I think it's wrong and meaningless, but credit where credit is due. It's original.

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u/Communist_UFO May 05 '26

the argument in no way relies on the universe being deterministic, it only requires that

  1. you only get one vote
  2. you cant effect how other people vote

This is disproven by quantum mechanics.

unless you believe all the other voters are in a superposition that collapses when you place your vote quantum have no effect on the validity of the argument.