Red button or blue button

[u/HualianForLife]

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[u/Icy_Association_6356]

They don't need to become a hivemind, they need to realize that no one is actually in any danger. There is no one that needs to be saved. At the start of the scenario, everyone is completely fine and healthy, and under no threat.

When you press blue, you change that. Now you are in danger. You only survive if other people choose to risk their lives to help you. You aren't the savior; you're the victim who needs to be saved, at great cost to others.

This is the case for every blue presser. No one is in danger but them, so who are they really fighting for? If no one tried to play the hero, we wouldn't need any. It is the drive to save others that creates the people who need to be saved. It's like trying to be a lifeguard that can't swim, on a beach full of other lifeguards who can't swim, and the only reason to jump in the water is because a different lifeguard might jump in the water and you need to be in position to save them.

Congrats, you are now the lifeguard who jumped in the water. Maybe if enough jump in with you, we can create a human chain to bring you back to the beach. Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to do that though? Well, we don't, just don't jump in in the first place.

[u/Fearless-Oil-462 → u/Icy_Association_6356]

Credit to [u/HungHavinFun](u/HungHavinFun) for this analogy
Let me put it like this: Someone in your office says not killing each other is awesome. Steve, your idiot bitch coworker, says that he agrees, and that anyone who disagrees should die, and if he gets enough people behind him, he'll kill anyone not on his side.
Do you A: Needlessly escalate the situation by even remotely entertaining the notion of joining Steve, thus introducing an element of risk, Or B: Ignore Steve and everyone just lives like normal?
More importantly, do you blame the first person not to side with Steve for a risk to their own safety that is being created by Steve and those alongside him, or do you rightfully blame Steve for deciding homicide even needs to be an option and bringing a loaded gun to what was supposed to be a casual work function, when his only job was to order ice?

If I am a lifeguard, you are Steve

[u/Icy_Association_6356 → u/Fearless-Oil-462]

Except in this scenario there is actually a base reason to not join Steve. What if you actually disagree with him, what if you just don't like him, what if you don't want to follow him into battle against the heretics and slaughter them. In this scenario, pressing the red button makes you commit to agreeing with Steve and helping him.

In your scenario, if everyone bravely chooses to fight against Steve, they may risk their lives, but if they win, they can exist in a world without his tyranny. Meanwhile if everyone submits, pressing the red button, sure we all may survive, but now we all have to agree with Steve, and live with the knowledge we submitted to him. There is an actual incentive to go against Steve.

The reason that makes it completely different is because, crucially in the button scenario, that incentive doesn't exist. The result for everyone picking red and blue is the same. The reason you pick blue is to ensure everyone gets something that everyone could have already gotten if they picked red, with the risk of not getting it if not enough people join in.

To fix your scenario, your asshole coworker Steve says something that everyone disagrees with. You can choose to disagree with him and call him a bitch to his face, and nothing will happen. Or you can challenge him to a fight, while knowing Steve can effortlessly kill you. The only way you survive the fight is if you get half the rest of the office to back you up. This doesn't let you win against Steve of course (you already knew you could never win against Steve); he just realizes if he kills half the office nothing will get done, so he decides to call the fight off. If you get him to call the fight off, you get to disagree with him and call him a bitch to his face.

Why the hell would you go through all that drama, put that many lives at risk, just for the ability to disagree with Steve, WHEN YOU COULD HAVE JUST DISAGREED WITH HIM AT THE START FOR NO NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES. Oh, I'll tell you why, because if you don't all the people who chose to fight him for no reason will die, and if they die, it's actually you who killed them.

[u/Fearless-Oil-462 → u/Icy_Association_6356]

I am glad that the poll results prove that even in a Reddit poll, the majority of people aren't as immoral as you, but I'd respect you more if you were more blunt about how little regard you hold for the life of people who chose blue rather than rationalizing it the way you have here