I've never actually needed this sub before but now I get it because I NEED TO VENT ABOUT THIS
I've seen this stupid hypothetical floating around lately and it has genuinely made me lose faith in humanity, but seeing it show up in this sub and having people actually take the blue side and then act all smug and morally superior because they have "hope" and "faith in humanity"
I need you to know that I DO have faith in humanity. I've played Outer Wilds, I've watched Project Hail Mary. I'm 100% a believer that humanity can overcome problems by using their intelligence and logical reasoning to solve them, but you don't do that by abandoning all logic and just pretending like having "hope" is a suitable replacement for logical reasoning.
What you should have instead of "hope" and "faith in humanity" is a "brain" and "faith in humanity's intelligence"
I spent like an hour drawing up a whole ass flow chart just to explain that there is genuinely ZERO reason to EVER pick the blue pill, but this stupid hopemaxxing epidemic started by a few superman gifs has made people think it's okay to just not think when you can just morally grandstand and say "i have hope that people will do the right thing" even when what they're calling the "right thing" is just getting more people killed.
It's the equivalent of seeing a house on fire and running in because someone MIGHT be trapped inside. Maybe they are, but if you run inside how exactly is you running in and dying going to help them? More than likely someone is going to just run in after you and you're going to get both of you killed. How many people are picking blue because they think someone they know is picking blue so they feel obligated to try to "help" even though the odds that their one vote will push the vote over the edge and save everyone is astronomically low.
People have a messiah complex and it shows. They call the lottery a tax on the stupid and as far as I'm concerned this hypothetical is the same except instead of a tax it's a meatgrinder. If you want to save the people you care about, how about be the type of person they don't have to worry about being so stupid that you'd see one button that risks your life for literally no reason and one that DOESN'T do that and they have to wonder which one you'd press.
Right now you could go buy a lottery ticket and use the hundreds of millions of dollars to save some patient that isn't getting proper medical care because they don't have the money. You probably won't do that though because wasting your 20 bucks for a one in a trillion chance to save someone is stupid. But if you're telling me you'd risk your entire life for an even lower chance, but wouldn't waste your money, I'm sorry but you're either suicidal or just not thinking.
I genuinely do not hate the PEOPLE saying this, because I get where they're coming from. It FEELS like a moral choice because it's disguised as one, but it's not. All you're doing by picking blue is adding one more person who dies if that side loses, and accomplishing literally nothing if that side wins.
Please people, we need to have faith in humanity's intelligence, not having such little faith in humanity that we think people aren't smart enough to make a basic choice like this and disguising our low expectations as some kind of heroic gesture
Picking Blue is not a moral choice, don't be fooled into thinking it is
FOR CONTEXT:
There are two pills. Everyone has to pick one.
If more than 50% pick blue, no one dies
If more than 50% pick red, everyone who picks blue dies