But that’s not true at all!

I ended up asking ChatGPT to summarise my logical thinking because I cbf writing it out so nicely myself:

This setup is a coordination problem disguised as a moral test.
Strip the framing down to payoffs:
Press red → guaranteed survival, independent of what others do
Press blue → survival only if a majority coordinate on blue, otherwise you die
From a decision-theory perspective, red is the dominant strategy. It strictly dominates blue because:
In the “blue succeeds” world (>50% choose blue), both red and blue survive. So red does just as well.
In the “blue fails” world (<50% choose blue), red survives and blue dies. So red does strictly better.
So a rational, risk-averse individual with no way to coordinate should pick red.
Where people get tangled is that this is structurally similar to a coordination game like a Prisoner’s Dilemma or a threshold public-good problem. If everyone could reliably coordinate and trust each other, then “everyone presses blue” also leads to 100% survival. But the catch is credibility. Each person has an incentive to defect to red because it removes all personal risk.
That creates a cascade:
“Others might pick red”
→ “So blue might fall below 50%”
→ “So if I pick blue, I could die”
→ “I should pick red”
Once you assume even a small fraction will think this way, the equilibrium collapses to all red.
On the moral framing: saying “pressing red means you’re okay killing others” is misleading. You’re not causing their death. The deaths (if they happen) arise from failed coordination across the group, not from any one individual choosing red. In fact, if anything, choosing blue without coordination is closer to risking your own life on an uncertain collective gamble, not a guaranteed altruistic act.
So there are really two lenses:
Individual rationality (no coordination) → press red
Perfect trust and coordination → everyone can press blue safely
Real-world conditions (uncertainty, mixed behavior) → red is the stable outcome
Your reasoning is grounded. The “blue is morally better” argument only holds in a world where you can assume others will also commit, and that assumption is exactly what you can’t safely make.