So is your general take on the problem that because the way it's worded (blue => "everyone survives", red => "only those who press red survive"), enough people would choose blue that therefore the empathetic/moral thing to do would be to also choose blue to save them? I can get on board with that line of reasoning

I guess you base that surprising "half" on the transparent analogy with politics, and so you think real-world Democrats will press blue to assert their Democrattiness. This is probably true. However, since this is the internet, and being a Democrat is associated with being online and living in a city, there are probably more than 50% blue-pressers, as shown in the poll. Just like in the real world, you won't change that ratio whichever way you vote in the poll. If swaying opinion is within a voter's control, then your "choosing" is meaningful but the "half" becomes meaningless. If swaying opinion isn't within the voter's control, it's "choosing" that becomes meaningless, and the fate of the half is already sealed by cultural forces beyond our control.

I don’t see them as selfless I see them as unintelligent.

Technically for red to win the number of dead people will be between 0% and 49.999% of the population.

The entire reason to campaign for red is to reduce the dead percentage.

Or choosing blue allows them to feel self-righteous while not actually at any risk since this isn't real. Virtue signalling is the ethic of our day.

Bringing rationalism - or whatever - clouds the discussion.

Blue is purely a win-win for me, so it's rational to only choose blue. Reds have their own value judgement.

"Rationality" is a useless quality to debate here.

> I don't think I want to live in a world in which they all died out.

So the blue side would also include the people who are good at game theory...

On the other hand, maybe a world where everyone who is bad at game theory is dead is a better world to live in, regardless of how nice or empathetic they are.

Literally suicidal empathy. Although the numbers would change drastically if it was real, it's easy to virtue signal in hypotheticals.

There’s no bad outcome for choosing red. The empathetic option is to convince everyone to vote red and that choosing blue is dumb.

Perhaps red is selfish, but blue is most certainly foolish.

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I don’t think short order cooks are know for being that especially emphatic. Along with most of the folks who “do stuff”—build roads, maintain power lines, etc.