If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive

I would personally assert it's foolish to pretend a species can survive without empathy and mutual aid. That's certainly not how humanity (or most, if not all, species) developed so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolut...

It may not have been completely avoidable though. What if the maximum number of people who would ever vote for blue is 30%

If that's the case then it's truly impossible to save them.

Your assumption is there is more than 50% of people who will vote blue or could be convinced to do so.

It's a terrifying thought that there could be such a deficit of empathetic people. But without any evidence you're just hoping based on your own beliefs that over 50% believe in blue like you do.

What if I'm not afraid of dying. But I'm just not willing to throw my life away unless there's decent evidence it could succeed and we could get above 50%

The thing is, all those red button pressers can't see that, for all their exact and flawless reasoning, they have a bias towards individuality, which they see as the only possibility, and we blue button pressers perfectly understand the math and yet we have a bias towards others, and would sacrifice more readily at many situations like this one. This sacrifice is what reds see as "dumb", but natural selection has chosen this because it probably works.

Both sides have a mental bias, and just can't see each other's "reasoning" because of it.

We blues think of reds as selfish, because we can't conceive of anyone not thinking of the worst outcome for others, and being empathetic about it, making it one's own. And they see us as "virtue signalling", or getting some external value of some kind (recognition from peers) because they can't think of any other explanation to justify that behavior, when it is just pure bias towards sacrifice. Sacrifice is just that, giving something without asking nothing, which does not make sense for a red. Reds think we are dumb but society needs a little more blues than reds. Otherwise it probably collapses.

I'm such a proud blue. in fact... ;)

You're thinking of this like a game where the only point is to "win". That's not how this would actually work in practice.

Blue is the only moral and logical choice. If red gets over 50% and you picked it, therefore contributing to the "red" outcome, you are now effectively a murderer. Plus you now get to live in a world where everyone else alive are sociopaths that picked red, where everyone with a conscience is now dead.

You also can't count on everyone picking red, or "if you picked blue, then you voted for suicide".

It's reasonable to assume that, leading to the button press event, the usual low-trust, "every man by himself" types will rally for red, with the usual excuses, where high-trust societies will make it clear that it's your moral duty to pick blue, to get the votes to the 50% threshold and ensure no one dies. Around the world there would be debates nonstop that would permeate every social circle and families. You'd have huge arguments where the typical selfish types would scream at their family members "how dare you say you're going to press blue, do you want to leave your poor mother alone without their only child?", only pushing red-leaning voters more into red and blue-leaning voters more into blue.

Plus, if you look at the possible outcomes:

- Red wins, you picked red: Depending on where you live, a reasonable portion to the large majority of the population is now dead. The ones alive have, by definition, a strong bias towards individualism and noncooperation. It's extremely likely civilisation will collapse. Pick your favourite fictional dystopia and you might have a reasonable chance of it actually coming somewhat real.

- Red wins, you picked blue: You are now dead, but at least you don't have to live in the world above.

- Blue wins, you picked blue: Things carry on as normal and your conscience is safe in knowing that you didn't vote to kill and that over 50% of your fellow humans also didn't vote to kill.

- Blue wins, you picked red: Things carry on as normal, but you now have a guilty conscience, or, if your vote was made public, people around you know you would have killed them to save your skin.

If everyone picks red everyone lives, nobody needs saving by picking blue. Picking blue obliges others to pick blue to prevent your death, risking their own life in turn. Red is the moral option.