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

Then, let's use a different instance of the red/blue problem onto a real world scenario. Since we are talking life/death, let's even go to the extreme of fascism, just so it's clear.

Voting red: In a world where fascism is taking hold and votes are monitored, voting for "red" allows you to stay alive (today.)

Voting blue: In that same world, if enough people vote blue (say at least 50%), then everyone lives.

This has all the same hallmarks of the original problem. Voting red=live another day, voting blue=maybe die.

Here is the rub, fascism usually vilifies a group of people whom will live immediately after voting red but ultimately won't matter if they vote red or blue. If the targeted group is less than 50% of the population then they need people who are not in the targeted group to vote blue to stay alive long-term. There will always be people who "just vote for themselves" since the immediate payout is obvious. Hopefully there will also be enough people who collaborate and vote blue despite that obvious/immediate payout to avoid genocide.

This changes the equation from "suicidal" to something else entirely. I think one key part of that something else is collaboration. It also takes courage and faith in fellow humans with whom you ultimately rely on. One could even say that voting red is cowardly in this scenario.

As usual, the devil is always in the details.

> This has all the same hallmarks of the original problem.

No, it doesn't. It introduces a bunch of political baggage that doesn't fit, for no reason other than so that you can talk about political groups you don't like.

> If the targeted group is less than 50% of the population then they need people who are not in the targeted group to vote blue to stay alive long-term.

There are no "groups" in the thought experiment (except the ones defined by the choice), and nobody is being "targeted". No "vilification" occurs, and crucially anyone in the "blue group" can trivially just not be so (unlike the identity markers that you're clearly trying to allude to).

> There will always be people who "just vote for themselves" since the immediate payout is obvious. Hopefully there will also be enough people who collaborate and vote blue despite that obvious/immediate payout to avoid genocide.

Survival is not a "payout", and no "genocide" occurs in the case that blue voters fail to attain a majority. You say "hopefully", and you load the situation by describing evil politics. But in the actually described experiment, as an objective matter of fact, there is no meaningful difference between a world where 51% voted blue and a world where 100% voted red.

> One could even say that voting red is cowardly in this scenario.

One could say this, but ordinary tests of courage do not expect people to risk their own lives for no benefit beyond the possibility of contributing to saving people who don't need saving (as they can trivially save themselves.

> As usual, the devil is always in the details.

Things that you add to the situation, or read into it, are not "details".

>> This has all the same hallmarks of the original problem.

Even the “reframed” version in TFA had additional details.

As for political groups I don’t like, I can definitely put fascism in that category… but that wasn’t the point, was it.

You have exceeded my ability to explain this problem. I hope you can find the knowledge you seek elsewhere.

> Even the “reframed” version in TFA had additional details.

None that are relevant. Adding a real-world political context is obviously not the same thing as adding a manner of death.

> I hope you can find the knowledge you seek elsewhere.

I genuinely have no idea what "knowledge" you think I'm "seeking" in the first place. My purpose here was to explain why I disagree with you.

I also have no idea what you meant in the first place by "This is also why we are roughly split in half with only a small percentage actually voting differently than their identity politics allow.". To be clear, "identity politics" does not mean "which political wing one tends to associate with" or "what political party one tends to vote for" (making politics part of your identity). It refers, instead, to treating immutable characteristics such as sex, race, gender, sexual orientation etc. as a justification for political views; or to promulgating political questions surrounding the merit of those groups or regarding matters somehow particular to those groups (making your identity part of politics).

Reading through the exchange further, it comes across that you imagine that there are such things as "collaborative populations". There are not. There is not some gene people inherit that prevents them from cooperating with others and drives them to an individualistic mindset. (If there were any forces driving people's actions so certainly, then there would obviously be no point in having the discussion in the first place, since obviously nobody could be convinced of anything.) In practice, people show willingness to collaborate with certain groups, and to greater or lesser extent according to the circumstances.

And I am not going to collaborate in a circumstance that implies extreme personal risk for no legible benefit whatsoever. It has nothing to do with how I feel about anyone else's mindset, or how I feel about them as people. It has everything to do with the fact that I know they face the same choice I do: one of extreme personal risk for what should be no legible benefit whatsoever.

The only way to find out would be for this thought experiment to actually occur, in which case I would do nothing, because I would be dead.