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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30159 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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So then we get into the question of why those people picked blue

Honestly? Going by the comments I've seen on the original Twitter post and a lot of the arguments here, people pick blue to show off how morally superior they are. "I have to save the idiots who made the wrong choice". "I'd rather be dead than live in a world where people are so selfish as to pick red" and the rest of it.

It'd be easy to turn the good/evil framing around on them.

By signaling that you are the kind of person that would pick blue, you are pressuring everyone around you to risk their death or else they'll live with yours on their conscience. I love my family and my friends, I would prefer they NOT put themselves at such a serious unnecessary risk of death, especially not my sake.

The only truly selfless moral choice (assuming no one is reading this post or applying meta reasoning) is to signal that you're the kind of person who'd chose red and then secretly chose blue. It's also quite a stupid choice, I think.

You've caught me! I have no principles, hate everything and everyone, and have no desires but to virtue signal as I do the opposite of what I teach. How'd you do it? You must be very smart to have seen my true nature through the dozens of comments defending the logical basis of blue-pilling which I crafted to obscure it.

I and each of the other 60-70% of people who picked blue are master charlatans, nothing more, and have not a neuron in our brains not devoted to the endless task of status- and rent-seeking. I'll have to inform the others that you're onto us.

Aha, the secret of my success is that I'm a down and dirty no-good wicked horrible selfish fascist red pill picker, you see. That's how I can tell lack of morals in others by the simple results of an Internet play poll, birds of a feather flock together!

I don't think you're entirely wrong. I don't think blue pillers are status-seekers, but there's a variant of that where people choose the altruistic option in online polls and choose the selfish option when things get real. That said, in the past when things have gotten real humanity has had a remarkable ability to cooperate. I would hope this would be the same, and people would actually be more altruistic when it comes down to it.

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