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Notes -
Not just no reason to lie but no need to trust. The cost of trusting that someone will vote blue is that if they vote red you may die if you vote in accordance with the agreement. The cost of trusting that someone will vote red red is that if they vote blue they might die if you vote in accordance with the agreement.
Lying is punished when the agreement is voting red; lying isn’t punished when the agreement is to vote blue.
Yes, the trustless aspect cannot be overstated when you're playing a game with strangers, potentially millions of them, and have no enforcement mechanism.
It's virtually guaranteed that some avowed blue-pickers will have a panic attack and go with red when the choice time is actually arrives. I suppose some red-pickers have a crisis of conscious and go blue, but holy cow if you have no other information to go on, Red is the one that doesn't require faith in strangers.
Trying to play the recursive game (I know that he knows that I know that he knows I'll pick blue, therefore...) seems like an inherently losing approach.
It just seems so obvious yet some people are arguing against it. I honestly cannot model their thought process (outside of them treating the thought exercise solely as an exercise instead of thinking — how would people actually vote if voting the wrong way could lead to their death).
The closest I've gotten is that they actually believe that "Altruism is a Schelling Point."
"I want to save people, and other people will too, so they'll accept the risk and we'll all pick blue."
But they can't fully articulate WHY they believe someone actually needs saving. They reason out why someone would pick blue based on altruism, but not why someone would pick blue a priori and thus need to be rescued. So why do we need altruism?
And on the meta level, I think they may be assuming that how people behave in this thought experiment is how they'd behave in other scenarios in which case they think reds are inherently self-interested.
But no, I'm capable of being altruistic, I can just recognize that this specific situation is one where it is best to shut off the altruistic impulse.
I genuinely WANT to understand the position that allows one to pick blue believing it to be the best action.
But it seems to require that you start with premises that are completely inborn or 'faith-based.'
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