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Notes -
It didn't occur to me until reading this, but also there's the possibility of the psychological cost of living as a blue-picker - which is the knowledge (at least with very high confidence) that I futilely risked my life for no gain. The odds that my vote was the decisive one that brought blue from 49.99% to 50.00% or whatever is minuscule, which means that, almost certainly, regardless of what I picked, all the blue pickers were going to live anyway. My picking blue meant nothing in terms of causing good, but I was able to manipulate my brain into convincing myself that it was worth it to pay the real cost of a real fear of real risk of dying, when removing that fear was as simple as picking a different color which, again, would have caused no negative consequences.
Yes, one should expect that your natural instinct is to generate any plausible justification for a choice you made in the past, and that the justification needs to pass social muster.
I'm partially solving that by straight up precommitting to picking red in all cases and broadcasting this intent. I won't have much cognitive dissonance later.
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