u/kk_slider346

Also, it seems that despite loathing powerscaling, Robert Kirkman does have some sort of internal powerscale, he just chooses to ignore it. I'm assuming on this scale, Thragg is a 10, Conquest an 8.2, Battle Beast a 7.3, Nolan a 6, and Mark is currently a 5.

That being said, yeah, the powerscaling in this series indeed makes no sense. Conquest was afraid to fight Thragg, and Mark, even if not as strong, could fight him and damage him. Meanwhile, trying his absolute hardest only gave Thragg a nosebleed in the comics, and he straight up can’t hurt him at all in the show. Yet Battle Beast, who is weaker stat-wise than Conquest, can damage Thragg just fine. It would make sense maybe if Conquest had used his weapons to get an edge, but no.

I think if all the Viltrumites were close in stats it would add up, but Thragg was so far above Mark and Nolan in their fights, one-shotted Thaedus, who could beat up Kregg, and took no damage from Dinosaurus, who was close to Mark’s level, so I don’t know, it just doesn’t add up. I suppose I generally agree powerscaling matters less than the themes of a story, but it does matter somewhat. Yeah, this is an underdog story, but it doesn’t matter how lucky a cat gets, it’s never beating a tiger.

If the gap is that large, it makes no sense character-wise for someone as crazy and bloodthirsty as Conquest to fear Thragg. Anyway though, if there was any dispute on the second strongest Viltrumite, there shouldn’t be anymore. I think Conquest lost his fight primarily because of the “spectator in his own fights” thing, but also because Conquest is arrogant and has too much fun, much like the audience. I don’t think he ever even conceived he could lose to a Viltrumite that’s not even 100 years old.

Red Button Pushers say the Red Button does nothing, but that's not true, at least by the original question's wording. The original question says if less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button will survive. In other words, you don't put yourself in danger by pressing blue, you put yourself out of danger by pressing red. If you press nothing and red wins, guess what? You still die. The only way to survive is to press red, but doing so, while it guarantees your own survival, decreases the likelihood of blue winning and thus the likelihood of millions to billions dying.

The other thing red pushers ignore is the "Everyone in the World" part, as in all 8 billion people, not all like-minded people, not all rational people, not all adults. Every person, every baby, every visually impaired person, every dementia patient and elderly person, every mentally ill person, every stupid person, every comatose patient will have to take a private vote. Tim Urban even specified yes, babies' presses or non-presses will count, and thus if they do not press red, they will die. And it's not like MrBeast rephrased the prompt, he says the exact same thing.

Now with that out of the way, there are 4 scenarios here:

1. Everyone presses red, everyone lives, which is straight up impossible because nobody has ever reached consensus in their entire lives, and also because, as mentioned, there are going to be babies who press randomly or not at all, people who can't read the prompt, or people who physically cannot. This means there are going to be people who did not press red.
2. Everyone presses blue will also not happen for the same reason.
3. Over 50% does not press blue and all non-red pressers die.
4. Over 50% presses blue, everyone lives.

And I see people trying to change this prompt with woodchippers and train tracks and industrial crushers or whatever, but they're trying to change the premise of the prompt. Under normal circumstances, I would not go into a woodchipper or tie myself to train tracks, but if these scenarios were the same, hundreds of millions of babies, elderly people, stupid people, mentally disabled people, etc. are on the train track and can't get out. The question is asking would you risk your life to save those people, or there's an elderly woman under a crusher and you can save her, but only if 50% + 1 join you to help save that elderly woman. That is what the question is asking.

So looking back at it, no, the Red Button doesn't do nothing. It does do 2 things:

1. It saves you guaranteed, no matter what, you'll live.
2. It decreases the likelihood of a blue victory and thus that non-red voters will live.

The Blue Button also does 2 things:

1. It increases the likelihood that everyone lives.
2. It decreases your personal odds of living.

And frankly, abstaining decreases your personal odds of living and decreases the odds of blue winning and thus everyone living. But red very much does not do nothing.

Now, the question changes answer depending on what things are changed. How large is the size of people? It's impossible to get 100%, 8 billion people, to vote on something, but getting 10 people to vote red is very possible, so in that scenario I'd pick red.

Are all the people voting rational actors, meaning mentally well, not children, have no dementia, can they all understand the question? If they can, again I'd pick red, as it is therefore reasonable to assume everyone will pick red.

But in the actual dilemma posed, where everyone in the world is included, it's too large of a size and I am certain, not guessing but certain, there are people that would pick blue. So this idea that if everyone picks red nobody dies is ludicrous because not everyone is going to pick red. If everyone just did X, nobody dies, but not everyone will. Never in humanity's history, no matter what it was, has everyone just done something. Just like not everyone will pick blue and get the same result of everyone living.

And ignoring the prompt, let's say it was a binary option where abstaining was not an option, like the woodchipper example. Everyone on Earth is in front of a giant woodchipper. If you don't jump in it, you survive. If you do, you'll die along with anyone else who jumped in unless more than 50% of people jumped in.

Now you're thinking, why the hell would I jump in a woodchipper? Except there are babies that crawled and fell in, elderly people who have no idea where they are and have slipped, etc. You know there are going to be people who fall in that woodchipper, and the woodchipper can only be stopped by getting in. The outcomes I mentioned are still the same. Choosing to not get into the woodchipper guarantees your survival but decreases the likelihood of people in the woodchipper surviving. Getting in the woodchipper increases your likelihood of dying but also increases the likelihood of everyone living.

Let's ignore the biased phrasing because frankly one could argue red winning is what causes the deaths and could rephrase the question like: if you vote for the red candidate, he'll kill everyone who didn't vote for him, and if you vote for the blue candidate, he won't kill anyone. Or you could rephrase that question that the blue guy kills all his supporters if he loses. The point is that the phrasing is irrelevant because the outcomes are the same. Who causes the action does not matter and does not change the action being caused here and your stake in it.

In all those scenarios, red still guarantees your survival and decreases the likelihood everyone survives, while blue increases the likelihood everyone survives but puts yourself at increased likelihood of death. Stop trying to change the prompt's actual meaning and what is being asked.

Some people are gonna pick red because they don't believe most people will pick blue and thus do not believe in dying in vain. Some would pick blue because they believe blue will win and wish to help achieve that outcome. So it could be argued the question asks what you believe about people, but it asks more because there are gonna be people who don't know what will win, who are unsure, and some will pick red to not take the risk and some blue because they believe they're needed to get it over the edge in winning.

Now of course, back to my original point, non-voters will die in this scenario assuming they cannot vote, and half of all irrational actors and anyone with empathy for said irrational actors and non-voters if red wins. Now you may believe anyone stupid enough to press blue deserves to die, or may believe that while they don't deserve to die, it's not worth risking your life over. The latter is fine, you're not obligated to run into burning buildings to save people that are in there. The former, not so much in terms of being fine, but the point is if that's your opinion, fine, but be honest that's where you stand. Don't try to change the prompt to say stuff it doesn't say.

Even if we assumed that everyone is of somewhat sound mind and thus only stupid people press blue, the question being asked then is: are stupid people worth saving? Is it a stupid person's fault they're stupid? Being stupid is partly education and partly genetics and innate brain structure. Neither of those are controlled by stupid people, so the reason for picking blue is still the same, to save those people. The reason to pick red is to guarantee your own survival even if that means decreasing the likelihood everyone lives.

Everyone picking red or blue is never gonna happen, so it's not an option. Now factoring in some people will be unable to press any button further decreases the chance of blue getting over 50% of the vote, so I don't blame you if you press red to save yourself if you believe red will win.

So Marrok is definitely the second strongest Inquisitor after seeing his showings against fighting Maul and Devon at the same time and doing well against Maul in a 2v1 with 11th Brother, and a lot of people seem surprised by this because Ahsoka beat him, ignoring that, you know, he showed relativity with Ahsoka. Like, I don't know why he's grouped in with 11th Brother, 5th Brother, and 7th Sister, who got embarrassed. He actually gave Ahsoka a fight in both of their battles. People for some reason think he got no-diffed, and that's not just me saying that, they outright say that he was evenly matched with Ahsoka. And I don't think it's super crazy that Maul with a targeted robot leg was getting pressed by him.

I think, in general, the Inquisitors are lowkey underrated. Like, I don't even think Marrok is the strongest Inquisitor. There was one that beat Ventress too. Even beyond having stated inferiority to the Grand Inquisitor, let's look at GI's feats as well. For almost all of Season 1, he's shown to be far above Kanan and Ezra in skill before the finale, where Kanan is finally in tune with the Force. Now, a lot of people have that loss as a pretty big anti-feat, but people forget padawan is not a combat skill level. There are padawans who are better in combat than knights or masters. There is no real "master level" or "padawan level," that's not really a thing.

People forget Ahsoka never became a Knight. Obi-Wan first defeated Maul when he was a Padawan. Barriss Offee also never became a Knight. Jecki Lon a padawan could hold her ground with the Sith Stranger, who slaughtered half a dozen Jedi, and was noted to be more skilled in lightsaber combat than Yord, who was a Knight. In this very series alone, Devon could fight off 2 Inquisitors at once, the same 2 that beat Maul. Cal beat 9th Sister and Trilla while a padawan. Trilla noted she's killed masters before. Some Inquisitors like 7th Sister and 10th Brother were Jedi Masters, and some, like Reva, were Younglings or Padawans like Trilla. There's tons more examples, but you get the idea.

But in terms of feats, we don't see a ton of the Grand Inquisitor, but an important one is easily handling Barriss Offee while unarmed and playing around. This is important too because Barriss, if you can remember, could beat Season 5 TCW Ahsoka in lightsaber combat and could best her even while both were unarmed, in hand to hand combat, as well as the fact that Barriss could hold her own against Anakin in combat as well. And while an Inquisitor, she clearly ranked below GI, so we can pretty safely say he scales above her. Beyond that, we know GI has mastered every lightsaber form and knows how to counter all of them, as well as can tell exactly who someone's master is simply by looking at what form and style they use, as he demonstrated on Kanan. Further beyond that, as a hollowed out, former shell of himself, as a phantom kept in eternal torture by Vader, he manages to briefly overpower post-ESB Luke. So he's clearly not some scrub.

All this to say though, I think people have been underrating the Inquisitors. Honestly, it shouldn't be a surprise Marrok, with help from 11th Brother, could beat Maul if he can already go band for band with Ahsoka, who beat Maul. And Marrok at that time was implied to be dead and, if the "tougher before he died" comment is to be taken at face value, wasn't at full power either. But my overall point is that Inquisitors are not these super weak Jedi, they're Jedi hunters. Some are gonna be tougher than others. This also came as a surprise to people when Asajj lost to one of them, and I'm like, Asajj didn't get nerfed, that Inquisitor is just strong . Most Jedi got taken out by clone and/or stormtroopers. The stronger ones that weren't got taken out by Inquisitors. The Jedi the Inquisitors kill are already among the strongest ones left standing, and if they have to escalate further, they send Vader. Frankly, if they have to send Vader after you, you should feel honored, you're in the top 1% of Jedi.

But those are just my thoughts on Marrok and the Inquisitors. I think Marrok though is top 3 or 2 among the Inquisitors.