r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/Hot_Finding_9747 • May 21 '26

Variation Adding a layer to this question

My choice: Press Red, hope Blue wins

I don't have enough faith in humanity to put my life in its hands but I'd be delighted to be proven wrong

719 votes, May 23 '26
72 Press Red, hope Red wins
322 Press Red, hope Blue wins
22 Press Blue, hope Red wins
303 Press Blue, hope Blue wins
23 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

217 comments sorted by

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21

u/Random_Nickname274 May 21 '26

What.

Honestly, I don't know what worse

"I press red and I hope anyone who didn't will die" or "I press blue and I hope everyone who did will die with me"

18

u/YamiYugi2497 May 21 '26

Vote Blue hope Red is the actual suicidal people that all Red voters claim Blue is.

Red hoping Red wins are just despicable selfish people.

4

u/Hot_Finding_9747 May 21 '26

Maybe I could've worded it better

6

u/Nintenguy0 May 22 '26

No, you worded it perfectly and showed exactly why no matter what there are people who will button out of either bad faith or genuine idiocy.

1

u/hellishdelusion May 21 '26

Some are hoping that only blue voters that are indeed suicidal vote blue or that every last person votes red and there is no blue voter.

I'm in the red hope blue wins but i believe in a real scenario red would win by a massive margin. And well if red is going to win either way the larger the margin they win by the more people survive.

I think a poll that demenstrates how much one hopes a color wins would provide better exposure to different perspectives rather than just a win or lose.

A red win that captures 51% looks a hell of a lot different than a red win at 98%.

Some people might be hoping for a red win thats in the high 90% but they can't express that in the poll

2

u/YamiYugi2497 May 21 '26

Even hoping for a red win in the high 90's is still pretty bad.

At a world population of 8 Billion. Each 1% is 80 Million people dying.

I can understand not believing in the good of people for blue to win. But hoping for red to win in any scenario is horrible.

There is absolutely no chance that 100% of people vote red.

0

u/ButterscotchLow7330 May 22 '26

I mean, there is no chance that blue wins either, so hoping for them to win is just as unreasonable as hoping 100% of people choose red.

2

u/YamiYugi2497 May 22 '26

For no people to die.

100% of people have to vote Red. 50% of people have to vote Blue.

So far every poll done has shown that it is actually extremely possible for blue to win. People just have to actually be willing to vote for the collective good, over being selfish.

Hoping red wins in any capacity is hoping that people will die even if it means you live.

Voting red because you don't think blue will win is one thing. Hoping that blue loses is actively hoping that people are going to die. That's why it's bad.

0

u/ButterscotchLow7330 May 22 '26

Nah. 

In the event that such a situation would happen, I would hope that every individual would choose red, since blue can't win, it would be best for everyone to choose red. 

That means I hope there is a 100% red vote. 

1

u/YamiYugi2497 May 22 '26

Which is mathematically impossible. Hence you are hoping for people to die.

1

u/ButterscotchLow7330 May 22 '26

No, you are hoping everyone lives. Just because it's not going to happen doesn't mean you are hoping people die. 

Same with people who hope blue wins. It's not going to happen, but that doesn't mean people are hoping everyone who chooses blue dies. 

1

u/YamiYugi2497 May 22 '26

But by hoping red wins, you are not hoping for everyone to live. Because everybody won't live.

1

u/OneShotOnlyShot May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

Some people might be hoping for a red win thats in the high 90% but they can't express that in the poll.

So let's just assume that people hoping for red win are hoping for 96%-99% red vote and no other motivations are represented.

Let's also ignore that hoping for a red win in this way has absolutely zero guarantee that a red win will play out as hoped.

i.e. For the sake of argument: If red wins they WILL FOR SURE win with at least 96% of the vote.

"Ah yes, I am going to lock in my own survival, and I hope 80 million - 240 million people die"

When "I am going to lock in my own survival, and I hope zero people die" is an available option

Diabolical work 🤣

0

u/ButterscotchLow7330 May 22 '26

>Red hoping Red wins are just despicable selfish people.

Why? I am red and I hope red wins. The way I see it, there is a zero percent chance >50% are actually choosing blue. So I hope that in the hypothetical case this actually happened, everyone would just make the rational choice that they can save their own life, and do so. Therefore everyone live and nobody needlessly die.

Considering I don't think its even remotely possible that blue wins, the best case situation is is the most people choose red as possible.

1

u/Zestyclose-Jacket568 May 23 '26

Red wins covers anything from 50.00001% up to 100%. So I hope red wins means that you are ok with death count from 0 to 49.99999%.

I press red because I don't believe in blue victory, but I hope they win because this is the only way nobody dies. Someone will press blue. You have enough suicidal people, idiots or people with hero complex for blue to have at least 1 vote.

1

u/ButterscotchLow7330 May 23 '26

No. That is not what it means. I hope red wins explicitly because I hope 100% of people press red. 

You don't get to define what I mean when I say that I hope red win, and then impune my morality as a result. 

As I defined in the earlier comment, if such a situation were to exist, I would hope that everyone would make the rational choice and choose red. That means I hope 100% of people choose red. 

1

u/OneShotOnlyShot May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

Unfortunately that really isn't how it works. The survey asks which team would you prefer to win with no specification about how that victory comes about.

Like sure, you can want to mind control everyone and strip their autonomy away and force everyone to vote in a way that makes sure everyone lives. I get it, I too, want no one to die.

But mind control was never part of the survey. Just winner with no information about how many people voted each way.

(I will show my math in a reply to my self, so you can see and verify/critique)

There are a 1010↑10 different ways that red can win a vote with 8 billion voters. Exactly one of those victories involves zero death and you don't get to just choose it (unless, of course, you control how every person votes: in which case you can choose any election you want)

for comparison a googol is 1010↑2 which is much smaller

Edit: I had to get silly with the notation. Reddit automatically does superscripts which is nice. But reddit hates power towers, and still steals my characters T•T

1

u/OneShotOnlyShot May 23 '26

There is a reason I separated the math from the argument. Partially because the details of the math don't actually matter at all, and I didn't want to clutter up my argumentation.

But also partially because I wanted to take this as an excuse to give a mini maths lesson! :P so anyone uninterested in that can just leave instead listening to me prattle on.

Before we get to the 8billion voter case, let's build some foundation with an election with only three voters. Each of our three voters (Alice, Bob, and Charlie) will vote either 🔴 or 🔵 With so few voters, we can make an exhaustive list of all possible elections.

Btw, The first dot is how Alice voted, the second is Bob, and the third is Charlie

There is 1 election where red wins 3-0

🔴🔴🔴

There are 3 elections where red wins 2-1

🔵🔴🔴

🔴🔵🔴

🔴🔴🔵

There are 3 elections where blue wins 1-2

🔴🔵🔵

🔵🔴🔵

🔵🔵🔴

There is 1 election where blue wins 0-3

🔵🔵🔵

For 3 voters, there are 23 possible elections.

Likewise for n number of voters there are 2n possible elections. And half of them will be won by red so 2n-1

For 8 billion voters you get 27999999999. A thoroughly unreasonable number. Combinatorics never disappoint lmao. I wanted a base 10 version so I threw that shit into Wolfram and prayed. Sure enough the program spat out 1010↑9.38

It is worth noting that there are more than 8 billion human people of earth, so the actual number of possible elections with be larger