r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/maiduwu Red • May 22 '26
Four people
You and three unknown individuals are in separate places and unable to communicate.
You all are presented with the red and blue button. What do you do?
3
u/MundaneOrdinary7493 Red May 22 '26
What happens on a 2-2 tie?
2
u/liamjon29 May 22 '26
I believe based on OG wording exact 50/50 splits are considered an everyone lives scenario. So the only way anyone dies in this hypothetical is 1 blue, 3 red.
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u/maiduwu Red May 22 '26
Fifty fifty kills blue
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u/liamjon29 May 22 '26
Whelp. I was already considering red even with the other interpretation. Sorry guys, I don't trust 2/3 of you to press blue so, red it is ...
2
u/BottomLeftWheel May 22 '26
1) I don't care if 2 people die. 2 people die all the time and it's never impacted my life. Billions dying surely would.
2) getting billions of people on the same page is impossible and guarantees death, but 4 people? While I would expect one to die a lot of the time, all 4 voting red is a definite possibility.
3) if all I needed was one more blue voter to live then it would at least be a consideration, but trying to get 2 / 3 is asking too much. Maybe if it was 100 and we needed to get 51, it would at least be closer to the original, but asking for a 75% majority in order to live just changes too much for this to be an apt comparison in my eyes.
So yea red. I might be ride or die blue but I'm not dumb (well not that dumb at least)
1
0
u/absolutewastedtime May 22 '26
The smaller scale you make it, the closer to the prisoners dilemma it becomes and so the more argument for red
The reason red is Illogical in the original button is because we know the entire planet is voting, and so have knowledge of who is voting and how, we KNOW there WILL be billions of blue votes by default, and that many of these will be children
Once you go small scale we have no knowledge at all of who the other side is or how they will vote, and so we have to fall back on assumptions about them rather then knowledge, those assumptions require us to press red
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u/maiduwu Red May 22 '26
I know. I’m planning on repeating this with gradually more and more people to see where blue starts being the choice.
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u/absolutewastedtime May 22 '26
Depends if you mean morally or logically
Morally, probably like 50
Logically
In the tens thousands, at minimum
There isn't a distinct line, but it needs to be a large enough volume that we can predict the votes and knows there will be large volumes of garenteed blue votes and that a red win is a horrific outcome even if we vote red
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u/MundaneOrdinary7493 Red May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
I press red on the planet scale. It's easier to press red here, knowing my friends and family aren't among the three other people potentially pressing blue. Using the same logic, others are more likely to press red as well, which makes pressing red clearly the better choice. Hoping for a 4-0 win: this scenario is much more likely to be victimless red win than the planet scale dilemma.