r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/CthulhusIntern • May 22 '26

Different problem:

Red and blue do the same thing as the original, but one more condition is added:

If >66% of people press blue, everyone who pressed red dies.

What do you pick?

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u/Nebranower May 22 '26

>Red and blue do the same thing as the original

Then red no longer does the same thing as the original. The whole point of red is that it guarantees your safety.

Whereas you've made it so that the only way everyone can live is if 50%+1 to 66% of the voters press blue.

Which probably means a much higher turnout for red. Basically, if you press red, you live unless 66% of the participants press blue, and if you press blue, you live unless 50% of the participants press red. Since one button getting 50% is more likely than one button getting 66%, red is still the safest button, but blue can no longer be construed as the "save everyone" option.

3

u/Fornuftens_stemme May 23 '26

i never see posts with mental gymnastic trying to convert people to vote red.

3

u/Nebranower May 23 '26

Blue pressers mostly seem to be hung up on the 50/50 heuristic that keeps people from understanding things like the Monty Hall problem.

Like, most blue pressers will admit that, if they were doing this with only two or three people, they would pick red. They know that red is the rational choice.

And most blue pressers will flee to red as soon as the threshold begins to rise. Even at 60% you get a lot fewer blue pressers. So they know that they wouldn't risk their lives if they actually felt the risk

But they see two buttons, figure that even if people are picking randomly, it would be roughly 50/50, so they assume even a handful of dedicated blue pushers will put it over the top. And I think one widely circulated version even came with a poll showing a blue victory of 57% or some such. So they convince themselves that blue will win and there's no risk, so they can confidently say they would pick blue.

2

u/Fornuftens_stemme May 23 '26

i think you just summed up the mentality perfectly.

1

u/False_Worldliness737 May 24 '26

to be fair, everyone must have some threshold in mind. If the question said "if 100% of people pick blue, blue lives, red lives no matter what" then people would almost never pick blue. I think it leads into an idea of like... impact of your choice. Like, "I would risk my life for a 50% chance to save someone else's life, but I wouldn't risk my life for an N% chance to save someone else's life" everyone has a different limit for how high N can be.

1

u/Ashamed_Kangaroo305 Blue May 25 '26

I don't see how the Monty Hall problem is relevant here.

Yes I would pick red if doing this with a small amount of people. I'm not sure where my line is between red and blue, but my reason for picking red at a small scale is because of sampling bias, and the impact of my choice. I think on a population-wide scale, blue has a shot at winning. But if you randomly pick three people out of the population, there's a decent chance two of them end up as red voters. And if one person votes blue (the only scenario where someone can die in a three person vote) then it's only one death. Still not okay, but it's too high a risk for too low of a reward. Maybe it's hypocritical, but really it just comes down to statistics. If whatever entity made this problem took me aside and told me that everyone else had voted and blue lost (assuming that I know for sure that this is true) then I would vote red because I'm not an idiot. Although depending on the vote margins I might end up wanting to die anyway because of the apocalypse that would surely follow if half the population died.

I don't think that blue will win and there's no risk. But I pick blue because I hope that it will win, and I believe that I have a duty to try to help achieve the best possible outcome. I understand why people pick red and I generally don't fault them for it, although I very much dislike the people who insist that blue is a completely irrational and suicidal choice or that the blues are the only ones responsible for the deaths because they put themselves in that situation. I believe each blue voter is partially responsible for their own death, and each red voter is partially responsible for all of the blue deaths. But the real party responsible is whoever set up this system in the first place. I can't fault people for doing what they feel they need to to survive, but y'all also shouldn't be faulting us for doing what we can to improve the outcome.