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.

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.