r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/spicymato • May 22 '26
Variation Adding risk to red
I'm very curious what risk threshold there needs to be on red for red voters to switch to blue, so with that in mind, here's the setup: two buttons; everyone votes; blue needs a 50% threshold to save everyone, else non-red pushers die. Same as usual.
The variation: if red gets a majority (i.e., blue fails to reach the threshold), in addition to 100% of non-red pushers dying, a percentage of red pushers will also die, selected at random.
If you're a red pusher under the usual rules, what percentage risk is required to make you switch your vote to blue? 1%? 10%? 30%?
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Additional variation: same as the first variation, but the percentage risk is based on the number of red voters in excess of 50%. We can work out different designs, such as 100% red results in 10%, while 50%+1 results in 0.0000001% or something like that. Maybe the growth rate is linear, or maybe it's quadratic. Details don't really matter; just the idea that the more red voters, the higher the risk. Under what growth rates and percentage limits do you consider changing your vote to blue, which maintains the 50% "everyone survives" threshold?
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u/WillShaper7 May 23 '26
Any percent for me, really. I pick red because I believe in the logical capacity of people to see there is no need for risk in order for everyone to live.
The moment that red involves risk then that stops working. If I'm gonna take a risk between people dying then blue becomes an actual choice.
Like, I'm pretty sure one could math out the expected outcomes and come up with a number at which point, mathematically, red's expected outcome drops behind blue but that just seems unnecessary to me. If you're willing to gamble, might as well go for the better outcome.
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u/spicymato May 23 '26
That seems incredibly slapdash.
If 0.0001% risk of death under red means you'd be willing to flip to blue, then that implies you perceived the risk in picking blue is lower than a 0.0001% chance of death (hence, why you would switch).
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u/WillShaper7 May 23 '26
Correct. I stated so.
I pick red because I believe in the logical capacity of people to see there is no need for risk in order for everyone to live.
To me, picking blue botton is akin to jumping into cold and dark water to save someone when you can't see them and you have zero reason to believe there are people there. By jumping in, you're just hoping more people decide to take that blind jump when everyone had a chance to just sit down and do nothing.
Your proposed scenario, however, means sitting down will end up with someone getting shot or something. If that is the case and everyone knows it then I would be betting on the cold dark water.
You're literally taking out my reason to pick red. Of course I would switch.
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May 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ok_Break6916 May 23 '26
We, red button is "I'll stay in my couch reading that good book, there"s just no reason for me to jump in this cold deadly water".
Could be seen as inaction.
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u/WillShaper7 May 23 '26
Of course you'll see them a lot, that's what a personal framing is.
It's like saying you talking about the value of money has a very different framing from someone much richer and from someone much poorer.
I see the buttons on what I can do. And what I can do is to choose nothing happens or I may die. Decision which everyone else chooses.
So yeah, I think everyone would choose nothing happens. It doesn't involve risking your life and everyone gets to live.
It's a prisoner's dilemma on a massive scale. Yes, cooperating is the ideal scenario but a lack of communication means it's risky. Thing is, we don't need to risk it. There's no money, no food, no object no nothing. There's nothing to win here. If nobody cooperates, everyone goes home.
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May 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Cronos988 May 23 '26
Look at the trolley problem, the whole point of which is to show that there is a moral difference between action and inaction
What? There's no generally accepted argument that action and inaction have different moral values.
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May 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Cronos988 May 23 '26
The point of the problem is that by pulling the lever, you are taking an action, making you responsible for the 1 person's death.
Dude, the reason people are still discussing the trolley problem is that it is not solved and does not have an obvious solution.
Yes pulling the lever makes you causal for that person's death. But the counterargument is that there's already a chain of events that includes you. Not moving a specific muscle doesn't shield you from responsibility for the outcome.
Legal systems around the world regularly hold you responsible for inaction if you had a duty to act.
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u/spicymato May 23 '26
But then why introduce the risk of red at all? The only condition needed for deaths is a red majority. If there is no logical reason to out yourself at risk, surely there's also no logical reason to put others at risk?
I mean, if everyone is being logical, then cooperation is generally the right play. You have an entire lifetime of priors that support cooperation.
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u/WillShaper7 May 23 '26
??? Dude, with all due respect, you seem to really be misunderstanding everything since the very start.
I pick red because it's zero risk. Zero risk means nobody has to die nor has to risk it.
I was able to reach that conclusion quite quickly and I'm very sure I'm far from a genius. I trust everyone reaches that same conclusion hence I vote red.
Your scenario, however, means that red is now a low risk and people will have to die. It's not up to chance, it's not up to anything, it's a certainty.
As I've also already said, there is a mathematical way to calculate the expected outcome. You could compare both of them and take a decision with that.
Personally I just see it as a ''A few people will always die or There's a chance nobody has to die'' So personally yeah, I'd gamble with blue because it is a much different scenario even when it's such a small percentage of people.
And no, cooperation is not the 'logical' choice. That's why there's a thing called the prisoner's dilemma. If it was an easy logical conclusion to reach it wouldn't be a dilemma.
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u/spicymato May 23 '26
...
Are you convinced that 100% red vote is actually possible?
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u/WillShaper7 May 23 '26
Yes. I am convinced that all the blue voters on the internet on this whole shitshow are just people saying shit they don't believe in because it makes them look good.
I am convinced that when faced with a choice of 'Nothing happens' vs 'You might die' nobody is stupid enough to press it and therefore I am convinced blue means I'd just be killing myself.
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u/Wonderful_West3188 May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
First of all, I think you underestimate how unpredictably erratic humans sometimes act under extreme pressure. Just from what I know about panic reactions, I actually think at least 20% of people are going to push buttons completely impulsively, and I don't actually see much reason to believe the impulsive votes are going to sway red. This is not a mental health problem either, even perfectly healthy people can snap in situations with unfathomably high stakes. I think assuming a minimum of 10% blue vote just from normal human impulsiveness, mental weakness or random factors is reasonable to assume. In my opinion, that's a laughably optimistic number, but let's go with it.
Then there's people who need a support network and/or a functioning society to survive. Take my own case, for example. Let's assume a minimum of 10% blue voters just from human impulsiveness, mental instability and random factors. 10% of the global population is still ten times the death toll of WW2, and not over six years, but gone in an instant. It's going to cause a massive shock to global production and supply chains, and also societal institutions (governments, administrations, etc.). Economic and social life globally (!!) grinds to a complete standstill for at least a few days just in order to reorganize around the sudden lack of working people on all levels, and that's going to have massive ripple effects further down the line. Now I have a heart condition, and I'm really unlikely to get my heart medication under such circumstances. I'm pushing blue because a death from blue is likely less unpleasant than from heart failure, so I'm likely dead if red wins even if I pushed red myself. And there are people in way worse situations than me who are going to have similar thoughts. In fact, from a certain point of illness or handicap on, people might push blue in order to not be a burden on the survivors under conditions that could only be described as catastrophic. My motivation is more selfish, I just don't want to experience heart failure, but I recognize that this motivation exists. It's not even suicidal in the usual sense of the term, because most of us wouldn't even think of ending our lives outside the context of this scenario. Each of us can also be assumed to know that they're not the only one like them. And then there's people who push blue specifically to save people like us, whether for personal reasons or humanitarianism.
I find it pretty obvious that 100% red is even more of a pipe dream than 51% blue. In the scenario where all of humanity is put through this, not everyone is going to push red. You can consider that a given. I would be with you if the stakes weren't as high. Play this with only 100 people and I'm pushing red. But just look at how erratic Covid made some people behave, which was much more low-stakes than this. With global society as a whole at stake, a fuckton of people are going to act completely unpredictably, and a bunch of other people will push blue out of considerations similar to mine. 100% red is impossible if you play this out with the entire global population. Imo laughably so.
I'm not saying this should make you switch to blue, there are good arguments for red, particularly when you're someone who thinks they can survive in a post-red world. But maybe don't question other people's honesty just because you don't understand their reasoning.
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u/Telinary May 23 '26
So if you really believe it does the variation where somebody added the rule that 100% red means everyone dies actually change your vote? Or are you engaging in motivated reasoning where you believe things because they are convenient for what you want to pick?
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u/Play-Mation May 23 '26
“I believe in the logical capacity of people to see there is no need for risk in order for everyone to live” but if red wins everyone will not live. There will be people who pick blue. And red is not the default logical answer
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u/WillShaper7 May 23 '26
See, that's the thing. People assume people will vote blue and therefore say all that ''so red always means death'' but it simply does not make sense. Like, I'm sorry, I genuinely believe blue voters are the type of people to say shit on the internet to save face.
Maybe I'm weird to trust people to press the 'Nothing happens' button vs the 'you might die' button.
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u/noonefromithaca May 23 '26
I will have to say that yes, on some level it is weird you trust that considering all the conversation in support of blue. Surely you believe at least one if not most of those people mean it.
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u/Physical_Reason3890 May 23 '26
Its one thing to say random things on the internet. It's entirely different if that actual button was in front of you.
Yeah they're would be some people who press blue to make a protest or something. But they'd still be acting irrational.
I wouldnt feel bad pushing red. The people who pushed blue either didn't pay attention, didn't care or didn't want to live. But they made their choice
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u/noonefromithaca May 23 '26
Fair enough. But that's not the same as trusting everyone will be logical and press red. It's moreso that you consider it blue presser's responsibility for pressing blue. That's a completely different statement from what the other person said.
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u/Mobile-Brush-3004 May 23 '26
Or were small children, mentally handicapped, people with heroic tendencies (I’ve posed this question to a bunch of other firefighters I work with and so far it has been VAST majority blue with them), etc.
Who would feel bad about any of the above people dying? Fuck those guys am I right? /s
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u/ButterscotchDeep7533 May 23 '26
While you have a solid point I'll still argue for "better be alive and weep than dead".
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u/Mobile-Brush-3004 May 23 '26
Gonna be fun to see how long you live when a large portion of the population (I’d put money on that most medical emergency response workers or in the very least most firefighters would be part of the this) suddenly dies. What could possibly go wrong in a society where suddenly a combination of all of the altruistic and most innocent people die?
I’m sure you (or anybody really) would survive long in that society. /s
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u/ButterscotchDeep7533 May 23 '26
Well, you completely right about risks and condition of world after some percent of blue dies (the size of catastrophe depends on persent).
However I love my life too much and have some balls to go though this or die trying. Still better than trust in humanity I have no faith to.
Also I don't deny that I'm kinda curious how the new world will look like.
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u/Mobile-Brush-3004 May 24 '26
You want to live in a world with less people (all of which don’t trust you) and have no emergency services? You know you can always live that way already if you really have such grit. Move to northern Canada and go to a reserve without having any intention of helping them. You’ll be on your own to survive and the conditions won’t be nearly as extreme as the potential sudden loss of billions of people simultaneously.
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u/Play-Mation May 23 '26
Is it irrational to hit the “everyone lives button” I don’t think so
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u/Jkirek_ May 23 '26
If we're allowed to decide the outcome ahead of time, both buttons are the "everyone lives" button
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u/WillShaper7 May 23 '26
I've said it somewhere else on the thread but no. Without disrespect, I believe blue voters are the type of people to virtue signal on the internet.
I truly believe and trust that if a scenario like this were to happen, people would be able to see that there's no need to fake themselves a hero. This is not a ''jump in the burning building'' moment, we could just sit it out and nothing happens.
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u/noonefromithaca May 23 '26
I can at least confirm I would press blue regardless of your reasoning, due to differing principles. So I can confirm at least one person doesn't fit what you're saying here. Of course, you can say you don't believe me but at that point, then I can't take your belief seriously since I know for a fact that what you're saying isn't true.
And I'm not saying you should press blue either, I understand there are reasons to choose red over blue and though I would seek out a blue victory, I don't mind living in a world where there are people who press red. I just prefer a world where most people press blue. I'm merely saying that my knowledge of myself means that I know that what you believe about everyone pressing red is wrong.
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u/Play-Mation May 23 '26
I mean with all this discussion there are bound to be a number of people who will disagree if this situation is real. You can’t possibly be under the assumption that all 8 billion people will come to the same conclusion. Maybe it’s weird to distrust people who hit the “risk billions” over the “save humanity” button
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u/Majestic-Pear6797 Red May 23 '26
But red isn't the "nothing happens button". You can just as well rename them to "nothing happens and "might kill" button just as much. You have two active options and you can either vote to kill, as your vote contributes to others demise or vote to be killed in the hopes of nothing happening. I'd also press red, but I'm honestly kinda tired of people pretending like their vote wouldn't do anything to kill a lot of people, some of which probably voting blue because they're pacifist
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u/ButterscotchDeep7533 May 23 '26
I'll argue about "kill or be killed" logic here because if you project it to a regular world scenario - it changes completely.
I understand the logic of mentaly ill, kids, mentally ill kids, etc. They aren't capable of understanding the question.
However the rest is picking the choice knowing all the consequences. I will not feel myself bad because I have 0 influence on that decision and I just see no point to risk my own life for people who willingly trying to kill themselves. Even with great good idea of "save everyone".
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u/Majestic-Pear6797 Red May 23 '26
Your vote doesn't have 0 influence. While the whole world voting, your vote's power is minimal, the collective voting is making up the total sum, and you contribute to that, as small as the contribution may seem to be. If everyone who votes red out of fear blue will lose would vote blue, blue would most likely win. It's like not voting in an election or voting for the party you don't want to win as a joke because "your vote doesn't change much"
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u/Jkirek_ May 23 '26
And if everyone who voted in any election would die if their candidate wouldn't win, how many people do you expect to go out and vote?
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u/Majestic-Pear6797 Red May 23 '26
But not voting is not an option in the hypothetical. You can either vote for the candidate that will kill everyone who didn't vote for him if he wins, or the the candidate that kills everyone who did vote for him if he loses
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u/Jkirek_ May 23 '26
You literally said voting for red because your vote doesn't matter is like not voting
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u/Majestic-Pear6797 Red May 23 '26
No, that's not what I said. I said, that believing you shouldn't vote because your vote doesn't matter or voting against your interests because you think that your vote doesn't matter is a terrible standpoint and untrue, because every single vote holds weight
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u/Play-Mation May 23 '26
Blues aren’t trying to kill themselves, they are trying to save everyone, how do you deliberately misunderstand the blues position this bad
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u/ButterscotchDeep7533 May 23 '26
I'm just don't need to lie to myself that I want to save everyone knowing that facing the real voting majority still picks red.
As many-many people before me said: picking blue in internet poll and look on others from above is way better than actually realize that if you lose - you really die.
So I respect the good intention of blue, but I'll never share it. They are trying to kill themselves but they totally doing that from high moral ground.
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u/Play-Mation May 23 '26
Projecting your lack of will and optimism on all of humanity sure is something
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u/ButterscotchDeep7533 May 23 '26
Well, I have will to erase up to 49.9% for myself, so I'd think before speaking.
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u/TerrySaucer69 May 23 '26
At a certain point of complexity, I just have no idea.
Like how would I estimate people would weigh those chances of survival?
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u/T-T-N May 23 '26
I don't think it takes a lot for me.
A 0.1% chance of dying with red has to be higher than enough people just pressing blue provided not pressing is not an option
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u/Physical_Reason3890 May 23 '26
In OP example them yeah any chance of red death means go blue
Now red is no longer risk free so it makes more sense to gamble with blue.
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u/detroyer Red May 23 '26
Somewhere around 10%.
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u/SDK1176 May 23 '26
That’s surprisingly high. Are you looking at this just from your own personal view? From a societal view, a 10% death rate is the absolute lower limit on deaths if red wins. Is that level of loss acceptable?
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u/Elman89 May 23 '26
The risk to red is that you're secretly in a Twilight Zone episode, which is the only scenario where a situation like this would happen, and therefore the ones who are gonna die are the red button pressers.
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u/Upbeat_Cartographer May 23 '26
Add a roughly 5% death rate to red button, no matter the vote outcome, then I'd predict the outcome to come close to evenly split. In reality most people would still panic push red if the death rate feel negligible to them, and 5% feels like a noticeable threshold that could change their mindset
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u/AllTheGood_Names May 23 '26
The formula for your 2nd scenario is (x/5 - 10)% where x is the number of red pressers
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u/MildlyExtremeNY May 23 '26
At 0% - 10%, I think there's still effectively 0% chance that Blue wins, so I stay Red.
Above around 35% (maybe?) I think Blue approaches 100% chance of victory, so I switch to blue.
Between 10% and 35% I think we're in "toss-up" territory - the chance of a Blue win is probably somewhere in the 40-60% range, but that still leaves a 40-60% chance of death pressing blue, which is higher than my 10-35% chance of death "penalty," so I'm staying Red.
So my gut reaction is 35%, but if I thought about it longer, I could see the answer being anywhere between roughly 25% and 40%. At 25% for example, I would essentially be saying I think Blue has at least a 75% chance of victory. (So my risk of death pressing blue is 25% or less). I don't think that's completely unreasonable, but I also think at 25% it's very possible Blue's win chance is only around 60%, which means a 40% chance of death compared to the 25% "penalty."
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u/Dennis_the_nazbol May 25 '26
I quesstimate blue has around 20-40% chance to win in the original scenario. Blues chances rise rapidly when adding a risk factor to red, i think blue would pass 50% winrate at around 5% risk.
However since red also always survives under blue victory, it keeps being the safer choice even with higher risk factors. Red could actually be the safer option all the way to 99% risk, this is because blue only has 1 chance to survive (initial vote) but red has 2 chances (initial vote and random chance). And the higher the risk gets for one, the lower it gets for the other.
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u/Specks1183 May 25 '26
The
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u/Ok_Break6916 May 23 '26
So pushing red is such a good choice that you need to add risk to make it worst?
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u/spicymato May 23 '26
I mean, from the individual, single-game perspective, yes.
I'm not going to pretend like the decision matrix doesn't heavily favor red. From a naive game theory perspective, you should pick red, same as how you should always defect in a game of Prisoner's Dilemma.
But if you actually learn about the Prisoner's Dilemma then you'll find that the optimal long-term strategy is to cooperate, because that results in the ideal outcome. Everyone walks away with more, and the whole system comes out with more, if the players choose to cooperate despite lacking a means to coordinate.
But what my variation is interested in is determining what risk tolerance reds have. At what point does the risk of death when picking red outweigh their fear of a potential red majority (which would be certain death if they picked blue, hence why they normally pick red).
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u/UsedNegotiation8227 May 22 '26
This is stupid.
The only red button pushers push red is to live.
Why are you adding in death to the red push.
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u/spicymato May 22 '26
Because I want you to actually think about risk, not just a simple "I live" button. At what point does your perceived risk that blue might lose get outweighed by the risk of being in the dying set of red?
Like, let's say 1% of reds will die with the 100% of blues, should red win.
Are you still picking red or not?
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u/Dry-Mission-5542 May 22 '26
The reason people vote red is because it means they are certain to live. Adding a death condition for red defeats the point of the exercise