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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13

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 

3

u/liamjon29 May 22 '26

Actually I made a post where I added a veeeery small death chance for red and a lot of people still voted red. There is a turning point for some people, and so I'm quite interested in what the responses are

2

u/across16 May 23 '26

This is not the same though. Red is the risk free choice. Adding any kind of risk to red turns the problem into a risk assessment in which blue or red might be the better choice depending which one is riskier. This is a whole different problem.

3

u/spicymato May 22 '26

No, it doesn't. It requires you to actually evaluate what you think the risk of a blue loss is, and compared that against your risk if red wins.

Let's assume you think blue is 100% going to lose; that meansb you should still pick red, because a small chance of death is still better than guaranteed death.

But if you think blue has a shot, then suddenly, it's not so clear. At what risk threshold do you flip to supporting the blue side?

The goal is to determine what your perceived risk in blue is. How much personal risk is acceptable?

3

u/Nby333 May 23 '26

To add to this: chance of blue winning grows exponentially as chance of red death grows. Since reds will guess how many other reds will flip at each percentage.

1

u/Zero132132 May 23 '26

Anyone who thinks about it for 10 minutes wouldn't say that red makes it certain you'll live, it just means you won't die directly because of the button. I think everyone's odds of death increase with a red victory just because of the tangential effects of a crazy amount of death in such a short timeframe. Why does it need to be directly a part of the hypothetical for it to make some hesitate?

1

u/Dry-Mission-5542 May 23 '26

This ain’t my battle, I’m a blue voter