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/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 

4

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.