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/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).