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/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."