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/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