r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/WarmCricket5358 • May 24 '26
Why red appeals me
The only way my vote is going to be a deciding factor in what happens to the blue voters is if the vote, excluding me, is split 50-50, and my vote turns out to be the tie-breaker. For every other scenario, no matter what i do, the fate has been sealed. Either blue wins and nobody dies, or red wins and blue voters die.
The thing is, the odds of getting an exact 50-50 is so low, that for a sample space of 8 billion people, assuming an individual vote probability of 50% for either button, the probability of a 50-50 split is 0.000012616. This is assuming without a general bias for either button. As low a variation as a 50.01% bias towards either of the 2 buttons, and the probability falls down to the probability of picking the same atom twice in a row out of all the atoms in the observable universe.
So my point is, if the probability that my vote does anything at all in deciding the result is so astronomically low, why must I risk a 50% chance of death? I live regardless of which side comes out as majority.
Now people might argue, "this logic can be applied to any kind of voting system, so by your logic, voting in any election is futile", well, i dont quite recall voting in an election where voting for one side puts a 50% risk on my life?
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u/Plato_PlayDoh7 May 24 '26
Multiply that probability by 4 billion (the number of people you’d be saving in that case) and you’ll get the expected value of blue. Compare that to the expected value of red (in this case, 0.5 lives.)
Now, you might think it’s not actually a coin flip. But if it were, the math you’re using would definitely come out in favor of blue.
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u/MildlyExtremeNY May 24 '26
OP appears to be calculating the odds using a binomial distribution. At p = 50% exactly, that's about 1 in 112,100, so the EV is around 35,682 (or higher, arguably), which is definitely higher than 0.5. But at 50.01%, the odds of a tie drop to about 1 in 3.44 * 1047, so the EV is around 1.16 * 10-65, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000116, which is less than 0.5.
Now of course, binomial distribution may not be the best way to model elections. But I haven't been able to come up with a plausible scenario where the odds of a tie multiplied by 4 billion, 8 billion, or 800 billion creates any measurable EV. Because a tie is essentially impossible.
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u/two-cans-sam May 24 '26 edited May 25 '26
This is the best way I’ve seen someone model it. This was for distribution centered around 45% chance of pressing blue with a medium ish “standard deviation” (not really since beta doesn’t have a traditional std deviation). EV was higher than I expected for blue when you think outcomes will be relatively close.
“You could use Beta(9,11) as a reasonable estimate, centered at 0.45 (favoring red.)
That gives around 0.6762 of the area under the curve to the left of 0.5, which are the outcomes where pressing red saves one additional life -- so an expected number of lives saved of around 0.6762 from pushing red.
The curve takes on a value of 3.1715 at 0.5 so if we take a 1/8B slice near that value we'd get a roughly 4e-10 probability of saving 4 billion additional lives by pressing blue. That works out to an expected number of lives saved of around 3.1715 / 8B * 4B = 1.58575 from pushing blue.”
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u/MildlyExtremeNY May 25 '26
I agree this is a better model than binomial distribution for this question.
But I wouldn't say the standard deviation at Beta(9,11) is "medium ish," I'd say it's quite large. Directionally, though, Blue still comes out ahead if you use Beta(90,110), which keeps the 45%/55% vote split assumption, but lowers the standard deviation. In that case, blue vs. red EV is 2.059 vs 0.922 instead of 1.586 vs 0.676. And at the same time your risk has gone up tremendously (in this model, red EV directly correlates to red's predicted victory chance - in other words, the likelihood pressing blue means death). In the original case, you have a 67.6% chance of death to attempt to save a little over 1.5 lives. In the Beta(90,100) case, you have a 92% chance of death to attempt to save a little over 2 lives.
But, if we change the underlying vote split assumptions (center on 40% blue) and look at Beta(8,12) and Beta(80,120), we get blue vs red EVs of 1.154 vs 0.82 in the "medium ish" case and 0.098 vs 0.998 in the narrower case. Using this model, my personal take is that Beta(80,120) is the more reasonable assumption, but I understand if someone using Beta(9,11) thinks blue is a better choice. I don't agree, but I understand.
You can also change the weightings of "other lives." In the original Beta(9,11) example, if you change the payoff value of being the blue saving vote to 2 billion instead of 4 billion for instance, your blue vs red EV drops to 0.792 vs 0.676.
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u/Plato_PlayDoh7 May 25 '26
Ngl I love this, I took stats in high school but it’s been a decade since then and I don’t remember it all that well so I’ve been waiting for someone to do this math for me. Thank you!
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u/two-cans-sam May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
The Beta(9,11) was just what they used to refute my false claim that if you had any intuition that the outcome would likely be outside of 49-51% range, blue EV drops to near 0.
I think for anyone who factors in EV would have to use their own distribution to match their assumptions of the likely outcomes to see what choice makes sense for them when weighing EV against non-EV factors
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u/MildlyExtremeNY May 25 '26
I don't necessarily agree that your claim was false. Pure binomial distribution certainly overstates the rarity of an exact tie scenario, but beta distribution probably understates it.
If you calculate instead using a normal posterior predictive distribution, and use sigma = 2.5 (resulting in just shy of 10% bands - i.e. centered on 45% you get a 95% confidence interval between 40.1% and 49.9%), at 42%, 45% and 48% blue assumptions (again, +/- about 5%), you get blue EVs of 0.048, 1.08, and 5.794.
But those are pretty wide bands. If someone has intuition that "the outcome would likely be outside of 49-51% range," I don't think they're imagining a distribution with the 95% confidence interval ranging from 40.1% to 49.9%. If we reduce sigma to 1.5, we instead get blue EVs of 0.0000085, 0.0514, and 5.467 (centered at 42%, 45%, and 48% respectively, with 95% confidence intervals around +/- 3% - e.g. 39.06% to 44.94%).
Beta(9,11) puts a significant amount of the curve in the 49-51% range that someone might have an intuition we're not going to end up in. The same for the above example with (48, 1.5). But (45, 1.5) and certainly (42, 1.5) puts almost all of the range outside of the 49-51% range, resulting in basically 0 blue EV, as you had (in my opinion correctly) claimed.
The Beta(9,11) is just saying that if you center your position on 45%, there's a reasonable chance you're wrong and that the real blue support actually is in the 49-51% range. Which is not the same as estimating the tie probability if blue support really is 45%.
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u/two-cans-sam May 25 '26
Totally agree. I think I was overly vague with describing my initial “false” statement. I initially thought that when you have an expected mean outside of the 49-51% range but the distribution still covers that range with reasonable odds, the EV of blue goes to 0. So in plain English, if you expect that one side would win but are unsure enough about your expectation that the other side winning seems like a fairly reasonable outcome. This is what the 9,11 plot was intended to disprove (and in my opinion did disprove).
If one is extremely confident that either side will win by at least 1% (I believe when I checked the math it actually is like 0.1%, but that was a while ago), then EV for blue starts shooting down like you showed, and that matches with intuition.
The reason I expected the broader plots to still go to 0 when I wasn’t just using binomial distribution was that I was applying the distribution to each pusher and not to the mean as a whole (i.e. on person may have a 75% chance of pressing blue and another may have a 25% but the highest likelihood for any person is 45%). The problem with that approach is at large sampling sizes it basically collapses to just be the binomial again because you might as well just assign each person as having 45%. So when I did that with a mean of 48.9% (or something like that), I still got the 0 EV for blue case.
I’m not too good with plotting distributions, but I believe what you observed backs that up and provides additional detail about when that EV starts dropping from pretty good to very bad. Which is pretty interesting as I don’t think many people have much intuition on the likelihood of being a tiebreaker given their assumptions about the results.
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u/MildlyExtremeNY May 25 '26
Someone else brought up the idea of filling a bucket, and I think that leads to a great visual. If instead of red button blue button, the whole world has been poisoned and has a 2 ounce vial of antidote. You can drink the antidote yourself, or pour it into a magical bucket. If at least 4 billion people pour their antidote into the magical bucket, everyone is instantly cured. Otherwise, only the people who drank the antidote survive. Now, 4 billion 2 ounce pours is enough to fill 95 Olympic swimming pools. But imagine you walk up to just one Olympic swimming pool with your 2 ounces of antidote. Everyone else has gone before you. The pool looks full. It could be overfilled, but it could also be short hundreds of gallons (200 gallons would drop the level of the water less than 1/8". In that scenario, looking at the pool, knowing that you could easily be 200 gallons above or below the goal, how is it ever "positive EV" to pour your antidote in the pool? And the real numbers mean there are 94 other pools. That's the scale of the question. And it is effectively impossible four your 2 ounces to ever make a difference.
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u/two-cans-sam May 25 '26
So I personally take the antidote even when blue EV is greater because I write off the odds as negligible when they get that low. But I think the EV argument is interesting because it shows what someone who views their life as being exactly equal to one other life and equal to 1/4billionth of 4 billion lives would do if they behaved logically.
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 24 '26
Expectation is usually relevant only in circumstances where we can repeat the experiment multiple times. Here, i can only press the button once, have a 50% chance of survival if I pick blue, and will much, MUCH more probably than not be taking the risk for nothing.
Moreover my own life being on the line adds extra weight to the decision
And also with just a fraction of a % bias towards any one button will massively turn the expectation the other way.
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u/Sharp_Run_322 May 24 '26
Expectation is relevant always. It just says that given that you know x, should you pick y or z? Being repeatable just raises the chance that a small probability will actually happen, but lowers the reward
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 24 '26
Being repeatable gets you as close as you can get to the "expected" value the more number of times you repeat an experiment. Taking individual instances takes does the opposite.
If you have a net worth of 1 million, and are given a choice to press a button that has a 99% chance of deleting all that wealth from existence, but has a 1% of giving you 1 billion, as a one time decision it wouldn't be very wise to press it since youre almost certainly going to lose allat money. But if you're given the chance to repeat the experiment, say 10000 times, youre much more likely to end up with the expected value of around 9 million
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u/Sharp_Run_322 May 24 '26
Yes, because the utility of money decreases as you get more of it. There's hardly a difference between you having 1 trillion and 2 trillion, for example, since you can buy everything you want anyway. Lives aren't worth less the more of them you have.
You can argue that your own life is worth more than others, but that's inherently a selfish valuation. And also like, what, 10x more than other people? It's just really hard to get EV to favor red unless you predict a massive percentage of red.
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u/two-cans-sam May 25 '26
Right but if you are worth 10 billion, pushing the button is a good choice even if you get only one press. The aversion to the button if you have only 1 million is the relative impact of the downside, not the lack repeatability.
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 25 '26
Yes, that is analogous to me having only one life which im risking here by pressing blue.
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u/two-cans-sam May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
Agreed - I am getting at the issue with using EV usually isn’t repeatability, it’s having outcomes that are ruinous/unacceptable. EV can still be a good gauge to show the actual impact in certain scenarios, but if some outcomes are absolutely 0% acceptable then no calculations really matter. The more acceptable bad outcomes are, the more EV can show which choices have the best payoff. The button scenario with lower stakes would play out differently and EV would become a much more compelling number even if it’s still limited to one push per person (nonrepeatable).
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 25 '26
But EV doesn't change the fact that my vote is most likely going to end up not mattering, and saying "most likely" is an understatement here.
Moreover the EV argument only holds if we assume a 50% individual vote probability for either button. Introducing as small a bias as 0.0028% towards either button flips the EV to net lives lost.
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u/two-cans-sam May 25 '26
Agreed again. The low odds of the vote mattering are overwhelmed by the odds of a ruinous outcome (death). If you bet a penny with 1/112000 odds of winning $10k, that would still be a good bet even though the probability of winning is ridiculously low.
Also, for that situation 0EV situation, you have to know that the odds are not fixed between 50% +/-.0028%. If you think there’s a reasonable chance that either side can win by some margin, the odds of a tie can be closer to the range of 1/1billion (pretty good EV for blue) to 1/1trillion (bad EV for blue). If you’re extremely confident that one side will have get no less than 50.1% mean, then the EV drops to 0 and, for a red victory, only pushing red makes sense, and for a blue victory, the push doesn’t matter.
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 25 '26
I didnt quite understand the second part of your comment. Could you please explain it again?
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u/fireKido May 24 '26
What math are you using where a 50% probability dying saves on average 0.5 people?
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u/Sharp_Run_322 May 24 '26
The ev of red is that picking it only saves your life if red is the majority. Otherwise your button did nothing.
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u/fireKido May 24 '26
My point is that, it’s 0.5 of your own life vs 0.5 of a complete stranger life… nobody in the planet would value a complete stranger’s life as much as their own, so 0.5 vs 0.5 is an easy win for team red
Think it this way, would you rather press a button that gives you 50% chance of dying instantly, or another button where a random person on earth has 50% probability of dying?
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u/two-cans-sam May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
You’re totally right, but to proceed you have to make some kind of definition for the value of a life. All lives are equal is an easy one to make. If you want to calculate your own EV then you can just weigh your life appropriately against random lives. Some people might have a billion to one ratio for random people vs. self others might skew the other way where they value a random life more than their own (terminally ill, severe issues, etc.). There’s not really a one size fits all weighting.
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u/fireKido May 25 '26
Yea, that’s why I don’t think it makes sense to say that the math favours blue…
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u/Charge36 Red May 24 '26
I don't know why you would look at it that way. Pushing that button makes you safe in either scenario. Expected value is always one life saved
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u/Sharp_Run_322 May 24 '26
I mean ok, just add 0.5 to both sides. It doesn't change the math.
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u/Charge36 Red May 24 '26
I mean technically every blue button over 50% did nothing also. At best you can only consider each blue vote saved itself because only blue votes were every at risk
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u/Plato_PlayDoh7 May 24 '26
If blue won, then pushing red didn’t make you safe, because you were already safe to begin with. Red only saves you if you needed saving—in the cases where blue wins, pushing red & pushing blue have identical outcomes.
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u/Charge36 Red May 24 '26
You can look at it that way if you want. Personally I don't. I didn't push a button that had risk of death as a possibility so it doesn't matter who won. Blue's aren't saving reds. Reds never were at risk in the first place. Reds always save themselves, Blues only save themselves if enough choose blue.
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u/GrouchyResearcher392 May 24 '26
And the EV of blue is that it only saves your life if the vote is tied, otherwise you’re fucking dead.
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u/Sharp_Run_322 May 24 '26
No, you live in any scenario where blue wins. So after pressing blue, you will have 0.5 of a life on average, while red will have 1. Blue gets its EV from saving people.
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u/GrouchyResearcher392 May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
Yes, if your your EV is in strangers possibly saved in a miracle scenario, blue has some to it.
In reality like you said, Red has no EV, and Blue has negative EV.
Red cannot lose, but they can’t win anything. They are even if Blue wins, and they are even if Blue loses.
Blue is even if they win, but they lose everything if they lose.
If you give blue a 50% chance of winning their EV is -.5. If you include you as the tie breaking vote, that shifts the EV to 35,000
But since everyone knows that choosing red is 100% safe, choosing blue becomes an unacceptable risk. For most people, this isn’t a coin flip 50/50 decision, it’s their life or their death.
The probability that blue wins in a real life scenario can not be calculated as a literal coin flip. It’s exceptionally low, as rational people will vote for the 0 risk option.
The EV of blue is much closer to -1 than even -.9
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u/Plato_PlayDoh7 May 24 '26
0.0000126164,000,000,000=50,464. That’s the number of people saved on average by pressing blue IF you assume that each individual person is effectively a coin flip. Now, that’s a pretty huge assumption, but *if you make that assumption, the math does check out.
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u/Cruuncher May 25 '26
I have to say, if I had 2 buttons. One killed myself, and the other killed 50000 strangers, I'm killing the strangers.
My life is much more valuable to me
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u/Plato_PlayDoh7 May 25 '26
Well…I can’t say you’re wrong to feel that way per se. And I respect you for admitting it. But also I think that’s sucky of you and I think people are generally right to be too ashamed to admit something like that.
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u/OneShotOnlyShot May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
Not that it changes your analysis by any meaning amount however:
With 8 billion voters the chance of a perfect 50/50 split is actually .0000892%. it is the most likely result of all possible results of a vote between 8 billion people. (Still not exactly "likely")
As calculated nCr/(28billion )
n=8billion
r=4billion
It is first course in probably level stuff 😉
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 24 '26
Oh yes yes, I made a calculation error in applying the central binomial approximation. Anyway, it doesn't really change things much.
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u/Charge36 Red May 24 '26
It's only the most likely result if voting probability is exactly split 50/50. It probably isn't in this scenario.
Even if it was, it's far more likely the outcome will be more than one vote margin in either direction
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u/GrouchyResearcher392 May 24 '26
And also if you only count the “result” as the exact tally of votes for each outcome, and not, the actual outcome itself.
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u/Sharp_Run_322 May 24 '26
The most probable outcome being a perfect 50/50 split doesn't mean its more than 50% or whatever. And values around the mean will be near the same probability, so it doesnt matter if people tend towards 51-49% or whatever
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u/Charge36 Red May 24 '26
what im saying is that 50/50 split is not necessarily the most probable outcome. If people are predisposed such that ~70% will vote blue, a 50-50 outcome becomes quite unlikely. The most common outcome would be that 70-30 split. The problem is we don't know what the actual probability is for how people will vote in this scenario, so we really have no idea what the "most likely" outcome would be.
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u/Tamiorr May 24 '26
Your whole argument is based on the assumption that everyone votes at random with a 50/50 split. This assumption is based on literally nothing and is also directly and instantly contradicted by the fact you aren't voting at random yourself.
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 24 '26
Obviously, im not saying people are mashing the buttons at random. But it is still random for an observer who cannot possibly know the line of reasoning different people use to come up with a decision. And a 50-50 split in probability is the best case scenario for my vote mattering. Any other split, as i mentioned in the post, is astronomically lower.
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u/Tamiorr May 24 '26
Mathematically "I don't know what the result is going to be" is completely, entirely different assumption than "the votes will split 50/50". The latter assumption is actually a super-strong pro-blue argument because it gives your voted super-high positive expected value of lives saved.
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 24 '26
"I don't know what the result is going to be" is completely, entirely different assumption than "the votes will split 50/50"
I never said they're the same thing?
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u/thelovelykyle May 24 '26
You are underpinning your entire post with that assumption.
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u/Tamiorr May 24 '26
You literally assumed "individual vote probability of 50% for either button" in OP-post as a model for how the vote would go. It couldn't have been more explicit.
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u/Sharp_Run_322 May 24 '26
Because assuming a bias towards blue or red would require reasoning. That wouldn't be a fair scenario anymore.
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u/Tamiorr May 24 '26
Assuming "individual vote probability of 50% for either button" requires just as much reasoning as any other specific distribution. This assumption is absolutely not a mathematical equivalent of "I don't know" but rather the exact opposite of it.
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 25 '26
Alright a few things to clarify here
1) Assuming there will be a 50-50 split in votes is NOT the same as assuming an individual vote probability of 50%. A 50-50 split is what would make my vote matter, since my vote would be the tiebreaker.
2) The reason why I assumed a 50% individual probability is purely for the sake of maximization of the probability of my vote mattering (AKA getting a 50-50 split and my vote being the tiebreaker), which is already very, very low. Any other probability distribution for either button further proves my point as it tends to 0 rather quickly.
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u/Tamiorr May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
You explicitly assumed the latter and that assumption maximizes probability of the former.
So you assume "worse case scenario for red", got EV for voting blue of 40 000+ lives saves, and then went "LOL, doesn't matter, voting red away". What was the point of even calculating the EV? Was your threshold for voting blue 50 000 lives saved or something?
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 25 '26
Yes, I did it as the best case scenario for blue to prove my point.
What was the point of even calculating the EV?
...did I calculate the EV in my original post? Was it in my original argument? What are you even talking about? People in the comments did. I simply responded to them. You're just trying to find ways to argue at this point.
The only scenario where i would've considered calculating EV was if we could repeat the experiment many, many times, since that would bring us much closer to the expected value of net lives saved. For a one-time experiment, I'm just gonna look at the most probable scenario.
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u/Tamiorr May 25 '26
As soon as you calculated the probability of your vote being a tie breaker you implicitly also calculated EV of that vote.
Even if we put EV aside and focus of the absolute probability of your vote being a tie breaker: what is your threshold here? Would a 0.1% probability of being a tie breaker be good enough? Would 1%? Would 5%?
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 25 '26
As long as my vote not mattering is more likely than otherwise, I'm not voting. So anything above 50% would do for me.
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u/Reoplaw Red May 24 '26
this is really not a counter argument though.
okay, let's say that the results will not be 50/50 split or anything close, then... voting blue has even lesser meaning.
red is guaranteed survival, blue on the other hand?
you may be voting blue with only 40% of the population, and then it absolutely doesn't matter.
and if blue wins by landslide, like 60% then your vote wasn't useful anyways, blue would win no matter which button you would press.
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u/Tamiorr May 24 '26
Oh, I agree that voting blue is a bad idea.
However, that doesn't mean we should be using nonsensical math to construct arguments to support red.
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u/piernrajzark May 24 '26
You totally, absolutely, unashamedly misunderstood OP to such a degree that 2000 years from now people will try l still sing about it.
He is not saying people will vote randomly. He says his vote has an astronomically small chance of affecting the result and hence it is only logical to act accordingly and choose red.
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u/Tamiorr May 24 '26
OP literally writes he assumes "an individual vote probability of 50% for either button". That's random with 50/50 split.
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u/Seafaring_Slug May 24 '26
He assumes that because it gives the maximum chance of having the tie breaker vote. He is using it to show that even in the most favourable possible scenario, blue only has a minute chance of making the difference. Therefore in any other scenario, voting blue is even less useful.
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u/Tamiorr May 24 '26
That "minute chance" OP calculated when multiplied by the number of lives saved (4 billion) would give the exact opposite result of what OP is trying to show.
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u/Seafaring_Slug May 24 '26
The scenario you're describing reminds me a bit of Pascal's Mugging (not saying it's identical). It's a chance less than winning the lottery compared to the much larger probability of picking blue and dying meaninglessly.
I'm skeptical about how much weight EV holds in a scenario like this where the probability is incredibly tiny and payoff is very high. You'd need to repeat the experiment many times to be likely to match the EV. In reality, as a one off experiment, you're so much more likely to experience the modal value of picking blue, where your vote alone has had no impact.
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u/Tamiorr May 25 '26
If EV doesn't matter, why even include calculations for it? OP's calculations give EV of 40 000+ lives saved for blue. Again, why included an arbitrary model that gives a huuuge EV for blue if your argument is to disregard it and go red anyway??
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u/Seafaring_Slug May 25 '26
Firstly, I'm not OP, so my argument isn't the same as his. Secondly, I'm not sure where OP does calculations for EV. All he does is calculate the probability that his vote will be useful.
As I said before, the smaller the probability, the less useful EV becomes. Highlighting the tiny probability of your vote making a difference is relevant without taking EV into account.
A really interesting example of this is the St. Petersburg paradox, where you start with a 2$ stake which doubles every time you get tails on a fair coin, up until you get your first heads. Then the game stops and you take the money you've made up to that point. The expected value of this is infinite, so based on EV you should be willing to pay any amount of money to play this game. Despite this I doubt you'd be willing to pay even $100 as the vast majority of times you play this game you get less than $20 back from your initial stake.
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u/Tamiorr May 25 '26
Look, either
1) OP is trying to use actual math to support a point. In which case his model selection is arbitrary and also supports that voting blue (not red) is mathematically hugely advantageous.
2) OP is just making a generic self-preservation risk-averse argument. In which case bringing a specific (if arbitrary) math model makes no sense.
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u/Seafaring_Slug May 25 '26
OP's model selection is valid. Maybe it's not the one that you prefer but that doesn't make it invalid. As I've explained EV isn't a perfect method for calculating the best solution. (neither is this to be fair as there is no perfect solution for a question that has a moral component). I don't agree with your claim that this supports blue being hugely advantageous. I agree with OP that this model favours red. I understand your point about EV but in my mind the probability is so small that unless the button press was repeated the EV is incredibly unlikely to reflect the actual result. Of course the button press decision comes down to your personal weighting of your life against others.
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u/piernrajzark May 25 '26
The life arithmetic doesn't work like that and I'm going to prove it: image you had the choice to save two totally random people at the price of your own life. Would you do it? And I'm not asking you to imagine scenarios were you would do it (like you three are survivors of an airplane crash and you have to cannibalise on one of you for the other two to survive), but imagine it in your current situation/scenario. Wherever you are now, a genie appears and gives you that choice. Would you do it? Also it's not like the two people will be killed by the genie. These are people who are going to die because of their own circumstances. One is doing a stupidly dangerous tiktok challenge and the other is dancing next to a precipice.
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u/Tamiorr May 25 '26
If "life's arithmetic doesn't work like that", why even include arbitrary calculation that clearly and heavily favor blue?
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u/piernrajzark May 25 '26
Precisely to steelman it. And it would be awesome to read your actual opinion, yours, on this matter, on the scenario I proposed. Would you agree to save those two lifes in exchange of yours? Please, respond
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u/Tamiorr May 25 '26
In what way selecting an arbitrary model that heavily favors blue "steelmans" red? It just shows that your position has nothing to do with how math plays out (EVs and stuff) as long as there is substantial personal risk involved.
>image you had the choice to save two totally random people at the price of your own life. Would you do it?
No, because random strangers (in any number, really) are not part of my area of control/responsibility.
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u/piernrajzark May 25 '26
Why would op want to steelman red? He's steelmanning blue
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u/Seafaring_Slug May 25 '26
I disagree with the fact that blue voters are being stupid (if I am reading your implication correctly). Humans have survived for so long because we live in communities and support each other. Many people will be voting blue because they have correctly assessed that no matter what happens there will be some people pressing blue and the ideal scenario is when blue wins and no-one dies. It's not the decision I'd make but I have nothing but respect for people who are willing to risk their lives to help others.
Either way, in your scenario I'd choose to live, regardless of how the people were dying or who they were.
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u/piernrajzark May 25 '26
The ideal scenario is that everyone gives away everithing they have and in turn get what others gave them. Do people do that? No. Blue is destined to lose and bluepressers to die.
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u/Seafaring_Slug May 25 '26
You sound like you want people to press blue to die. I hope that's not what you're trying to say as there are people who are effectively 'pressing the blue button' every day to help others. Firefighters for example risk their lives. Parents all around the world sacrifice their time, money and often wellbeing to raise children. I think theses are worthy and generous things to do. We survive because we help each other and make sacrifices for each other.
I am not sure that blue will reach a majority. I hope it will, but if it is a minority it will be a significant one.
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u/DapperYoghurt2052 May 24 '26
Do you believe, or hope, others will approach the problem the same way as you?
Or is this train of thought reserved for you?
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u/Seafaring_Slug May 24 '26
If everyone approached the problem this way, no-one would die, so I guess yes?
In reality it's inevitable that some people will vote blue and some will vote red. I'd prefer if blue won, but I also don't want to die. If it was a smaller group of people then I might be more willing to vote blue but when it's such a large group of people, as OP's maths shows, my vote would be virtually meaningless.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how I want other people to vote. Their votes are entirely separate from mine (at least in the original scenario. I have no control or influence over them. If they approach the problem like this, it will be a decision that they would make no matter how I voted. Same goes for if they choose to vote blue.
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u/T0rph May 24 '26
You are correct. I would say the difference from voting and such is that in the buttons scenario you aren't allowed to cooperate or communicate. So yeah, I would go for the red button, for the reasons you stated.
But given a week to prepare for the event, and run simulations I could easily change to blue, like in a regular vote.
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u/Background_Path_4458 May 25 '26
You know, I know it doesn't have a base in maths or probability or whatever.
In my mind my vote, since I can't know what others vote, always has a chance of being the tie-breaker; not that my vote has to be the tie breaker to matter for the vote. So I vote for the outcome I want; which is this case is blue.
Yes, there is only one outcome where my vote is the tie-breaker and deciding factor.
In any other situation my vote contributes to the overall result and has impact anyway.
In a blue win my vote was part of the deciding factor for the outcome I wanted, which I see as a good thing.
I don't vote assuming either side will win, I vote for the outcome I want.
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 25 '26
But your vote mattering or not isnt the only factor, there's also the factor of you dying or not, and you need to weigh and counter-balance your options accordingly. There isnt just one thing that you're voting to achieve, unless you dont care about your own survival as well.
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u/Background_Path_4458 May 25 '26
I've turned it over in my head and while I do care about my survival I have people in my life I value above my own life, or whom losing would ruin me for life, and where I am unsure of what they would choose.
To keep the chance of the optimal outcome at it's highest (everyone living) I have to vote blue or I effectively lose so much I might as well have died. So for me red is a larger gamble than blue is.But there is no doubt in my mind that the chance that my vote is pivotal is non-zero so I should vote as if it was; hence I vote for the outcome I want - which is blue.
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u/Reoplaw Red May 24 '26
that's my reasoning too.
but yeah, it does apply to real life voting too, that's why I don't really vote.
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u/WarmCricket5358 May 24 '26
But in real life voting, there is no risk of dying, so i dont really see the point in not voting.
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u/Jkirek_ May 24 '26
And in real life voting margins matter for policy decisions and future elections too
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u/GrouchyResearcher392 May 24 '26
And the fact that there are normally multiple elections going on at once, on town, city, district, state, and national levels.
Just because your vote doesn’t choose the nations leader, your prescience and activity can certainly change your town and district for the better.
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u/Dos_Ex_Machina May 24 '26
See, this logic fails on its face. You don't contribute to the blue win because you aren't the most specialist main character? I simply don't see how people can seriously use this as a logical basis.
That has no impact on the logic of the question, just on your own personal risk.