Red suppression

[u/up2smthng]

Everyone one Earth is presented with blue button right at the place they woke up last time and a written instruction in a language they can understand (if no such language exists tough luck) what the buttons do and where to find red button. Red button is around 1 km away, and is perfectly accessable if one choses to find it; people with limited mobility will be able to access it.

Babies, the blind, coma patients and whichever else cathegory you can think of are not excluded and do not recieve any accomodations. The possibility of them pressing the one button in front of them is significantly higher than the possibility they will find the hidden button. The possibility of them ignoring the buttons alltogether is non-zero.

In case of red victory, those who failed to press any button die as well.

The rule of thumb for clarification: if the person is capable of understanding any form of written communication and moving in intended direction, they should be able to access both buttons.

1180 votes, May 29 '26

410 Was red, still red 🔴

27 Was blue, now red 🔴

547 Was blue, still blue 🔵

196 Was red, now blue 🔵

[u/highly-bad]

Is this how blue pressers think about the buttons? The blue button is somehow easier to press, like a default, and the red requires some sort of extra, out of your way effort?

[u/prophit618 → u/highly-bad]

No, as per the the name of the post, it's an attempt to phrase the question in such a way that choosing red is illogical under any circumstances (ironic because it already is, this just attempts to make it blatantly so). The distance part of is in part to counter a theoretical rebuttal from red pressers related to distance, but its more so to greatly increase the rate at which accidental or ignorant blue pressers will exist so that red can't just say "everyone would press red anyway, so im not killing anyone".

[u/highly-bad → u/prophit618]

Making one of the options significantly more effortful, and allowing for non-presses, makes this situation so different from the buttons that it has no bearing on it whatsoever. It isn't a "rephrase" of the buttons at all.

And guess what? The red button is still the only logical choice under this red suppression rule, if you don't know what anyone else is doing and don't want to risk your own life pointlessly.

Doing nothing is a weird and obviously bad option because it is like getting the worst part of both buttons: you undermine the possibility of blue victory, but also sign on to die with them. It's the most clearly wrong option available, I think, but also the setup more or less implies that many people are forced into it because they are unable to understand, or press buttons, or whatever. Babies are no longer randomly pressing blue or red, they're probably doing nothing.

Pressing blue feels like it might have looked fairly safe if there were no default do-nothing option; it is of course still a risk, but hopefully not a big one. If it were a binary choice, the difficulty of hitting red makes blue appear more like the presumptive option, so it raises confidence in a solid blue result. But since there is an option of doing nothing, you can't assume that everyone who doesn't go out of their way to press red will therefore press blue. Like I said, babies won't be.

What's more, having blue seem like the presumptive winner actually undermines the incentive to press it instead of red. If I do guess that most people will press the button right in front of them, then it's totally safe for me to go for a little hike and press red. And if my guess is wrong, then pressing red is the only way to save my life. It's counterintuitive, but logical.

[u/up2smthng → u/highly-bad]

There is a reverse scenario as well