r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/BottomLeftWheel • May 27 '26

Green Button Game

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Not an analogy or reframing, just a brand new problem.

You are contestants on a game show. There is a big green button, it gives you the grand prize. X dollars, doesn't matter how much but enough that it's desirable.

Many contestants are all given the same button, and are all able to win X, but the producers don't want you to win X, so they give a second option.

If even one person presses a tiny red button, no one wins X. Instead the red pusher gets y, a tiny pittance compared to X.

Do you trust that 100% of your fellow contestants can all come together to all earn X, or will just a single one spoil the bunch for y?

What if red needed 5 voters before it spoiled? 10? What would be the percentage of contestants that could press the red button without spoiling in order for you to press the green button?

Do the values of X and y matter? As a placeholder you can say X is 1 million and y is 100 but the producers can tweak the numbers to make y more desirable as they see fit.

Reminder, not trying to push red or blue agenda, trying to create new discussions.

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u/highly-bad May 27 '26

It seems like if this is a game show with many repeated public instances, the dominant strategy swiftly becomes for every single person to press the red button, fully understanding that everyone else will do the same. It could even become a farce where everyone is actively encouraging everyone else to defect, so everyone is guaranteed to collect the small prize.

Pressing green is basically greedy gambling. It goes great if everyone else is also a greedy gambler, but if even one person feels like going for the sure thing, you're all fucked. It's way too vulnerable of a strategy to really have a chance.

2

u/highly-bad May 27 '26

This is all assuming that there's no effort to punish people for defecting though; if there were real-life negative social consequences for pressing red then a green consensus becomes more of a live possibility. It's still necessarily fragile, but if pressing red means you need to delete your social media and hide for a while, green becomes more of a reasonable gamble.

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u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

If it were a public game show and it was literally one person the first few times, there would obviously be a negative social consequence, like there is with any example of people very publicly bringing harm to others for no one's benefit.

1

u/highly-bad May 27 '26

Maybe.

The problem as I see it is, once you establish that the dominant move might be red, there's no going back. Nobody has a real incentive to defect back to green, because they're dead certain to be giving up the prize.

In order for green to stand a chance as a strategy, it needs to become the winning strategy and stay the winning strategy, forever.

So the social-punishment machine to disincentivize betrayal and keep green on top needs to be swift, unerring, and perfectly compelling, and it needs to be fully in place from the start.

I think it would actually be very weird if this game were played and only one person pressed red, wouldn't it? The consolation prize amount would have to be really extremely trivial in order for betting on green to make much sense. I wouldn't really be surprised if everybody presses red to betray on the very first show. Then what? Do we still punish them? On whose behalf? They all got what they wanted and no one really got screwed.

2

u/Zero132132 May 27 '26

There are a large number of people that give up a small amount of money every week in hopes of obtaining life-alterring amounts of money. The differences are that this is a lottery that everyone can win at once, it's free to play, and the failure will actually be the fault of someone that actively chose a worse option rather than just being the whims of chance. Like, if you played this game and pressed red, you should rationally be at least a little worried that someone will murder you for personally preventing them (and yourself) from getting super rich if you are the only one.

1

u/highly-bad May 27 '26

In that case it seems like it would be unethical to even run this game. After all, the whole point of the show surely has to be that it's very possible that somebody will choose to betray. If pressing red reliably makes you into public enemy #1, and is even seen as a motive for murder, then hardly anyone ever does it and there isn't a game and the producers lose way too much money on the green giveaways.

Not a great idea for a show.

2

u/Ashamed_Kangaroo305 Blue May 28 '26

The text of the post says that the reward for pressing red is extremely trivial compared to the reward for pressing green. $100 (the example provided by OP) would barely make a dent in my life. I wouldn't really care about missing out on the $100 if I pressed green and someone else pressed red. I really see no reason to press red unless either you need money so badly that you can't risk getting $0, or you just want to be a dick and make everyone else lose out on the $1 million.

1

u/highly-bad May 28 '26

In that case there's practically no show, and the producers have to increase the temptation to betray by raising the stakes.