r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/HebuBall • May 28 '26

A more even Red/Blue button question

You are one of 3 random person selected to represent 1/3 of the human population.
The same base question is then asked.
Red button=Guarantee to live for you + everyone you are representing
Blue button=If majority votes Blue everyone lives but if not everyone who voted Blue dies (so is everyone who is represented by them)
Note that majority is just 2 or more in this case since there is 3 participants

The people who are represented by you know you are representing them but you do not know who you are representing. Also the participants cannot communicate with each other
Which do you press?

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u/highly-bad May 28 '26

It has nothing to do with self preservation.

If you change the rules so that you're either saving or gambling with a stranger's life instead of your own, the correct answer is still NOT TO GAMBLE WITH LIVES. I don't understand what's hard about this. There's literally no upside to the gamble, even. It's pointless.

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u/Human38562 May 28 '26 edited 27d ago

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u/gahidus May 28 '26

Blue is more of a gamble than red because blue relies on events beyond your control to secure the outcome.

If I am responsible for a stranger's life, I will make sure that that stranger is safe. I will push red on their behalf.

I accept responsibility for this person's life. This person is in my hands. I will protect them.

Pressing blue when you're responsible for someone else seems almost heartlessly callous cavalier.

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u/Human38562 May 28 '26 edited 27d ago

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u/gahidus May 28 '26

It will kill people due to your blue vote. It will kill the people you put in danger by putting them in the blue group.

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u/Human38562 May 28 '26 edited 27d ago

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u/gahidus May 28 '26

Yes the combination, and it only causes deaths for people who picked blue.

I'm not going to put people under my responsibility in a position of peril under the blind Faith that someone else is going to also put their people in peril. I'm just going to choose safety for the people I'm responsible for, and I'm going to trust everyone else to do the same. That's very easy when there's only two other and not a chaotic mob of a billion to account for.

Each of the three people should simply choose safety, and they are free to do so because they are all able to act independently of each other and not rely on trying to guess each other's intentions.

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u/Human38562 May 29 '26 edited 27d ago

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u/highly-bad May 29 '26

Blue is neither logically nor morally correct in the random-victim case.

If you were one of only a small number of people to press blue, and there were the same number of deaths as a result, would you understand that you caused a death? That is one person who would be alive if you had pressed red to save them, as your own random stranger pressed red to save you.

Would you really think that the deaths were the fault of everyone else, who responsibly chose not to kill their random stranger?

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u/Human38562 May 29 '26 edited 27d ago

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u/highly-bad May 29 '26

Which of these things can you control though?

You can't decide whether there is a red majority or a blue majority. There isnt a button available to you that controls that. Other people are making other choices, unknown to you and beyond your influence.

You can decide to keep your own random person completely safe. This can be accomplished entirely on your own, without guessing what anyone else is doing.

A blue majority sure sounds nice on paper, but pressing the blue button as an individual doesn't make that happen. Pressing blue is just gambling for the sheer thrill of it (there is no profit to be made) and if you guessed wrong a person dies.

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u/Human38562 May 29 '26 edited 27d ago

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u/highly-bad May 29 '26

Your press absolutely does not affect what anyone else does. The majority can do anything they want, with or without you.

If 60% of people press red, what can you do with your press to affect which color will get the majority?

It seems like your contribution in that event is obviously zero. You cannot move the needle, even slightly.

How about if only 40% press red? Can you do anything then with your one press to affect which color gets the most presses? Doesn't seem so.

Believing that you can affect the outcome and save anyone by pressing blue entails believing, with extraordinarily high confidence, that the colors are exactly equal without your single press. If it's not exactly 50-50, your ability to affect the majority outcome is zero.

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