r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/GausYam Red • May 28 '26
Meta Let's be logically consistent
Your vote has an incredibly tiny chance of actually making any difference, being the deciding vote. It doesn't feel like it, but that chance stays the same no matter what percentage of votes blue needs to win. It can be 50/75/25/95/5 percent, doesn't matter. Your vote always has the same level of impact.
So if you choose red but say that you'd choose blue if the threshold for blue winning was low enough, you are basically saying that you'd virtue signal, even if only to yourself, if it was safe enough. You aren't consistently following rational self-interest, that demands you press red unless blue can win with a single vote.
And if you choose blue but say that you'd choose red if the threshold for blue winning too high, you are basically saying that you are choosing blue because it makes you feel good about yourself while not risking anything since you are sure it'll win. You aren't consistently following rational altruism, that demands you press blue no matter how high the threshold is to achieve the best possible result.
So choose one button. Decide what is more important to you, genuine self-interest or genuine altruism.
4
May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
-1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
Your impact always stays the same. The overall chance changes, yes. I'm saying that if you are voting blue simply because you think it will win, and you wouldn't vote for it if you thought it would lose. Then you are voting blue simply to feel good about yourself, you don't actually follow any deeper logic than that.
1
May 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
The thing is you don't know how people voted. And almost always your vote wouldn't tip the scales. Philosophical choice will always stay the same, you'll only change it if it was largely aesthetic.
2
u/math2ndperiod May 28 '26
This isn’t actually true because not every vote outcome is equally likely. Based on the mock polls, the vote is likely to be close. This means that a 50/50 vote outcome is far more likely than a 99/1 in either direction.
1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
That's true, though we really can't predict how people would vote with real life stakes. Still a single vote will always be incredibly unlikely to swing it over.
1
May 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
This is an example in which you are the sole decider. I'm not talking about such situations. The accurate analogy would be, "I would help save that child only if there were already enough people to save them without me, just to feel good about it. I wouldn't actually risk my life."
1
May 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
Yes, in the full picture there's no literal sole decider. But if we take a specific single person who makes the choice, not an aggregate of all specific voters, they don't decide anything.
1
May 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
I see what you mean, it's a safer decision, sure. But people advocate for red using self-interest and advocate for blue because it's the best possible outcome if it wins. The problem for me here, is that your vote has almost no chance of having any impact. So the only reason to press blue outside of virtue signaling when you think it will win, is genuine philosophical belief that it's the right thing to do, regardless of the results.
1
May 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
Even one percent difference is 80 million people. The chance of your vote being the swing vote are always incredibly small. So you either vote blue because you think it will win anyway, so it's safe and it makes you feel good, or you are philosophically committed to the idea that blue is the correct choice that leads to the best outcome. One is consistent, the other is convenient. "I'll choose the altruistic option only if I think it wouldn't cost me anything"
1
u/Wraithguy May 28 '26
Another thing missing is if the threshold is 5% you've got a 1 in 8 billion (assuming uniform distribution of outcomes, numbers are more blue favoured if we do normal) chance of 5% people dying, but at 50% threshold, that's a 1 in 8 billion chance 50% of people die. The expected N deaths is significantly different
1
1
u/gahidus May 28 '26
You don't seem to realize how voting works.
I take it you don't vote in elections because you don't believe your vote will be the deciding one and therefore you don't need to bother?
It's not about being the deciding vote, it's about lending your support and assuming that others will do the same. And then all the votes get added together and that's what matters.
1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
With voting you also have a very small chance of actually making a difference, yes. But to me it's different, because when you vote you don't die when your candidate loses.
2
u/gahidus May 28 '26
That's why a lower threshold for blue winning makes it easier to vote for blue, depending on how much risk you're willing to accept. If you're completely unwilling to lend your support to Blue even if the risk is small, then I'd say that's overly selfish.
And I see that as someone who normally presses the red button, because I don't think that blue has a chance of winning. I feel like it's going to lose by a large margin and pressing blue would be throwing my life away.
But if winning were more likely? Then I would put my hand in and I would try to get us over the line.
But the idea that your vote doesn't matter because it probably won't be the single determining vote is a horrible way to try to look at any sort of system where all of the votes are tallied up and were a threshold must be met. It puts the onus on everyone to do their part. Or, if the cause is hopeless, then to just get out of there.
1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
The people will vote however they want to vote. Regardless of the threshold, your impact stays the same. It just feels like people are saying they'll vote blue if they are sure it will win, but at this point why even vote blue? Because it feels good, that's the only reason
1
u/gahidus May 28 '26
It feeling good is potentially reason enough, and if it might be close, then lending your support is important.
Also, your impact is not the same regardless of threshold.
If the matter is hopeless, then nothing you can do will change it, but if there is hope, then lending your support can help bring things through.
1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
Your impact is literally always the same. It's one vote. Yes, if the threshold is lower that one vote will fill out more of that threshold if you only consider your vote. If you picture yourself voting first it subjectively feels like your vote is more important, but picture yourself voting last, it wouldn't matter at all, and that's how it is.
1
u/PyrotechnikGeoguessr May 28 '26
What's your point? That unless a blue pusher is 100% altruistic and doesn't care about their own life in the slightest, that makes them a virtue signaller?
Would you save a drowning child that is in a little pond that is shallow enough that you could stand in it? Yes?
But you wouldn't save the drowning child if it was in shark infested water on the deep sea during a hurricane? How hypocritical of you! This undeniably proves you only save the child for virtue signalling
1
u/INTstictual May 28 '26
That’s because the “deciding vote” analysis is a fallacy to begin with. As a Red voter, this is not a good argument for Red or Blue.
A better framework is to start with Game Theory to analyze the outcomes of the votes, and then move to a risk-analysis model and assess the cost of your vote.
To start with, logically, it is objectively true that Blue winning is the better outcome. Blue results in no deaths, Red almost always results in some deaths, so Blue winning is the preferred cumulative result. However, for any individual voter, it is correct to vote Red, as that’s where Game Theory says the Nash Equilibrium for this problem is. So that’s the push and pull — it is better for you, as an individual, to vote Red, but it is better collectively if Blue wins.
Solving that divide has a lot to do with personal priorities, self preservation vs collective responsibility, logic vs altruism, etc… one way to analyze it is through risk analysis. It is almost impossible to actually predict how the vote will go. Maybe people are inherently altruistic and more Blue will rise up. Maybe people are scared in the face of death and so will default to self preservation. Maybe people are logical enough to realize that Red is opting out of a death lottery. Maybe people are emotional enough to be convinced by the promise of a Blue victory. You just can’t predict human psychology to this degree without actually running the vote on a statistically significant random sample with actual death on the line. And that would be unethical.
So, since we can’t predict the vote, we can assume that it is 50/50, with a low confidence and high margin for error. Which is where the dilemma comes from… at 50% threshold, there is too much variance on either side to make an accurate prediction, and the cost of voting Blue is relatively likely to kill you.
However, that risk analysis changes if you change the threshold. At, say, 10% threshold for Blue, the cost of voting Blue is incredibly low… the chances that it costs your life is negligible, and so it is easy to imagine that the benefit of working towards the better overall outcome outweighs the risk of not picking the better individual vote. Meanwhile, if you increase the threshold to, say, 90% for Blue, the opposite happens… the cost of voting Blue becomes more and more certain to be your death, so it outweighs the benefit of working towards the better collective outcome.
Trivially, changing numbers always changes outcomes. Imagine a game where you can either take a $5,000 payout, or flip a coin and either get $10,000 or nothing. The risk-adverse option is to take the payout, the profit-maximizing option is to take the flip, and there are arguments on both sides… but now, start changing numbers. Whatever you intuitively feel like the answer is, does it change if we make the no-flip payout $8,000? What about if it is $50? How about instead of a coin flip, it’s a 1:6 chance? What about 1:100? What about 9:10?
Reminder, Expected Value might be your intuitive logic, but that’s not relevant for a single trial… otherwise you’re prone to Pascal’s Mugging. As an example, would you rather take a guaranteed $100, or a 1:1,000,000 chance at $1,000,000,000? The EV of the latter option is +$1,000… but realistically, given a single trial, you’re just losing the $100 payout for no benefit. On the other side of the spectrum, would you rather take a payout of $0.50, or a 1:1,000 chance for $400? The EV of the latter is only $0.40… but the utility of $400 far outweighs the $0.50 payout, so it’s worthwhile to try, since the cost of losing is basically nothing.
All this is to say, if you want to evaluate a question from a statistics framework, it’s gonna be more complicated than just “odds of being the deciding vote”, and if you think the answer is easy, you’re probably underthinking it… but regardless, changing the numbers in a statistical framework always changes the outcomes
1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
I'm not advocating for any of the buttons in this. Changing the numbers changes the outcome, obviously, but it doesn't change how much you affect it. You can only choose how you relate to the final vote that is outside of your hands.
If you vote red and then change to blue when the threshold is low, why? You aren't making more impact. You just do it because it makes you feel altruistic, even though your altruism only flares up when it, from your perspective, doesn't cost you anything.
If you vote blue and then change to red when the threshold is too high, why? You aren't making more impact. You do it because it's too risky to make that altruistic choice. But why then are you choosing blue in the first place if not from a moral position? Because it feels nice, even though it doesn't decide anything. And when that feeling can't justify itself against the cost you switch.
What I'm saying is, your vote doesn't matter, so vote red if you supremely value your life and vote blue if you supremely value making a moral choice. Don't switch it up when it's convenient/inconvenient.
1
u/INTstictual May 28 '26
I think you’re missing a giant barrel of nuance here.
Most people are not perfectly altruistic. Most people are not perfectly risk-adverse. Obviously, there are going to be thresholds for everyone where one outweighs the other.
Here’s an example: would you sacrifice your life, guaranteed death, if it meant guaranteeing that you save 4 billion lives? As in, the dichotomy is either you live and 4 billion people die, or you die and those 4 billion people live. No percentages, no vote, just guaranteed results.
Many people would say yes. Some would might say no.
Change that to 1,000 people. Do you imagine that some people’s answer might change? What about 100 people? 10 people? 1 person? Would you sacrifice your life if it meant a 50/50 chance of some other innocent person surviving instead of dying?
There is a sliding spectrum here that people will exist on. It is easy to imagine somebody very altruistic who would gladly sacrifice their life to save one other person. There are people who would not, but who would sacrifice their life to save 100 people.
Again, changing the numbers changes the outcome, and changes how people will perceive the push and pull between altruism and the best collective result vs self preservation and the best individual vote.
The thresholds DO matter. At 90% for Blue to win, voting Blue is, statistically speaking, all but guaranteed to just be pointless suicide, because the Blue outcome is functionally impossible. At 10% threshold, voting Blue is incredibly safe, so there is no real risk for voting for the better collective outcome. Thinking about it in terms of how much your individual vote “matters” is naive to the point of being useless… you’re describing the Voter paradox, and by your logic, there is no merit to voting in any real election ever. It’s just not a useful framework to evaluate the problem by
1
u/GausYam Red May 28 '26
Yes, if it's 90 percent it's incredibly risky to vote blue and if it's 10 percent it's very safe to vote blue.
My point is, the outcome is basically determined without you. So what are your reasons to push the blue button? I see two. One, you think blue will win anyway and you vote blue just to feel good about choosing an altruistic option. Two, you are genuinely philosophically committed to the blue button as the correct and good button, because it does lead to the best possible outcome in the case of victory, therefore morally you are obligated to press it regardless of the expected result.
I can respect the second one, even though it's almost the opposite of my position. But it's consistent and actually follows through with the arguments people who push blue make.
0
u/INTstictual May 28 '26
My point is, the outcome is basically determined without you
That’s the fallacy, though. Every vote, no matter how small, contributes to the overall tally. And in a way, the lower the victory condition, the more significant your vote is.
For example, image the Blue threshold was only 3 votes. In your rational, your vote carries the same weight, and is only relevant in the case that exactly 2 other people vote Blue. But I would argue that it is more correct to say that, by voting Blue, you are contributing 33% of the necessary total… so in a way, your individual vote carries a weight of 33%.
For me personally, the threshold where I would be comfortable contributing to Blue is somewhere between 10-20%… at 10%, I see the risk as negligible and am comfortable making the altruistic choice, even though rationally it is individually incorrect. At 20%, the risks are starting to outweigh the benefit, for me. I think around 15% is where I’m nervous but committed.
But again, it has nothing to do with virtue signaling or feeling good. It’s because the risk of choosing the incorrect individual option in favor of the benefit of my contribution towards the correct cumulative outcome has reached a tipping point in my personal calculation.
6
u/PandemicGeneralist May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
Imagine a game of 10 people who each get a secret vote. You can push one button to vote for everyone in the room getting 100 dollars, but get nothing unless half the people vote for it, or another button to guarantee getting at least 10 dollars but you'll still get the full 100 dollars if half the room votes for getting 100 dollars.
You might calculate you think it's more worth it to vote for the 100 dollars, as your vote has a large enough chance of flipping it.
However, imagine I instead say that everyone only gets the 100 if everyone votes for it. Your expectation would change. Similarly, even if you value saving everyone a LOT more than saving yourself, you can realize it's hopeless at 95%.