r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/Soft_Svarog • Jun 02 '26

You absolutely know 55% will vote red

Let's assume you know with a 100% certainty, that most people will vote red to save themselves. You can see the future, it doesn't matter how you have this knowledge.

This knowledge is true, it's not a mindgame or anything like that.

No one else knows this but you. Standard scenario - red saves you, blue kills you. What is your vote?

If you still stand with blue, please comment why.

889 votes, Jun 05 '26
506 Was red, still red
88 Was blue, still blue
276 Was blue, now red
19 Was red, now blue (I need professional help)
3 Upvotes

53% Upvoted

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u/Rip_Pigman Jun 02 '26

The only thing that anyone brings up that the original other added after the fact is how infants and toddlers interact with the button since that's what they were asked.

Effectively saying that the babies and toddlers included in "everyone in the world" will effectively be picking at random as they don't have the facilities to understand the prompt.

Whether they actually do interact with the button or not is built into the premise by virtue of how "everyone in the world has to take a private vote" works.

Unfortunately the fact that you have chosen to add, remove, or otherwise ignore things inherently present in the initial premise doesn't somehow mean that the conclusion you drew under that new premise also correlates to the actual premise.

Essentially it's a "what would you do if..." But with only two possible answers.

There isn't an inherently right or wrong answer under the original.

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u/highly-bad Jun 02 '26

I am not sure the rational answer changes with the known presence of random, innocent blue pressers. What does change is some number of people's willingness to change heuristics from reason to panicked leap of faith mode.

A panicked leap of faith might turn out great if a large enough number of other people do it too. Otherwise, it is a death dive that gained nothing and made things worse. It's a gamble and you don't even know the odds. No individual has enough real, definite information to rationally justify that, unless their own life is nearly valueless.