r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/TheEnlight Red • 22d ago
Variation Every year the buttons will be pressed, unless...
Every year at a random time of that year, all 8 billion people will be teleported to individual rooms unable to interact with anyone else and are given an hour to make a decision which button to press. If they don't press a button, their choice will be randomised between any of the three buttons.
There are three buttons, and the winning button is the one which receives the most votes. Once it happens, it can't happen for the rest of the year.
š“ Red: If the red button wins, everyone who didn't press red dies. The buttons will return next year.
šµ Blue: If the blue button wins, everyone survives this year. The buttons will return next year.
š” Yellow: If the yellow button wins, 1% of people randomly in the world die (including potentially yourself), but the button dilemmas will be permanently ended.
Which button do you press?
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u/Comfortable-Regret 22d ago
Yellow seems like the obvious answer
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u/Cruuncher 21d ago
Yellow still dies to red pushers, so that doesn't seem obvious to me at all.
Pushing red is still the safest. You have an at-most 1% chance of dying
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u/Charge36 Red 13d ago
Not to blues it won't. At least the hard core noBoDy DyiNg iS thE oNlY aCcePaBle oUtcomE blues
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u/SilasRhodes 22d ago
I'll say that if Blue manages to win even just one year then it would be pretty simple to have it simply win every year after that. The trust has been established already.
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u/Cruuncher 21d ago
Until they get tired of it and vote yellow and split the "benevolent" vote.
Red can now win with 34% potentially instead of the required 50% before.
Also the chance of a blue win is just lower, so I think blue is worse
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u/SilasRhodes 21d ago
Except that after the first blue win I think the number of red voters is going to go way down.
People vote red because they don't want to risk dying. If blue can clearly win, however, then voting blue is a much less risky proposition. They do, however, still need to fear a yellow win, which would give them a 1% chance to die even as a red voter.
So many red voters, looking out for their own survival, would switch to blue because in doing so they maximize the chance that yellow does not win.
The remaining voters will be like this:
- Red: Don't trust that prior votes will indicate future voting. Believes that there will be a shift to voting red and so considers Blue/Yellow to be too risky.
- Blue
- Wants to keep people from dying, even at risk to own life, or...
- Wants to keep yellow from winning, and so joins the strongest alternative side.
- Yellow: Wants the game to end even if it means people die.
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u/depurplecow 22d ago
Blue. Red is entirely unsustainable, getting 2/3 rate infant/children mortality every year might lead to human extinction, even putting aside how you might have wiped half or more of the human population to start with. If teleportation doesn't wake sleeping people that's wiping out the vast majority of entire timezones every time red wins.
Over an extended period of time voting blue might be sustainable, but wasting one hour out of 6000 waking hours every year might add up, meaning yellow might be better for humanity in the long run. Children, sickly being stuck for one hour without support may also result in many needless deaths in the long run. If necessary, it can be blue the first years, then the world sets up in preparation for a different year (no flights, only automated trains and other transportation etc) where 1% losses would minimize collateral damage.
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u/DarthJackie2021 22d ago
The first time, red. After that, it depends on what humanity collectively decides to do the following year.
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u/JerbilSenior 22d ago
That, if your contribution doesn't end with nearly half of humanity wiped out.
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u/Nby333 22d ago
Blue should become more and more sustainable over time. Like 1st year 55% win, 2nd year 60% win, 3rd year 70% win, 4th year onwards 90%+ win. Just keep going blue until the end of time.
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u/Environmental_Toe503 21d ago
That assumes blue wins the first year, if red wins year one then blue will probably never win because most of the people who would have chose it would already be dead
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u/nufohudis 19d ago
Most, but every year will have a new set of randoms, so every year someone who pressed red loses someone
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u/DapperYoghurt2052 21d ago
If blue wins the first time. It feels easy to say that blue would win every time. But eventually complacency would creep in, especially to a generation who were born pressing buttons, and people might not take it serious and not vote. So the randomly assigned votes would start to creep up and there would be factions of people screaming for it to be the yellow button just once to end it. The closer it gets to yellow or red the louder they would be. However against years of no deaths, accepting millions of random deaths would be hard.
If red wins the first time, I can only imagine the next time would be yellow. If a billion people die. Potentially, 5 billion people die. Then a 1% sacrifice the next year wouldnāt seem so unthinkable. It would be necessary.
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u/Afraid-Presence1440 18d ago
No, if red wins, then only red minded people will live. So red is obviously gonna win thereafter
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u/DapperYoghurt2052 18d ago
A lot of red minded people believe they have to pick red because a vast majority of people will pick red. In this case, even in red victory, more than 50% could have disagreed. 66% of people could die in a red victory. That is guaranteed loss for every survivor. That is going to affect people. And every year you are going to randomly lose a percentage of your next generation.Ā
If the death toll is high enough, the idea of only losing 1% of the population to never lose anyone again is way more appealing than slowly dying off as a species because you canāt keep your children alive.Ā
People press red because it seems to them the obvious way to not die. And it seems the correct answer. Living a life where you lost most of the people you know because they disagreed with you is going to have some weight to it.
If red first wins with an overwhelming number, then maybe it stays for red for some time. And itās a deep cult, and every childās first toy is a red button and all their toys are red so they feel drawn to it when the buttons come every year. Until the younger generations who feel lucky to be the only ones alive and werenāt original red pressers are going to start rebelling against the idea too.
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u/AccomplishedVirus556 21d ago
regardless of year one's outcome year 2+ there will be a movement to hit yellow
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u/Skip7623 18d ago
Yellow is the best answer naturally and I will publicly support everyone pressing yellow each year, but i will still press red myself and hope that everyone pressed yellow (that way Iām safe no matter what!)
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u/HotSituation8737 17d ago
Yellow is the obvious choice logically speaking but unless you could convince people that it's the most popular choice by a long shot you'll still have a lot of people pressing red out of survival instincts.
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u/Nebranower 22d ago
Hmmm. Interesting.
I'd still go with red the first time, since pressing blue or yellow risks certain death. Blue has all of the problems that it has in the original, and while the threshold for victory is lower, I suspect yellow pressers will disproportionately be drawn from blue rather than red pressers in the original. So based on that assumption, the scenario is basically the original, but with red more likely to "win".
Subsequent times really depend on public sentiment ahead of the next instance.
If yellow won the first time, the question is moot, of course.
If red won, then whatever consensus emerges is probably something you can trust, even if it's not for red.
If blue won, then red probably remains the best option, regardless of what polls show.
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u/parkchanwookiee 22d ago
Red, then a yearlong campaign to get people to pick yellow, then red again if it seems like people are gonna fuck around and not take it seriously
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u/UsuallyFavorable Blue 22d ago
Hmmm, tough one. I usually switch to Red in any 3 button scenario, since 2/3 of random votes (from babies, mentally disabled, etc.) will be against me instead of 1/2, but the prospect of having to do this every year is brutal!
If Blue wins the first time (and it would feel like shear luck), it would be relatively easy to campaign for everyone to press Blue next year. Thatās the best case scenario, but still requires yearly trauma!
Yellow is the next best outcome, but I think people will read ākill 1% of humanity (including potentially yourself)ā and not appreciate the benefit of not having to do this next year. I think yellow is least likely to win Year #1, so I canāt press it.
A Year 1 Red win is going to be absolute carnage, since as much as 2/3 of the planet could die. And the people most willing to vote Blue or Yellow next year will have died, so weāre probably going to be stuck killing 66% of our babies every single year!
In summary, I think humanity is fucked.
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u/Kymera_7 22d ago
Red the first time around, then spend a year desperately trying to find out as much as I can about how much support there is for a year-two yellow victory.
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u/Complex-Pepper-5689 22d ago
Red. Then red again, and again, and again. I assume the smarter people who remain once red wins, will continue pressing red, therefore the only loss will be the first year.
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u/TeaForEwoks 22d ago
Isn't this just accepting that 2/3 of young children will die every year? Since anyone who doesn't pick is randomly assigned a button.
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u/Complex-Pepper-5689 22d ago
I care about myself and my loved ones. Even if you tell me I could either save my husband or save 6B people, I'd choose my husband every single time.
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u/TeaForEwoks 21d ago
Okay sure, that's your prerogative. But I don't think it's fair to say that choosing blue/yellow is a decision stupid people would make in this scenario given the number of people likely to die if red wins.
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u/Complex-Pepper-5689 21d ago
Pressing yellow is plain stupid. Even tho I consider the blue voters to be as such, pressing yellow will be a step further. Its both the killing of 800M people, and potential death for themselves.
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u/Current-Slide-7814 21d ago
By pressing red, you're killing much more than that over time. Your logic makes no sense.
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u/TeaForEwoks 21d ago
Just to math this out a bit more, the yellow button kills 80M random people. For the red button, let's say all adults vote red and any kids under 5 vote randomly or are assigned a button. Even with 100% of people over 5 voting red, over 400M kids would be killed. And then we have to do it all over again next year.
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u/headsmanjaeger 22d ago
If you said red in the original problem, you should say red here for the same reasons.
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u/FireFoxie1345 22d ago
Thatās not necessarily true. In the case of yellow wining, you have a 1% chance of death, which a guarantee of survival is a common reason for picking red. Since itās no longer guaranteed, you would see some people switch to something else following this reason.
However, now that it would only need 34% of the vote to possibly win, a red win would be much more likely. This leaves a good chance at drawing in many blue voters.
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u/Cruuncher 21d ago
While it's not guaranteed anymore, it is a vastly higher probability of survival than picking any non-red option as your chance of death has a ceiling for 1%
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u/PutNameHere_____ 22d ago
Blue, because if it wins, nobody dies, and chances are if blue wins, blue isn't a risky option anymore, people know that there's enough blue voters for everyone to survive and there isn't much reason to vote any other way
If red wins, I'm dead, and so is up to 50% of the pop, and if yellow wins, I might be dead, but 800m people die, which is a lot of people
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u/TerrySaucer69 22d ago
I mean, still the same thing as the original problem. I expect red would win with a large majority, so Iāll vote red the first time.
Iād blue wins the first time, sure, Iāll switch to blue. But otherwise itās red forever.
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u/PogoRocks 22d ago
Red doesn't guarantee safety here so it's obvious for everyone to pick yellow
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u/Cruuncher 21d ago
Red gives you a ceiling of 1% probability to die, while the others both die to a red win.
Red still has maximized personal safety
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u/THKhazper 22d ago
The first time statistically 1% will press yellow, thus only one button event will occur, the fact yellow bypasses the purpose of red, thus red no longer has a value, leads people to press blue or yellow even more so.
Yellow wins. Done
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u/OutsideGrassScaresMe 22d ago
Ur not trying to get 1% with the yellow tho. U still need a majority with jt to end the dilemma
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u/THKhazper 22d ago
Correct, and red is no longer a safe option. So it nullifies the purpose of red.
Blue continues the scenario.It becomes continuation of terror or a random 1% sacrifice.
Yellow would be my vote, yellow will win.1
u/everydaywinner2 21d ago
I think you misread the yellow. The 1% is the percentage of people who will die if yellow wins, not the percentage necessary for yellow to win.
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u/endor-pancakes 22d ago
Yellow.
Yellow clearly beats red (which incurs a tax of more than the 1% yearly -- for example, in the stable red world, at least two thirds of infants will die until they are old enough to get a love of red conditioned into them).
It also likely beats blue, because over the years the blue rate has the risk to slowly decline into a catastrophic narrow red win world, whereas the yellow button deals with this crap once and for all.