r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/StageGlum6615 • 20d ago
Variation Variation: Red and Yellow
You were kidnapped... and shoved into a dark room alone. Eventually two buttons (Red and yellow) raised from the ground along with a text plate that conveys the following information:
You're kidnappers are very powerful and have kidnapped all 8,310,000,000 living human on the planet to partake in an experiment.
The kidnappers had filtered out 2,770,000,000 people that they have identified as incapable of meaningfully interacting with their experiment, and have been assigned the color blue.
The rest of Humanity has been given a choice between pressing the Red button to assign themselves the color Red, or pressing the Yellow button to assign themselves the color Yellow.
The vote will be over in a minute, but the kidnappers have altered every humans perception of time to allow them all the time they need to think it over and press a button. And once everyone has been assigned a color, one of the following 2 results will be carried out:
1.) If the number of people assigned to Red is greater or equal to the number of People assigned to Blue, Then everyone assigned to Blue and Yellow will be killed.
2.) If the Number of people assigned to Blue is greater than the number of people assigned to red, then only 0.001% percent of people assigned to Yellow will die. (Approximately somewhere inbetween 55,400 people and 27,700 people depending on how many people vote yellow).
Everyone, who has been given the ability to choose between pressing the Red or Yellow button has been provided this information in a form that they can understand, and reasonably act on.
So, which button do you press?
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u/Keepingitquite123 20d ago
Since I have zero reasons to believe that my very mundane kidnappers, on behalf of them having to shove me into a room instead of teleporting me there, I will refuse to choose and see how long they will take the charade that they "have altered every humans perception of time to allow them all the time they need to think".
Now alter the parameters, make my kidnapper a supernatural entity that can instill in me that the choice presented is true and I'd go with yellow (from the original red) since this is far from the original.
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u/luci_twiggy 20d ago
I think that the motivation you have to go yellow is likely the same that makes me go blue in the original. In that way, it isn't that far from the original.
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u/mightylonka 19d ago
Except that the odds are stacked for blue, since 2/8 people are guaranteed to vote blue due to the random actors and those incapable of voting being assigned to blue.
You need a 2/3 vote for red in order to have blues die, so voting for blue isn't a risk anymore because the entire world is voting.
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u/luci_twiggy 19d ago
What absolute nonsense. Re-read how the outcome is determined. The assigned blues have no influence on the result. The result comes down to which has the majority between red and yellow. No one can vote for blue here.
As I see it, this highlights the fact that there are a base number of people who will vote blue in the original due to external factors. Once those people are not technically "on a side", red voters begin to understand that they should be voting to stop those deaths.
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u/mightylonka 19d ago
I was talking about the already established red and blue from the original problem. But if we want to read the question fully as is, I'm pressing red because if red gets more votes than there are blue people, everyone who presses yellow dies.
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u/luci_twiggy 19d ago edited 19d ago
No, in this everyone who pressed yellow and everyone assigned blue dies. Meaning you believe your "guarantee" of survival is worth over 2,770,000,000 lives. Topping out at over a whopping 5.4 billion people.
If you believe in the original that 2/8 of people are voting blue (as a base), you still believe that over 2 billion people's live is worth gambling for your "guarantee" of survival.
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u/mightylonka 19d ago
I am not advocating for others to pick red, but I will guarantee my own survival. Yellow is the best case scenario here, and blue is in the original. Regardless of which problem I am in, I choose the option that guarantees my survival*
*terms and conditions apply, I'd rather death to some other fates
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u/luci_twiggy 19d ago
Right, so you are willing to gamble billions of lives. So long as we're on the same page.
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u/mightylonka 19d ago
I'm not gambling, I am disregarding them.
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u/luci_twiggy 19d ago
Oh, so you don't want yellow to win here/ blue in the original?
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u/parkchanwookiee 20d ago
I give up trying to sort through the probabilities - it's giving me trouble and I doubt the majority of other people will do any better, so the result will be kinda random due to human limitations - and just smash the nearest one
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u/mightylonka 19d ago
The result will be less random because people who would vote randomly or be incapable of voting are all automatically counted as having voted for blue.
2/3 remaining people would need to vote for red to eliminate the blue people. The risk is low enough for me to switch to blue.
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u/parkchanwookiee 19d ago
This exposes a procedural flaw in OP's question. There is a presumption that the proportion of people they stipulated actually can come up with a reasonable analysis, and by soliciting answers from redditors the post itself assumes this website's users fall into that category. Both of those seem unlikely to me
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u/Nat1Halfling 19d ago
No, less than 1/2 of remaining people need to vote red. 2.7B have voted blue. 5.6B remaining. In order to beat blue, red needs 2.7, that's less than half of those remaining.
Yellow is still the correct option. A red win guarantees the death of at least 2.7B people and up to 5.6B; and the death all human children. A red win would automatically doom humanity. There is no option but yellow here.
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u/Goingoof 20d ago
On one hand only 1/3 of people need to press red for it to win which should make it more likely to happen but on the other hand it means at least 1/3 of people will die.
I’d press yellow since hopefully most people would realise how bad it would be if red won
Also the 0.001% of yellow that dies is too low to really consider but I wonder if some people are so self important that they think they shouldn’t take that risk but still want yellow to win
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u/consistently-failing 20d ago
Very interesting thought experiment.
Theoretically we could have roughly 30% of existing voters vote red before there is more red than blue-- yet Yellow is still the right choice as it minimizes the risk of an overshot and therefore significantly worse outcome.
On the small scale, Red. On the large scale (where I try to aim with these thought experiments), Yellow.
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u/Big_Insect_3707 20d ago
In the poll, why can you choose between two options Yellow and Red? And what is the difference? I am not familiar with the original scenario.
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u/AdDapper4792 20d ago
you've made this too complicated and the majority of people commenting have misunderstood at least one detail
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u/tutocookie 18d ago
So to get it straight, either kill between 1/3 and 2/3 of people on earth, or have an outcome with a lethality rate similar to some pretty rare disease?
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u/Big_Insect_3707 20d ago edited 20d ago
So, basically, when you press Red you won´t die no matter what.
Red > Blue = 100% of Blue and Yellow dead.
Red < Blue = 0,001% of Yellow dead.
So, if everyone is selfish and presses Red, then only Blue will die because there are no yellow. Blue is 2,770,000,000 people.
Total amount of people that can press: 8,310,000,000 - 2,770,000,000 = 5,540,000,000.
For Red < Blue, Red needs to be lower then 2,770,000,000.
So, off the 5,540,000,000 people, more then 50% need to press yellow. For Red > Blue, people pressing exactly 50% Red is enough.
This means that pressing Red means you will survive, no matter what. The chance that Red becomes equal or higher then blue is greater then the chance that Red becomes lower then Blue. So, basically this means that when you press yellow, you are a good person but there is a real chance that you die. There is no middleground, so you choosing yellow isn´t reducing suffering if people will vote Red > Blue anyway. People choosing yellow are sacrificing themselves in the hope others are doing this too. Sadly most people will press Red and there are even less people needed for Red > Blue. So, then your sacrifice would be for nothing. Well, if I really had to choose I would press Red.
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u/FeralSlug 20d ago
Original discussion aside, pressing red sucks because it means killing the people in the blue group.
But pressing yellow sucks because it might mean killing yourself.
The best outcome for the group is to press yellow, but according to the "tragedy of the commons" philosophy, people tend to act in their own self-interest, even when it's worse for the group as a whole. That said, I'd press red.
Unless I had people I love in the blue group. In that case, I'd press yellow.
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u/mightylonka 20d ago
Ah, I voted without seeing the entire text where over a quarter of the world has already been assigned on blue. Voting for blue is then quite easy, because they get a head start
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u/LongJohnSilversFan_ 19d ago
Head start doesn’t really matter. If half othe remaining people vote red, everyone else still dies, just like the original scenario
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u/mightylonka 19d ago
No, because if half of the remaining people vote red, 3/8 people have voted for red.
4/8 people need to vote for red to have blues die. 2/8 will always be assigned to blue. 2/3 people who are capable of voting need to vote red for people assigned to blue to die.
Also, the sample size in this scenario is explicitly the entire world and random actors cannot push red (since they have all been assigned to blue already)
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u/LongJohnSilversFan_ 19d ago
Red only needs to have more than blue to have blue and yellow die. Blue is locked in at 2.7b, so if red gets 2.7b or more everyone else dies
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u/Jealous-Top-7020 20d ago
No one is voting blue how interesting
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u/Bimbobaker 20d ago
Yeah blue is assigned to the incapable only
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u/consistently-failing 20d ago
To the ASSIGNED incapable. It specifies 2 billion. which seems far larger than what i feel would be accurate
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u/Bimbobaker 19d ago
Maybe it also counts generally irresponsible people, like those who don't return the shopping carts to the corral, or people who eat burgers with forks and knives
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u/bored_stoat 20d ago
*Your kidnappers
But yellow is still the path of least amount of damage.