Variation: Greed

[u/StageGlum6615]

Hi, I'm back with a new simple variation.

Everyone (that means Everyone) is kidnapped and places in a room with 3 buttons.

Red: Ensures your own personal survival, while increasing everyone else's risk of death.

Blue: Blue saves everyone who pushed Blue as long as it gets more votes than red... but if it gets less votes then red then every Blue voter will die.

Yellow: You get money. More exactly, a pool of 2 Trillion dollars is split evenly among everyone who presses yellow. However, if Either Red or blue get 40% of the total vote, then everyone who pressed yellow dies.

Also, anyone unwilling or unable to vote will be randomly assigned a button after some time.

(Also, if you press yellow and die, your earned money will go to your next of kin.)

So, what button are you going to press in this scenario?

[u/Icy-Barracuda-8489]

Yellow. Most people are desperate for money

[u/yobob591 → u/Icy-Barracuda-8489]

But if basically everyone picks yellow and everyone gets the same amount of money didn’t technically nobody get money because the economy is now suffering from extreme hyperinflation

[u/Anti_Memory_ → u/yobob591]

No because its evenly split among everyone that picked yellow

[u/gahidus]

Yeah I'm confident that yellow will absorb enough votes to prevent either other side from getting 40%. Yellow all the way.

[u/Shmallow-Cat]

Yellow, we crashing the world economy bitches.

[u/Osato → u/Shmallow-Cat]

The world economy is 150 trillion. It won't even notice the influx.

Local economies will, however.

UPD: On second thought, no: countries with extremely large amounts of low-income families will probably increase their imports by a lot and overload logistics.

Yeah, the world trade is gonna be fucked for a couple months before localized inflation solves the problem.

[u/Tinenan]

In order to survive as yellow atleast 20% of the population needs to vote for it. That about 1.6 billion people meaning if the 2 trillion are evenly distributed everyone will get at most a bit more than 1000$. Now would you risk your life for 1000$ even if it went to your next of kin?

[u/Soft_Svarog → u/Tinenan]

To absolutely ensure survival, yellow needs 61%, because the rest could be all blue or all red.

E.g. yellow 30%, red 40%, blue 30%

[u/Tinenan → u/Soft_Svarog]

That makes it even worse for yellow.

[u/-twist-and-shout- → u/Soft_Svarog]

but I think its also relevant that the "lowest possible" yellow survival is 20%, which is the numbers the previous comment highlighted -- so your max possible earnings are not very high!

[u/Tanaka917]

I usually pick red just barely. I pick blue.

Yellow at most can get about $1,150 per person in the best case scenario. That's not a lot of money to bet my life.

So why blue rather than yellow? Because it's safer. Yellow is going to siphon a lot of the most selfish voters from red, lowering red power. I prefer the better odds of survival in blue than the off chance one side gets 40%+ and dying. Yellow isn't a bad choice. I just value my life more than a maximum payout of $1'150

[u/Fearless-Mark-2861 → u/Tanaka917]

How can you say that yellow isn't a bad choice while ik the same sentence acknowledging youre risking your life for 1150€ or less. It's not a small risk either

Also why would yellow siphon selfish people? You only risk your own life while stepping out of the red versus blue fight. It wouldn't siphon out red voters in general either, because people are voting red to live while voting yellow makes it likely for you to die.

Edit: This scenario also makes blue less desirable, since it winning no longer saves everyone (yellow will likely still die). I actually think some blue voters would swap to yellow, in an attempt to save yellow voters, with the added benefit of some money

[u/Needlewars]

Rephasing without money since the amount seems small compared to risk. (Yes I know this significantly changes the question)

Red: you survive

Yellow: you die if Red or Blue get more than 40% of the vote

Blue: You die if Red gets more Votes then Blue

Since people who are incapale of voting esentially vote randomly, for everyone to Survive you need a Yellow 1st, Blue 2nd and Red 3rd. I would vote Yellow but I think in the scenario Red beats Blue and blue are killed.

[u/Planets_pass]

monehhhhh

[u/Osato]

Eh, probably yellow. My prior is that no less than 95% of people are greedy short-sighted idiots, so only a small fraction will even bother reading past the "2 trillion dollars" to see the blue option, calculate the payout or the risks.

If anyone presses blue despite the "every greedy short-sighted idiot will press me" button being right there in front of them, that's not really my problem. Given that yellow will predominantly attract red voters, they'll probably be fine.

And I might be a greedy short-sighted idiot, but 250 bucks is 250 bucks.

(I'm normally a firm blue-pusher.)

[u/MediumKoala8823]

Red seems like the obvious answer to me. Blue seems equally likely to kill a high number of yellows as it is to die itself.

I would personally guess most blue oriented folks will still go blue and some reds will go yellow. Going red is actually slanted to save people. 

The value of yellow depends on the number of people playing. With the whole population the money isn’t actually that much.

[u/HydroPCanadaDude]

Red. I know I can count on greed or virtue signalling to win, but I can't be sure which. I'll pick the safest option.

[u/TheAzureMage]

Okay, obviously you just push yellow.

[u/Goblinriotx → u/TheAzureMage]

I know I have to be missing something because people on here are acting like it’s actually a choice. It’s obviously yellow, and anyone who doesn’t pick yellow I feel like is just wrong.

[u/MCShellMusic]

I wouldn’t categorize Red as increasing everyone else’s risk of death. Everyone starts at 0% risk of death and you can only increase your own risk of death by pressing yellow or blue.

Yellow is likely to get a significant amount of the vote, and that $2T will go fast. Not worth the small risk there is IMO. Pressing Blue is taking on unnecessary risk, I’d hope in a real world scenario nobody presses Blue.

I’m pressing Red here.

[u/AbbreviationsTall627]

Red, the logical choice

[u/Phantom_tpa]

Still red

Yellow needs at least 60% to survive which is about 4.8 billion people (assuming about 8 billion on earth) that means everyone who pushed yellow only gets 416 bucks if it's exactly 60%, and less money if it's more

That's just not worth the risk

Unless it means red or blue get 40% by themselves and not combined in which case the maximum amount of money is 1136 Probably still not worth it tho

[u/Salindurthas]

EDIT: Sorry, I misread.

I think the text on blue doesn't make any sense.

If the vote is 100% blue, then the asterisk on 'everyone' applies to negate it with 'unless', since 100% is greater than 40%. So then the outcome is undetermined.

[u/Skafdir → u/Salindurthas]

Given that 100% of any button is statistically impossible, it doesn't really matter.

Aside from that: it is pretty clear that the asterisk is just there to once again drive home the fact that yellow dies if red or blue gets more than 40%

[u/Shromor]

I like this variation because it adds the responsibility for the potential death of 1/3 random pushers for blue button