As I see it, nobody here has yet to receive any money on this game.
I’ll take what I can get.
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Nope, there’s a 25% of $100 million. Four possible outcomes of pressing the green button twice, and only one of them is a win-win.
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No, that one only let you press one button once.
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Red gets you a million, green gets you fifty mil half the time, zero the other half. You get two presses, so you get $1mil the half of the time the green button gives you nothing, and $51mil when the green button pays off. (same as green-red)
Which is nice, and it is the second best in terms of making sure you get something with a chance of a much bigger prize.
The green then green or red depending is the best in terms of maximizing the potential winnings and still making sure you walk away with “something” (and $1mil is honestly a whole lot more then something for almost everyone). This is almost unarguably a better choice then “red-green” because the minimum winnings are the same both in terms of dollars and in terms of chances. It has the same chance of winning $50m or $100m as the red-green has a chance of winning $51m, so maybe it gets you $1m less or maybe $49m more (equal odds of both). So red-green is only better if you really have something you want $51m for and don’t care about maybe getting $100m.
Arguably red-red has something going for it as well (100% chance of $2m which might be better then getting between $1m and $100m because $2m for sure may be more useful).
Green-green is only good for people that don’t care about a mere $1m. Oh, or who just love to gamble, I mean if you get $0 twice you still get a rush!
(and for the record, I’m team “green, red if loss, green again on win”, aka team “pay off my house, buy a nice car, and put the rest into retirement/rainy-day-slush fund for sure…and 50% never need to work again”)
Should we work out what do with three presses now so we can just slack tomorrow?
Green, Green, Red if both lost/Green again on any win.
Obviously. Feel that sweet sweet rush. And yet, don’t end up with nothing.
Assume that right now I have got $0, no fortune. So any amount of money I could get out of the game (except $0 which won’t change my situation) has a huge utility for me.
So I’d press first the green button. If the first press results in $50M I’d press the green button again. Because now that I have $50M one more $1M will have greatly decreased utility. While $50M more doubles my fortune.
If first press nets $0 I press the red button because I have got $0 and that sure $1M still has a huge utility.
I walk away with either $1M, $50M or $100M.
Alternatively I could press red button twice and be savvy in my investments. $2M can go a long way.
I don’t think these puzzles comprehend real poverty. A sure two million dollars? I wouldn’t hesitate and it’s a little distressing that the puzzle assumes I would. I feel like the people who engineer these concepts are disconnected.
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I can’t find the “Twitter Thread”. Just random comments. I am Twitter illiterate, however… Illtwitterate: is that a word?
I have no idea what the optimal button presses would be. My brain tells me press green then red.
It’s a trick question
The right answer is it doesn’t matter what we pick, or whether we pick anything, because no matter how we respond we actually get nothing
The real probability of getting $1 million is zero
The real probability of getting $50 million is zero
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Do you mean, in real life? 
Sure, it’s a hypothetical game.
But within the hypothetical game, as long as the people running it aren’t wrong or liars we have a 100% chance of getting $1 million for hitting that button. Unless I’m thoroughly misunderstanding things.
Hmm.
I think I would press the green button first. If I won the 50 million then I would press it again. If I got nothing then I would press the red button, for a guaranteed 1 million out of this whole affair.
One million would change my life a lot, so I’d want to be sure to grab it no matter what. Fifty would also change my life, and sure, may as well go for fifty more at that point.
Before pushing the buttons I would also want to check if this is actually some other theoretical button game in disguise: are there side effects to me pushing these buttons such as “a stranger dying”, who might also be the last person who pushed the buttons, is this actually a trolley problem in disguise, if I asked the button’s operator if she always lied, would she say “no”, etc, etc.
So it is. According to prospect theory, most people would hit the red button twice in a row. It’s two million guaranteed. A percentage of people would press red and green. There are rare people who would press green twice. Even if the probability of not winning $50 million was lower, the red button would still be chosen more. Whoever will make the choice has a point of reference (which is usually their financial condition). The green button offers fifty times the value, but it’s a choice seen as “risky”, which encourages “loss aversion”. Losses hurt us twice as much as gains make us feel good, I read this in an article published in 2018. That is, if a person presses green and doesn’t gain anything, he will probably press red right away. She will enjoy the $1 million, but will regret twice as much not having won the $50 million.
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Best Twitter tread ever!!!
Yeah, I think this approach can be generalized for 80% of the population for N available button presses: Green for N-1 presses, Red for the Nth if all are losers, else Green.
for the best chance at the most money, green then red as people have mentioned, since at worst you get 1 million and at best you get 100 million.
for the best chance at guaranteed money, red then red, since you get 2 million dollars for certain.
I had an interesting thought last night. Let’s say you had a 75% chance of winning 50 million. Do you experience a greater pain if you press that button and don’t get 50 million because the odds were higher? Like if I press it and win I experience euphoria; if I press it and don’t win, I experience dysphoria. If the chance of winning increases, does my brain try to evaluate the amount of pain I will experience if I choose to press it and lose? I mean if I knew it was 90% certain to get 50 million, maybe pressing the green button twice would be acceptable. Except if I lost both times, I’d REALLY feel like an idiot. If it was 25% chance of winning 50 million, would I feel like so much of an idiot? Not really. It wasn’t likely to happen anyway.
I see the lines of people wanting to buy into billion-dollar lottery tickets. But the world would be much happier with a thousand million dollar winners than one billion dollar winner.
I would be ecstatic with a million dollars. I’d be a bit more ecstatic with 50 million dollars. But not twice as happy. That button shouldn’t be about getting more money, but about getting more happy.
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