Live data from Hacker News

The Evolution of Trust

ncase.me

21–30 of 81 posts

Re: The Evolution of Trust

#21

This is by far one of the coolest things I've seen on this site. Informative, engaging and educational. Would be very keen to learn more subjects through this method.

What makes it even cooler is that code and assets are on GitHub and released to the public domain.

https://github.com/ncase/trust/#play-it-here-httpncasemetrus...

Re: The Evolution of Trust

#22
post #18

I've read it multiple times, I still do not understand the simpleton strategy...

Essentially, the simpleton is treating your previous move as either a reward or punishment.

If you cooperated, then the simpleton thinks the thing it did last time must have been good and does it again. If you cheated, the simpleton thinks the thing it did last time must have been bad and does the opposite.

It follows these rules based on its last move even if that last move was flipped from what it should have been due to the chance of mistake.

Re: The Evolution of Trust

#23
post #13

Wow that is extremely insightful. Now I understand why globalisation is dangerous; if people start to favor short term relationships (both personal and business) with many different partners (smaller number of rounds per match ), then society will evolve to become full of cheaters.

Interestingly enough, seemingly to compensate for this phenomenon, almost every new platform that requires people to interact with each other has a built in trust and reward system with ratings (e.g. Uber). And for physical businesses, we have things like Yelp. We are effectively trying to anticipate our opponents behavior through a trusted intermediary. There was a Black Mirror episode on giving every person on the…

Trust, however, is not a miracle drug.

For one thing, people can build trust with the intend to abuse it after a longer period of time. An abuser, for example, could plan to offer 20 "good rides" on Uber until s/he strikes. For another thing, many people have learnt to skillfully simulate trust which may pose a problem for you. For instance, you may believe to be in a loving relationship but all of a sudden you find out that the other person isn't interested in you at all and just didn't want to be alone etc.

Re: The Evolution of Trust

#24

Wow that is extremely insightful. Now I understand why globalisation is dangerous; if people start to favor short term relationships (both personal and business) with many different partners (smaller number of rounds per match ), then society will evolve to become full of cheaters.

There was a tremendous amount of social technology that had to be developed to allow people to regularly interact with strangers without trying to kill each other.

EDIT: Which is to say, a global community of 7 billion is absurd but not all that much more absurd than a city-state of 50 thousand.

Re: The Evolution of Trust

#25
post #9

Of course, this all breaks down when you have a cartel :) I recall in one of the major prisoners dilemma tournaments, the winning entry was actually a coalition of users who would use the first few moves to establish a code for membership in the cartel, and then one entry was the master while the others were slaves. The slaves always cooperated and the master always defected, to their victory.

The eye!

Re: The Evolution of Trust

#26
post #5

This is by far one of the coolest things I've seen on this site. Informative, engaging and educational. Would be very keen to learn more subjects through this method.

Nicky Case has a lot more where that came from :D http://ncase.me

Wow. I played "we become what we behold" just last week. I had no idea it was the same author. I'm gonna check out the rest now too!

Re: The Evolution of Trust

#28
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More notable to me is the premise of the simulation that it is ok to kill off the poor to make room for the rich. Because using the simulation to justify moral/ethical/rational acceptability of cheating sometimes means accepting that premise.

This isn't the premise of the simulation at all. It explicitly says that the agent replacement phase is an abstraction and could just as easily be interpreted as agents changing their strategies. "Note: you don't have to wait for people to literally die & reproduce for culture to evolve -- all that's needed is that "unsuccessful" behaviors go away, and "successful" behaviors are imitated."

The premise of the replacement is that poorest adopt the strategy of the richest and is premised on this being the right thing to do even if the change is from always cooperating to always cheating.

In some ways the description of replacement rather death is a more explicit example of the premise underlying the simulation that cheating is morally/ethically/rationally justifiable. The underlying moral/ethical theory behind the simulation is not even Utilitarian (never mind Deontological) it is purely Randian where the justification of behavior is only what is in it for me.

In that sense it completely misses the point of the Christmas Peace which from a deontological perspective reflected moral/ethical principles such as the golden rule and peace on earth and goodwill toward men. Even from a utilitarian perspective there was the idea that the greatest happiness for the greatest number included the enemy in that number.

The individual benefits were a side effect that was only possible because of the higher level principle. And the individual benefits were always going to trend toward a short life. The shell with someone's name on it was still going to be lobbed on 26/12/14.

Re: The Evolution of Trust

#30
> Despite strict orders not to chillax with the enemy, British and German soldiers left their trenches, crossed No Man's Land, and gathered to bury their dead, exchange gifts, and play games.

Is this actually true? I'd love to read more about it.

Post reply on HN