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The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

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Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#131

Post by belorn »

godelski wrote: post #105
belorn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on observations I have the opposite view. A lot of human behavior would not make sense if we only measured resources and not social competition over wealth and status. There is even biological aspects like stress which get effected by the relative status between members of a community. Resources however increases each year with more people enjoying the benefits.

> Resources however increases each year with more people enjoying the benefits. > RESOURCES ... INCREASES EACH YEAR I wouldn't call this a zero nor negative sum game if the game is to gather resources (resources with certain value. Which I think you'd agree that more recent resources have higher value. Like an AC vs a fan).

> I wouldn't call this a zero nor negative sum game if the game is to gather resources

yes, that would not be a zero sum game.

If the game however is about wealth there are things like status symbols which drain resources but increases perceived relative wealth.

Would you agree that status symbols with no intrinsic value are a zero sum game? Could a status symbol for wealth work if everyone had it and could afford it?

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#132

Post by godelski »

belorn wrote: post #131
godelski wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Resources however increases each year with more people enjoying the benefits. > RESOURCES ... INCREASES EACH YEAR I wouldn't call this a zero nor negative sum game if the game is to gather resources (resources with certain value. Which I think you'd agree that more recent resources have higher value. Like an AC vs a fan).

> I wouldn't call this a zero nor negative sum game if the game is to gather resources yes, that would not be a zero sum game. If the game however is about wealth there are things like status symbols which drain resources but increases perceived relative wealth. Would you agree that status symbols with no intrinsic value are a zero sum game? Could a status symbol for wealth work if everyone had it and could afford it…

I'm not sure why you are shifting to status symbols though. I'm talking about things that make people better off. Money, widgets, access to clean water, and medicine. Sure we can talk about status symbols, but it seems kinda contrived to make your point and not the one that we originally started with or have been discussing. So unless you have a good reason for that digression I'm having a hard time seeing this as anything but a non sequitur.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#133

Post by imtringued »

godelski wrote: post #51

One of my favorites is the economy. People constantly talk about there only being a finite number of resources or money. While this is true, there is not a finite amount of wealth. The whole point of an economy is to generate new wealth and goods. Inventions and innovations. It is easy to see when you take the historical perspective, that the vast majority of us are living much better off than those a hundred years a…

The economy does none of those things. What you are talking about is technological progress and money is just one of humanity's greatest inventions out of many.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#134

Post by jtms »

0815test wrote: post #53
wayoutthere wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it is because many humans derive self-worth from seeing other people who are worse off than they are. If you have that mindset, personal comfort really can be a zero-sum game, sadly...

Protip: please don't say "humans" when you can just say 'people', or even 'folks'! It makes you sound a lot more, well, human , and less like a poorly-programmed, clunky robot. Related: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/style-guide-not-soundi...

Protip: No one cares about this

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#135

Post by lukejduncan »

petra wrote: post #79
TTPrograms wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those markets are really zero-sum. People value different things in all of those markets (jobs etc). Zero-sum is an edge case.

Interesting answer. The people aiming for a certain position or role mostly care about similar things though. So don't they play a zero sum game ?

It assumes there is only one fixed org chart and role. This isn’t true everywhere under all circumstances, but my personal experience in tech has been that companies make space for talented people who have a real impact. If you’re fighting over a title, you’ll stagnate. If you’re growing the business and building useful things roles will invent themselves. Especially in the case of competing with an individual over a role, making each other look good is far more valuable than being competitors.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#136

Post by jacques_chester »

roenxi wrote: post #108
zwkrt wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I was thinking of as I typed that comment was people who begrudge increases in the standard of living for those in poverty. I see this in two forms. The first and most direct form I see is when people don’t want minimum wage to increase because it means their own wage becomes closer to the minimum. The second and more insidious form I see is in judging the entire concept of “poverty” in a critical light. I recal…

> I recall my mother being furious that... I'm going to be the first to acknowledge that you know your own mother a lot better than I do; but strictly from what you've written that is a defensible position. Most of the readers here live in a society that is extremely compassionate compared to most historical societies; one where there is constant political pressure for the people who make good decisions to support th…

The difficulty is fundamental attribution error.

My mistakes are not mistakes, they are bad luck.

Your bad luck is not bad luck, they are mistakes.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#137

Post by jacques_chester »

biql wrote: post #92
TTPrograms wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those markets are really zero-sum. People value different things in all of those markets (jobs etc). Zero-sum is an edge case.

In dating market, attractive people get most of the attention [1], thus it would be safe to assume that attractiveness is highly valued by the majority and they compete with each other, knowingly or not. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170127222943/https://blog.okcu...

The zero-sum here depends on who is who. The competition is zero-sum, but the relationship is not.

If the market is to exchange affection, it's positive-sum. If the market is a status good, it's zero-sum.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#138

Post by jacques_chester »

nostrademons wrote: post #36
gnicholas wrote: post #17

> people tend to assume that if a product is superior in one dimension then it must be inferior in other dimensions. Assuming price is one of the dimensions, this is generally a true statement. Otherwise we'd have a bunch of best-in-class products that are cheaper than inferior competitors. This can occur for products sold at massive scale and with large tooling costs. This dynamic enables the producers of premium pr…

In a way this is a restatement of the efficient-market hypothesis. If the market is efficient, then a product that is inferior in most or all dimensions will be forced out of the market by one that is superior. Therefore, if you believe in efficient markets and observe that both products are still offered for sale, it's a reasonable inference that the superior product must be inferior in some way that you haven't yet…

A nit pick: you're describing something more like perfectly competitive markets through to monopolistic competition.

The efficient market hypothesis is that the prices offered for purchase and sale factor in all relevant information about the thing being traded. It's less about whether that good is "better" or "worse" than a substitute, more about what information is revealed by prices.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#139

Post by jacques_chester »

pessimizer wrote: post #58
gnicholas wrote: post #17

> people tend to assume that if a product is superior in one dimension then it must be inferior in other dimensions. Assuming price is one of the dimensions, this is generally a true statement. Otherwise we'd have a bunch of best-in-class products that are cheaper than inferior competitors. This can occur for products sold at massive scale and with large tooling costs. This dynamic enables the producers of premium pr…

When it comes to products, marketing is also one of those dimensions, and can easily swamp the others. It's a good assumption that if you hold price steady, the more marketing, the worse the product. We don't see this because it is often canceled out by economies of scale, which of course are a result of size, and the larger the relative size, the higher amount of marketing as compared to other brands. At the same pr…

There's a school of thought that expensive advertising is actually "signalling" higher quality to consumers. Why spend so much on something substantially less appealing than available substitutes?

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#140

Post by conanbatt »

pessimizer wrote: post #125
conanbatt wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my life-long frustration on monopoly and Catan. There isn't a better case for free trade than playing those games in my opinion, but people really are reluctant to understand that trades make their possition better at the expense of everyone else. Allow me to boast about my single most fantastic monopoly play where nobody wanted to trade at all, so I initiated a series of trades where I gave each opponent a m…

Sounds masterful. I've always explained Monopoly as a trading game unlike any other out there in that you spend the entire first 3/4 of the game building up to one big trade. It may be a complex multi-part trade, involving other trades in preparation, but it's all you were working towards. After that trade, you're just a passenger seeing how your valuations played out. Sometimes, like what you did here, you can just…

Absolutely correct!
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