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Non-Zero-Sum Games

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Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#81

Post by cowpig »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #70
cowpig wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling people ignorant and naive while doing nothing to address the actual arguments isn't going to convince anyone. In the passage you linked to, the author argues that property is impossible, which seems like a rather different argument than the one you are making.

in fact it’s the opposite If you read Prudhon thoroughly you’ll understand that his critique is that the entire concept of capitalism is based on the concept of property (undisputed) and the concept of property is an entirely made up mythical thing (disputed)

Opposite of what?

And what does that have to do with non-zero-sum games?

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#82

Post by AndrewKemendo »

cowpig wrote: post #79
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire premise is not philosophically rigorous Read any serious philosophical work and the first thing it does it tells you what it’s assumptions are about the world and basis for reality. At no point does this website do that at all it just assumes a lot of background and then jumps into this concept that there exist these “win-win games” with a bare grounding in game theory, and that all we need to do is pull t…

Proudhon and Marx were two philosophers making observations about a rapidly-changing economy nearly two centuries ago. Society, politics, and economies have all drastically changed since then. I don't think "Proudhon debunked this" is going to change anyone's mind. I don't find his arguments particularly compelling, even taking the historical context into account. I see him as trying to take a moral position and then…

What is property and Das Kapital are even more relevant now than when authored.

Why? because the plurality of people in the late 19th century when all these things were being written was still primarily smallish groups with limited capacity to generate impactful externalities. Read: Engels formation of the family, property etc..

While there was global capitalism, it had not entirely consumed the entire globe at that point

Ad of today there are no parts of the globe that are free from the reach of some property owner attempting to extract a resource from property that they do not control. There are no indigenous peoples that are free from the effects and impact of global climate change as a function of global capitalism

That’s just as fact

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#83

Post by yannyu »

esafak wrote: post #68
firejake308 wrote: post #64

The only way for cooperation to be a winning strategy in a prisoner's dilemma is if people have memory/reputation/trust. However, that is very difficult to build in the modern digital world where everyone is a faceless username. https://nonzerosum.games/cooperationvsdefection.html

Computers make it easy to track such things. eBay's success -- enabling strangers throughout the world to trade with confidence -- was built on it.

Sure, it worked and then it stopped working. Upvotes, reviews, social media, and word-of-mouth have been co-opted by advertising and marketing.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#84

Post by nuancebydefault »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #60
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fact of resource extraction from society and externalities like pollution not being counted by capitalist because they "can’t count them" and just bundle them as externalities demonstrably destroy any concept of non-zero sum game The article explicitly addresses this: The fact that Capitalism is non-zero-sum doesn't mean it is necessarily positive-sum. An economy that gets out of balance can produce very negativ…

[flagged]

I don't believe capitalism is a zero sum game. Capitalism is not the holy grail, but when combined with laws that balance the uneven distribution of the wealth it _creates_, and laws that protect resources and cleanliness, it turns out it is the best system we as a human species employed so far. I'm open to be proven wrong.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#85

Post by AndrewKemendo »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #84
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't believe capitalism is a zero sum game. Capitalism is not the holy grail, but when combined with laws that balance the uneven distribution of the wealth it _creates_, and laws that protect resources and cleanliness, it turns out it is the best system we as a human species employed so far. I'm open to be proven wrong.

If this is the best we can do then we do not deserve to survive as a species

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#86

Post by nuancebydefault »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #69
SapporoChris wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If capitalism is zero sum then how do countries with capitalism manage to succeed and grow for hundreds of years?

By pillaging and conquering nations that have abundant resources through violence and coercion Like this is the entire history of capitalism and it’s not even close the fact that other organizations (USSR, China) do the same thing (horde property and then use consolidated resources to enforce economic heirarchy) but don’t call it capitalism doesn’t make it any less true They can say “communism” all day but if the fun…

The hording and eliteness is not a property of the capitalistic system. It might be an unwanted side effect. Imperialism, greed, urge to expand control, subordination of others are unfortunately human traits. You might attribute that behavior to any system, why single out capitalism?

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#87

Post by zozbot234 »

kashyapc wrote: post #63

The article on "effortocracy"[1] is pretty very well done. Quoting the end of the article: "... if you take anything away from this, it is to recognise that if meritocracy is based on achievement only, then we must be sure not to confuse it with effortocracy when it comes to its moral weight." Related reading: The Tyranny of Merit , by Michael Sandel (I was hoping the article would reference this, and it does.) [1] h…

I don't think we actually want an effortocracy. Why should we aim to reward pointless, Sisyphean tasks at the expense of actual achievement? There's no inherent moral worth to futile effort that doesn't actually yield any reward, regardless of how laborious it might be.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#88

Post by nuancebydefault »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #85
nuancebydefault wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe capitalism is a zero sum game. Capitalism is not the holy grail, but when combined with laws that balance the uneven distribution of the wealth it _creates_, and laws that protect resources and cleanliness, it turns out it is the best system we as a human species employed so far. I'm open to be proven wrong.

If this is the best we can do then we do not deserve to survive as a species

Deserve, by whom's standards?

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#89

Post by VinLucero »

zozbot234 wrote: post #87
kashyapc wrote: post #63

The article on "effortocracy"[1] is pretty very well done. Quoting the end of the article: "... if you take anything away from this, it is to recognise that if meritocracy is based on achievement only, then we must be sure not to confuse it with effortocracy when it comes to its moral weight." Related reading: The Tyranny of Merit , by Michael Sandel (I was hoping the article would reference this, and it does.) [1] h…

I don't think we actually want an effortocracy. Why should we aim to reward pointless, Sisyphean tasks at the expense of actual achievement? There's no inherent moral worth to futile effort that doesn't actually yield any reward, regardless of how laborious it might be.

Then why do we have books on grit? And why is grit such a good indicator of successful founders?

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#90

Post by didibus »

skibidithink wrote: post #11

Lots of interesting insights, but their affirmative action take is a miss. > Critics of affirmative action often commit the fallacy of letting a failure in one area doom the entire enterprise. This ignores the interdependent nature of affirmative action. [1] Affirmative action sets up a zero-sum game where fixed resources like university admissions and employment offers are redistributed to people with the "correct"…

It depends, there were a lot of studies that showed prejudice and bias in the meritocratic process. You had examples of CVs with woman names removed getting more callbacks, and anonymous interviews having higher rates of hire and such.

Due to this, people considered affirmative actions to correct for this skew. That would actually make it a meritocratic motivated AA.

And then you have the idea of missed potential. Those who weren't given the opportunity to develop, it limits the pool of exceptional candidates. It's similar to when black athletes weren't allowed in sports. We thought we had a meritocratic process, but we were artificially limiting those with potential. The challenge is bigger here, so you need a bootstrapping process, because you're faced with a chicken and egg situation. You wouldn't know if it works or not unless you give it at least one if not two generations to take effect. I admit that this is the more controversial one, as it means temporarily favoring disadvantaged groups to bootstrap things. I just wanted to point out that there's a meritocratic angle to it as well.

Equity doesn't mean give those that suck a boost. It means give those that weren't given the environment to develop their full potential a chance at it, they may end up being even better than the alternative.

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