Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Non-Zero-Sum Games

nonzerosum.games

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 218 posts

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#91

Post by VinLucero »

skibidithink wrote: post #45
analog31 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To counter that, though without a precise economic analysis, both university admissions and employment grew during the affirmative action era. Everything looks like zero-sum if viewed as a static, local model.

It's only positive sum if they grew because of affirmative action. And if affirmative action caused net friction, it'd be a Moloch.

Are you assuming elite college admission counts are rigid in the count of people admitted because of real teaching constraints or reducing the supply of prestige?

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#92

Post by strongpigeon »

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"…

I was more thrown off by their definition of "Coordination Problems" than anything. They say:

> We sometimes run into problems where a number of factors have to be addressed simultaneously in order for them to be effective at all. One weak link can ruin it for the rest. These are called Coordination Problems.

Coordination problems are about multiple actors choosing interdependent outcomes, rather than a problem that needs everything to be done right. This sounds more like a "Weakest Link" problem than a coordination problem.

Not that it invalidates the rest of the post, but it did make me dig in more into the person's background and showed that they're more of a journalist than a game theory expert.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#93

Post by Xirdus »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #65
Xirdus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very reductionist view of economy. For starters, it ignores the entire services sector, which is like half of GDP of most developed capitalist countries. Services are an extremely clear example of positive sum - no resources disappeared from the world, as much money was gained as was spent, but on top of it somebody got something of value.

You should read about Baumol cost disease if you want to understand why what you just said is totally misguided https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect If I pay somebody to dig a ditch and I pay somebody else to fill it in was something of value created? Unequivocally no. Whether or not that allowed somebody to survive and feed their family is entirely orthogonal to the question of the zero-sum nature of the univ…

Let's stop at the first half. If I pay somebody to dig a ditch. Period. End of story. Let's assume I'm not clinically insane and I actually needed that ditch for something. Is the sum still zero?

Just because pointless things are possible doesn't mean not pointless things are not possible.

Nothing is free, but the service isn't free either. It's not free because people find it valuable, so valuable they're willing to pay for it. More than the cost of food needed to compensate energy spent. Way more in most cases. Is the sum still zero?

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#94

Post by cgannett »

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.

This is further complicated by the difference between direct and indirect value. I build a thing that produces n value and is directly attributable to me. I also do things that help 100 others produce 10% more value themselves but most of that is attributed to themselves producing 10 * n value overall. How will I be rewarded if at all? Most likely as someone who produced n value.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#95

Post by robocat »

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]

When you call people ignorant, you are trying to say you know better than them. It is not only rude, but against guidelines.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#96

Post by ronsor »

VinLucero wrote: post #89
zozbot234 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A lot of meaningful things are difficult and laborious, but not all difficult and laborious things are meaningful.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#97

Post by wijwp »

VinLucero wrote: post #89
zozbot234 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because you need effort + the ability to create value, not one or the other. Some people have one but not the other and seek out help to bridge the gap.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#98

Post by robocat »

didibus wrote: post #90
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. Th…

You are stawmanning. You are attempting to say what they think meritocracy is - and your basing your thoughts on your own stereotypes.

> You had examples of CVs with woman names removed getting more callbacks

That is not meritocracy.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#99

Post by skibidithink »

VinLucero wrote: post #91
skibidithink wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only positive sum if they grew because of affirmative action. And if affirmative action caused net friction, it'd be a Moloch.

Are you assuming elite college admission counts are rigid in the count of people admitted because of real teaching constraints or reducing the supply of prestige?

None of my arguments require any assumption on why. But I would say that it's because of prestige and signaling.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#100

Post by steveBK123 »

cgannett wrote: post #94
zozbot234 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is further complicated by the difference between direct and indirect value. I build a thing that produces n value and is directly attributable to me. I also do things that help 100 others produce 10% more value themselves but most of that is attributed to themselves producing 10 * n value overall. How will I be rewarded if at all? Most likely as someone who produced n value.

This is the inherent friction of most overly “scientific” management systems. A decent line manager is aware of who on their team lifts up the team with glue & peer acceleration type soft work.

Systems that try to get too “objective” fail to recognize this as most KPIs are on direct outcomes that are easy to measure, though often less important.

No joke I once worked at a company with multi-category numeric ratings that then rolled up to a total rating score that had 2 decimal places of precision.

Post reply on HN