Game theory’s cure for corruption • Hacker News Board

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#101

Post by kijin » Tue, May 12, 2015, 1:56 AM UTC

dj-wonk wrote: post #84

This article, like many, mentions the idea of the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) but does not convincingly connect it to the particular nature of police corruption. An interesting article; still, I tire of seeing so many articles introduce and anchor game theory based on the PD or one particular configuration of it. The PD is frequently overblown, misunderstood, and misapplied. Game theory is much more than the PD. I think…

The Prisoner's Dilemma is frequently mentioned because it is one of the most fundamental building blocks of game theory. Almost everything else that we think of as game theory is either a variant of it, built on top of it, or is an attempt to tweak it.

The simplest version of the Prisoner's Dilemma succinctly explains both (1) why rational beings feel compelled to have a moral code in the first place, and (2) why they so often disobey the moral code that they themselves believe in. It's best for everyone to cooperate; but in the absence of a guarantee that everyone else will, it's in my best interest to defect.

Of course, you can't get from PD to police corruption in a single step. Lots of intermediate steps and computer modeling is needed to get there. But most of that is probably too technical for an Aeon article, so the article only mentions the first and last steps. A more detailed account of the models they used would be very interesting, but that's probably the job of actual scientific papers.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#102

Post by pixl97 » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:01 AM UTC

gertef wrote: post #88

a_c_s wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens in cyberspace all the time (just look at any HN discussion about airport security): what reason do we have to believe that in meatspace people would behave differently?

People behave very differently online and offline

No, not exactly. People behave differently when they believe there will be consequences for their actions. I may troll because there is almost zero repercussions to the action online. You see the same action in large crowds. A few people in a large crowd can easily start a riot by realizing their individual actions are not likely to be punished.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#103

Post by pixl97 » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:03 AM UTC

mod wrote: post #39

ashark wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even as another driver I automatically class any police car I see as "highest possible risk of doing something stupid without warning", right up there with a minivan full of kids and a texting driver that I've observed swerving several times and has changed lanes without signaling. The only problem with this is that the cop car probably deserves a class of its own, even riskier than the swerving distracted-driver min…

Maybe it's a function of me living in a small town, but I have only once seen police doing anything dangerous while driving. I've NEVER seen one use his siren to get through a red-light, either. When they have the siren on, they're typically driving much faster than normal, but normally they're indistinguishable from a normal driver. The one incident I did see was a motorcycle officer do a U-turn across four lanes to…

DPS and the local PD used to race from the center of our town to the 24hr diner on interstate in our town at 3 am. Why, no one ever reported them.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#104

Post by pixl97 » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:05 AM UTC

KhalilK wrote: post #25

jobu wrote: post #20

It seems like the ubiquity of small recording devices that nearly anyone could own and use (like a cellphone) will have a larger impact on corruption than anything else we could do. You may not have any direct power over the cop that just shook you down for a few hundred, but discretely recording that interaction and posting it on YouTube is likely to end his career in any society.

posting it on YouTube is likely to end his career in any society. Given that the video gains enough visibility of course but I would still take that with a grain of salt.

That's why you pay attention to the people in the media that are good at distributing this kind of stuff and pass it to them.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#105

Post by dclowd9901 » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:43 AM UTC

mod wrote: post #39

ashark wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even as another driver I automatically class any police car I see as "highest possible risk of doing something stupid without warning", right up there with a minivan full of kids and a texting driver that I've observed swerving several times and has changed lanes without signaling. The only problem with this is that the cop car probably deserves a class of its own, even riskier than the swerving distracted-driver min…

Maybe it's a function of me living in a small town, but I have only once seen police doing anything dangerous while driving. I've NEVER seen one use his siren to get through a red-light, either. When they have the siren on, they're typically driving much faster than normal, but normally they're indistinguishable from a normal driver. The one incident I did see was a motorcycle officer do a U-turn across four lanes to…

Know this, we had a former officer as a guest speaker and he made it quite clear that, between radio calls, logging and looking up stuff on their systems, police are incredibly dangerous to be around. His best advice was to stay far away from patrol cars.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#106

Post by KingMob » Tue, May 12, 2015, 4:38 AM UTC

dj-wonk wrote: post #84

This article, like many, mentions the idea of the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) but does not convincingly connect it to the particular nature of police corruption. An interesting article; still, I tire of seeing so many articles introduce and anchor game theory based on the PD or one particular configuration of it. The PD is frequently overblown, misunderstood, and misapplied. Game theory is much more than the PD. I think…

> I think it is also worth mentioning that game theory isn't the only game or theory in town when it comes to thinking about society and collective action. For example, systems dynamics is also quite interesting

Not to mention the huge numbers of psychologists and anthropologists who provided data illustrating the numerous fallacies of game theory. In the early days, game theorists were laughably naive about actual humans.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#107

Post by visarga » Tue, May 12, 2015, 5:27 AM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #97

kps wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A past idea of mine is: everyone. Every vehicle registration accumulates points at the rate of one per week. Fingering another vehicle deducts 5 points from their total and (to deter false reports) one from yours. If your total is negative, you can't drive/ride. There's probably a great deal wrong with this.

Old people who don't drive would report one vehicle per week.

We could also do network analysis on the graph of people reporting other people. If there are any strange, unnatural patterns, they could be ignored. But if Jonny has been reported by 10 people in the last month, and those 10 are unrelated to each other, that would be compelling evidence Jonny is not behaving well. The system can still be gamed if a group of people are organized online to report targets (like 4chan does DDOS attacks). Fortunately, in order to report someone one would need to disclose his identity. On 4chan there is radical anonymity, by contrast.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#108

Post by vacri » Tue, May 12, 2015, 5:49 AM UTC

kijin wrote: post #101

dj-wonk wrote: post #84

This article, like many, mentions the idea of the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) but does not convincingly connect it to the particular nature of police corruption. An interesting article; still, I tire of seeing so many articles introduce and anchor game theory based on the PD or one particular configuration of it. The PD is frequently overblown, misunderstood, and misapplied. Game theory is much more than the PD. I think…

The Prisoner's Dilemma is frequently mentioned because it is one of the most fundamental building blocks of game theory. Almost everything else that we think of as game theory is either a variant of it, built on top of it, or is an attempt to tweak it. The simplest version of the Prisoner's Dilemma succinctly explains both (1) why rational beings feel compelled to have a moral code in the first place, and (2) why the…

But the PD is faulty at it's core, because it doesn't take into account external factors. What if the criminals are in a gang that treats snitches very harshly? Or not in a gang but in a culture of 'omerta'? What if the criminals' career prospects are affected more harshly by a long vs short sentence? What if admitting guilt fast-tracks the criminal into a drug rehab course that the criminal is interested in? What if one police interrogator reads criminal A better and thus phrases the deal in a more attractive way? What if the criminal is on the third strike in a 'three strikes' location? What if the criminal is a devoted father, and can't possibly entertain the option of being away from his child for the term of the long sentence? What if the criminal is an institutionalised homeless person, and the idea of prison is attractive?

There are heaps of external factors that can affect this decision, from subtle to severe, and the PD doesn't model them well at all. As a base building block, it's not very solid.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#109

Post by spacemanmatt » Tue, May 12, 2015, 6:01 AM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #75

wyager wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like many of the cops who are filmed brutalizing people end up on brief suspension, and then back at their jobs shortly after. For filming police to be effective, we need more regularly enforced punishments (like actually being fired) for police brutality.

Those who are actually fired are sometimes discovered working as a cop in another nearby jurisdiction shortly thereafter. If you really want to punish a rotten cop, you need to prevent him from being rehired.

> If you really want to punish a rotten cop, you need to prevent him from being rehired.

Isn't preventing rehire part of the premise behind jailing criminals? It makes me ill that it is so difficult to jail common criminals if they have worn a badge. They earn the name 'pigs' every time they obstruct justice.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#110

Post by spacemanmatt » Tue, May 12, 2015, 6:10 AM UTC

lotsofmangos wrote: post #94

On a very similar theme I was discussing the merits of requiring police to have personal professional insurance that pays out for a portion of any civil liabilities and is priced accordingly. It seems somewhat perverse at first glance, but might actually be a good incentive if carefully structured and actuaries are also one group of people that might actually get somewhere with demanding actual figures from police.

I'm for this. I think it would get the same pushback that most good ideas for policing routinely gets: They'll say it might make cops timid. As if they're already too timid.