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Non-Zero-Sum Games

nonzerosum.games

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Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#101

Post by Der_Einzige »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #41
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"…

>The conflict is not a disagreement over effectiveness. It's a misalignment between meritocracy and equity. A lot of proponents of affirmative action will agree with this. They'll explicitly acknowledge that people admitted under AA will be underqualified, due to factors mentioned in the article: [Minorities] may lack foundational skills (taken for granted in more affluent households and schools) and therefore might…

Singapore does the whole "race based quotas for everything" and they have by many metrics, the best standard of living in the entire world.

It turns out that the government forcing racial integration actually works! Being a "quota ridden society" would be good for America.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#102

Post by BeetleB »

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"…

> Affirmative action sets up a zero-sum game where fixed resources like university admissions and employment offers are redistributed to people with the "correct" demographics.

I wish I could find the source, but the vast majority of universities don't have a fixed admissions quota. They are criteria based (if you meet the criteria, you get in). In principle, AA admissions did not prevent others from getting a seat.

Of course, it's possible the general admissions criteria is raised slightly to compensate, but again - for most universities, AA admissions wasn't a significant number, and however much the bar raised, it was likely minuscule.

I'll be blunt. Everyone I've personally known who didn't get admissions in a particular university and blamed AA for it was trying to get into a top school, and likely didn't earn his spot.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#103

Post by Der_Einzige »

578_Observer wrote: post #16
cryptica wrote: post #4

I think a major flaw of all these models is that they underestimate: 1. How easy it is to start fresh and shed your past reputation if you get caught doing something bad. 2. How forgiving people are and how tolerant they are to deception, abuse and immorality. I hate to say it but a lot of people are attracted to abusers. They keep going back to the same kinds of people who will abuse them over and over. These same p…

Writing from Japan. You are absolutely right about the "Finite Game". If you can reset your reputation and start over, "Cheating" is indeed the winning strategy. However, here in Japan, we have a different operating system called "Shinise" (companies lasting over 1,000 years). They play an "Infinite Game". Their reputation is tied to a "Noren" (shop curtain) or a family name that has been built over centuries. You ca…

Japan having the most insane, high effort culture in the world is exactly why they are continuing to slowly die by lack of fertility. Same with South Korea.

Japan will either lose its traditional culture including this long term aversion to "cheating", or they will lose their nation. It's existential and their refusal to embrace globalism will destroy them.

Zero sum game, and yes they (ZSGs) do actually exist nearly everywhere in real life and are the norm. I can't physically be in the same place as another person. Time spent on one action is time not spent on everything else. Every bit of food I eat is food denied from every other person.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#104

Post by ifethereal »

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'm replying without having read the entirety of the text you've referred to by Proudhon, but it looks interesting—thanks.

Some raw thoughts of mine if I may (feel free to add seasoning):

You mention that capitalism is definitionally zero-sum, and you seem to be facing quite a bit of resistance. I've had similar thoughts (perhaps still premature) that capitalism is zero-sum, but only (?) under a strong definition of "zero". I've not fleshed out my thoughts completely, but I suspect there are intangible/abstract dimensions along which we maintain some kind of equilibrium, regardless of what we do. "Do" here is quite abstract, but as a first approximation in the realm of economics, it might refer to any act of investment, compensation, or labour. (I may be abusing some technical terms in economics here—not my home turf.) A separate question could then emerge as to how significant these intangible/abstract dimensions are.

Actually, I'm not even sure that this is specific to the context of capitalism. However, whether something is a zero-sum game would seem relevant to systems obsessed with objective quantification, and where that quantification is heavily involved in steering moral views (or decision making), and I view capitalism as one of them.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#105

Post by Der_Einzige »

oersted wrote: post #6
cryptica wrote: post #4

I think a major flaw of all these models is that they underestimate: 1. How easy it is to start fresh and shed your past reputation if you get caught doing something bad. 2. How forgiving people are and how tolerant they are to deception, abuse and immorality. I hate to say it but a lot of people are attracted to abusers. They keep going back to the same kinds of people who will abuse them over and over. These same p…

This doesn't make sense to me, our current prosperity is founded on an enormous mountain of collaboration and shared beliefs. Usually not out of selflessness of course, often guided and forced by strong leadership and/or strong institutional structures to bend selfishness into selflessness (like capitalism to a degree). Poor countries tend to stay poor not due to fundamental resource constraints but due to self-reinf…

Re: Plato/Socrates

"Therefore Socrates said that it wasn’t enough to use the intellect in all things, but it was important to know for which cause one was exerting it. We would now say: One must serve the “good cause.” But to serve the good cause is—to be moral. Thus, Socrates is the founder of ethics.

"Socrates opened this war, and its peaceful end does not occur until the dying day of the old world."

Plato/Socrates are the original ghost story tellers. I spit on their grave. Republic is easily one of the worst books written in human history in terms of its impact. Right up there with Das Kapital.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#106

Post by stackghost »

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

Perhaps it's merely the best we have been able to achieve, thus far.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#107

Post by zajio1am »

wijwp wrote: post #97
VinLucero wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, also effort is something a person can influence directly, while ability cannot or only indirectly (education ...) so it makes sense to focus on things people can influence, but but achievement is the ultimate target.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#109

Post by integralid »

svara wrote: post #37
marcosdumay wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be misunderstanding the GP. Evolution does not work maximizing individual success.

But it does? What do you think it optimizes other than individual fitness? I think I understand the GP pretty well. Cheating, or defection in the language of evolutionary theory, is subject to frequency based selection, meaning it is strongly selected against if its frequency is too high in the population. It's not a stable strategy. It can be a winning strategy for a few individuals in a cooperative environment, yes…

>What do you think it optimizes other than individual fitness?

Chance to pass genes forward. This is only equivalent to individual fitness for very solitary species and humans aren't.

As an extreme example, take soldier termites - their chance to pass their genes is zero, but the chance for the colony to survive grows. Also gay people exist (they also - usually - don't reproduce, but help others instead).

Humans naturally care about their family and tribe because this increases the chance of their bloodline to survive.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#110

Post by aprilthird2021 »

mf_tomb wrote: post #29
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Poor countries tend to stay poor not due to fundamental resource constraints but due to self-reinforcing loops of desperate crab-bucket like behavior, where everyone is cheating one another out of necessity (or culture) This doesn't seem true and I'd be interested in any stats that back this up. It reminds me of a very interesting result (that most never internalize) which is that the number one way to avoid corrup…

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/thumbnail/self-reported-t... Pretty clear trend: low-trust societies have low gdp and high-trust societies have high gdp, regardless of resource distribution. Africa/South America are resource rich, japan/iceland are resource poor.

That's terrible proof. Anything better?

Yemen and the US are equal shades on that trust polling map. That alone should show you it's not really a factor.

India has a higher GDP and GDP per capita than it's neighbor Pakistan, but Pakistan has quite a higher trust score on your map than India.

There are many more examples, just these jumped out at me.

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