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Game theory’s cure for corruption

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Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#111

Post by digi_owl »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #96
mod wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think social media is a somewhat relevant corollary, where it self-polices content. I'd say sometimes--like HN--it's a success. Good behavior is encouraged & enforced. Bad behavior is punished. Other times--like reddit--not a success. The hive-mind is real there, and in particular well-mannered disagreement that is misaligned with the norm is punished pretty strongly there. Plus we all have heard how their investig…

Reddit is actually quite a complex ecosystem nowadays. There's a lot of HN-quality subreddits focused on particular topics. I'd risk saying that most topical subreddits are sort-of OK. The rule of thumb I'm seeing is: the more niche the interest, the better the community. It's only when you start dealing with "normals" that you see the worst parts of humanity.

As a general (no just limited to Reddit) observation, the easier a topic can be opinionated the more noise there will be.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#112

Post by spacemanmatt »

amyjess wrote: post #60
aidenn0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a big part of what the article is about; so long as only the police can levy penalties against people for breaking the law, there will be police corruption.

What I would like to see is serious incentives for police officers to turn in their colleagues and give IAB unlimited power to spy on every aspect of officers' lives.

I think this goes a little too far. I would settle for cops being held to the same rules as everyone else for starters. If that's not enough, then sure, special inquisition powers for IAB and maybe also a citizen led review board.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#113

Post by kijin »

vacri wrote: post #108
kijin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

All the complications you mentioned can be, and usually are, modeled as additional constraints on PD.

You can add arbitrary constraints on PD, such as a 50% chance that a third party will punish you for defecting. More importantly, you can play PD many times in a row and have each round's incentive structure depends on the result of previous rounds, sort of like encrypting in CBC mode.

The rewards and penalties don't need to be jail time, either. You can gamble with money, your life, or anything else you value. Usually it's done with some representation of money, because money is easy to measure and more intuitive to people who've never been in a prison.

The iterated (many rounds) variant is extremely powerful, as it allows researchers to simulate all sorts of complicated constraints. For example, other players might become more likely to defect on you if you defect on them three times in a row (three strikes). Certain players (the mob boss) might be much more interested in your performance than others, and defect on you much more severely when disappointed. You might be given an opportunity to reset your records (rehab or pardon) after a certain pattern of defection and cooperation, or maybe it will be game over (death sentence) after a different pattern. Iterate a few million times, and you've got a pretty damn accurate picture of how effective each policy will be in discouraging defection (crime).

Iterated PD also allows researchers to study whether a given incentive structure is stable, i.e. doesn't change much over thousands of iterations. According to the article, the incentives that give rise to police corruption are stable, but tweaking the constraints in a certain way can disrupt them.

More information on iterated PD:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#114

Post by dmichulke »

api wrote: post #92

Game theory as a subject is something I wish was taught as standard curiculum. It contains so many answers to so many deep and vexing questions and problems of our age, and it holds the promise of so many more. It is among the great intellectual achievements of the 20th century.

I will teach my son first Game Theory and Statistics and only then economics and law.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#115

Post by richmarr »

kps wrote: post #18

> In righteous societies, police were not a separate, elite order. > They were everybody. Attributed to John Peel in his establishment of London Metropolitan Police: “To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police , the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention…

I've lived in London for most of my life and have never heard that. Thanks.

It does jibe somewhat with certain modern police practices, like 'kettling' peaceful protestors, and their insistence on calling it police 'force'

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#116

Post by geomark »

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.

For your amusement let me point out some implicit assumptions that are required for that to be true. The country in which I live has criminal defamation laws that would result in you going to jail for posting that video - the truth is not a defense against defamation here, unlike other countries. Also, the authorities would likely demand the video be taken down or they would require ISPs to block it within the country.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#117

Post by bootload »

jessaustin wrote: post #64
spcoll wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hunter-gatherer societies that did fit this model could be considered to be the ultimate totalitarian organizations. Extremely strict rules controlling every aspect of the life of the members, from birth to death, and no deviation ever tolerated, under pain of banishment or even death.

Over most of human hunter-gatherer prehistory, the population was not generally resource-constrained. (Rather, it was constrained over the long term by catastrophes, which could be related to resources, diseases, genetics, culture, or some combination.) Therefore, most of the time, banishment did not lead to starvation or even necessarily isolation. One just walked for some time, until one was alone or in more accept…

"Therefore, most of the time, banishment did not lead to starvation or even necessarily isolation. One just walked for some time, until one was alone or in more accepting company, and then started hunting and gathering wherever one found oneself."

Where danger can be found, banishment is death. Consider this quote from Sebastian Junger:

"What all these people seem to miss isn’t danger or loss, per se, but the closeness and cooperation that danger and loss often engender. Humans evolved to survive in extremely harsh environments, and our capacity for cooperation and sharing clearly helped us do that. Structurally, a band of hunter-gatherers and a platoon in combat are almost exactly the same: in each case, the group numbers between 30 and 50 individuals, they sleep in a common area, they conduct patrols, they are completely reliant on one another for support, comfort, and defense, and they share a group identity that most would risk their lives for." [0]

There is a lot of anthropological studies that confirm this observation.

[0] http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/05/ptsd-war-home-sebasti...

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#118

Post by task_queue »

mod wrote: post #43
digi_owl wrote: post #22

Maybe I'm cynical, but I can't shake the thought that this will simply lead to the formation of gangs/clans.

I think social media is a somewhat relevant corollary, where it self-polices content. I'd say sometimes--like HN--it's a success. Good behavior is encouraged & enforced. Bad behavior is punished. Other times--like reddit--not a success. The hive-mind is real there, and in particular well-mannered disagreement that is misaligned with the norm is punished pretty strongly there. Plus we all have heard how their investig…

Both communities are heavily moderated

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#119

Post by zby »

spcoll wrote: post #50
coldtea wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In righteous societies, police were not a separate, elite order. They were everybody . Also in totalitarian dystopias. The thing is, before you get to who the police is (and it being everybody can be OK), it's more important to know what to police for and what is considered an offense.

Hunter-gatherer societies that did fit this model could be considered to be the ultimate totalitarian organizations. Extremely strict rules controlling every aspect of the life of the members, from birth to death, and no deviation ever tolerated, under pain of banishment or even death.

Care to link to sources on that?

From what I read on hunter-gatherers they were very egalitarian - and there was no need for strict rules controlling every aspect of the life of the members. Unlike in pastoral and settled cultures they did not have any way to accumulate wealth and they did not need to defend it later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer#Social_and_econ...

In fact the ways hunter-gatherers enforced their rules were often playful: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201105/ho... (lots of other interesting material at this site).

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