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Non-Zero-Sum Games

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Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#171

Post by didibus »

zahlman wrote: post #132
didibus wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It depends, there were a lot of studies that showed prejudice and bias in the meritocratic process. A meritocratic process by definition is not prejudiced or biased. There were studies that claimed to show processes to not actually be meritocratic. In my experience, these findings either haven't reproduced or don't appropriately account for confounders; and if they held up they would be pointing at things that are…

Historically, institutions were widely believed to be selecting the best available candidates within the accepted social boundaries of the time. They did not call it meritocracy, but it was assumed.

AA advocacy exposed cracks in systems that claimed to be merit based and pushed reforms like anonymization and structured evaluation, which made selection more merit based, not less.

Merit is noisy and ties are unavoidable. When candidates are effectively equal, a tie breaker is required. The old default was incumbency and other status quo dynamics that favored the existing cohort. Random selection among equals would be defensible. Favoring candidates from groups historically denied opportunity is another possible tie breaker. You can disagree with that choice, but it is coherent to see it as pro merit rather than anti merit.

And that's just my point, some proponents of AA were arguing for better merit based systems, not all, but a lot did.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#172

Post by immibis »

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.

But we do do that. People scream from the rooftops that it's unfair to give people money for doing nothing (i.e. welfare or UBI) but it's fine to give the same money to someone who digs ditches all day, and to someone else who fills in ditches. As long as a CEO is involved, for some reason. All of Graeber's bullshit jobs are effortocracy.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#173

Post by immibis »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #57
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is 100% a zero sum game and capitalists love to try to pretend that it’s not 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 There are limited resources on the planet and that’s the sum. If you want to take it even further…

>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…

Steel man: GP could be using "capitalism" to refer to the distribution of capital - financial markets - rather than the entire system. Financial markets are zero-sum as they don't produce anything and their consumption (wages, electricity, etc) is paid in by their users. They can influence wealth creation asnd destruction but that isn't part of the market itself.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#174

Post by immibis »

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.

One failure mode is when someone makes 1000 accounts and upvotes everything that benefits them and downvotes everything that doesn't. And you have to balance letting new users into the system with not letting the same user into the system twice, and with not requiring a picture of each user's passport. Or some orange guy convinced 1000 people that what's good for him is objectively good and what's bad for him is objectively bad and facts aren't real and words don't have meanings, which has the same effect as a user with 1000 accounts, but even scanning passports won't help you.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#175

Post by immibis »

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…

So... how does a new person open a shop?

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#176

Post by jibal »

robocat wrote: post #95
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

Certainly some people know better than some other people, and I see nothing in the guidelines that say otherwise, or say that one cannot say so ... expertise is a thing. OTOH, I think there are several aspects of your comment that go against the guidelines. (Perhaps my pointing that out does as well.)

Of course, one can dispute specific claims, with facts and argumentation.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#177

Post by jibal »

skibidithink wrote: post #166
anon84873628 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that critics of AA are committing the Fallacy of Composition. Specifically when saying that since giving out scholarships doesn't result in equal educational outcomes, then we should stop giving out scholarships. I am with the author on this one. Creating better educational outcomes (for all students) is a coordination problem.

Critics are typically saying that giving out scholarships limited by race is racially discriminatory.

This doesn't address the question and adds to it a misrepresentation of the facts.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#178

Post by stackghost »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #119
Xirdus wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You’re describing positive-sum outcomes in subjective preference space. I’m describing conservation laws in physical state space. Preference gains don’t violate thermodynamics, but they also don’t escape zero-sum reality once you include energy, ecology, and time. You’re doing what I’m complaining about separating Economics from ecology - there’s a very firm reason why climate changes the most important topic of our…

"Everything in economics is zero-sum because the resources on the plane are finite" is an unimaginative undergraduate-level position that adds nothing of substance to the discussion.

If you want to have a constructive conversation about pricing environmental externalities then by all means, but you need to drop this "I'm smarter than you" attitude if you want better reactions to your comments, especially if you're just going to aggressively post lukewarm takes and then insult people.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#179

Post by 578_Observer »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #103
578_Observer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand your pessimism. Looking at the demographics, Japan seems to be in a "Game Over" state. I live in rural Gunma, surrounded by *empty houses (Akiya) and elderly people*, so I feel this reality every day.

However, living right in the middle of it, I have started to see it differently. Japan is running a global experiment: *"How to sustain a civilization without growth."*

As you said, if the world is finite (Zero Sum), then "Scale or Die" will eventually stop working physically for everyone. Every country will hit the same wall. We are just hitting it first. We are the *test subjects* to see if humans can mature into a "Steady State" or if we just collapse. I am here to document the result.

Re: Non-Zero-Sum Games

#180

Post by zdc1 »

hirako2000 wrote: post #126
jmward01 wrote: post #118

One thing I have always thought was missing in game theory (and it is probably there but I just haven't looked hard enough) is a mathematical framework for how to build trust to increase the infinite payout for everyone. If in the decision making the idea of an offering is added in then it brings up the possibility of gauging trust and building trust so that future actions can capture more value until an optimal infi…

Nature already solved that and implemented it. It's all around us with relationships. Not just among humans. They typically last over a single interaction. Especially if you don't ignore the rules of the game. But the game theory of nature also leaves room for other sort of players to somehow win over fair play. I thought this was a bug but over time realised it is a feature, critical to making players as a whole str…

I think this comes down to the fact that we can keep a mental ledger on the reputations of 50–100 people, so our in-built reputation system breaks down at the current scale.

You could try building a social credit system to scale things up, but that tends to upset people...

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