21–30 of 57 posts
The main novelty about this work is that we had 100 people play repeated PD for a month instead of The findings can be summarized in a sentence as "a minority of nice people can make everyone better off."
Resilient players, regardless of if they are cooperators or not would obviously add long-term stability; to me, this reads as adding stability creates stability. Majority of players are do not express resilient behaviors, regardless of the impact on them; that is they are random, unable to create a consistent valid strategy, etc. - it is not that they are just greedy, since if that were the case, the system dynamics…
It was not surprising in face of what was previously known, but it was not obvious either.
looks at TV selling me various pocket knives reads a bunch of people who think they know what they're talking about Is there a place in between for those who don't care about armchair intellectuals? I just want to know. Because a whole lot of basically retards made HN their new home so I'm curious. I'm the only person who noticed, I'm sure.
Resilient players, regardless of if they are cooperators or not would obviously add long-term stability; to me, this reads as adding stability creates stability. Majority of players are do not express resilient behaviors, regardless of the impact on them; that is they are random, unable to create a consistent valid strategy, etc. - it is not that they are just greedy, since if that were the case, the system dynamics…
It's not obvious that adding a minority if stable players will stabilize the overall game. It was not surprising in face of what was previously known, but it was not obvious either.
A general challenge in doing social science research is that once you present a new result, someone will always claim that it was obvious because of X. What they don't see was that there was a Y that could have plausibly explained an entirely different result. Once we've shown which of X or Y is more likely, the world updates, but it was not obvious to begin with.
My collaborator Duncan Watts (one of the pioneers in the field of network science) has written a book about this phenomenon: Everything is Obvious, Once You Know the Answer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not obvious that adding a minority if stable players will stabilize the overall game. It was not surprising in face of what was previously known, but it was not obvious either.
When designing this experiment, we were pretty sure that cooperation would break down altogether based on what people had previously tried. That it didn't and resembles more what we see in the real world (things generally work and people don't stab each other in the back) was not obvious. A general challenge in doing social science research is that once you present a new result, someone will always claim that it was…
If you're saying that the resilient players might switch to being non-resilient, sure, it's not obvious what would happen, but my assumption is that a resilient player is resilient.
Lead author of the paper here; AMA. The main novelty about this work is that we had 100 people play repeated PD for a month instead of The findings can be summarized in a sentence as "a minority of nice people can make everyone better off."
You say as a summary :
> a minority of nice people can make everyone better off
Was it possible for you to identify the "nice people" group vs the other group?
If yes, overall which group was better off ?
Once the non nice people start cooperating, i guess you can't make the difference between a nice person and a non nice one
Lead author of the paper here; AMA. The main novelty about this work is that we had 100 people play repeated PD for a month instead of The findings can be summarized in a sentence as "a minority of nice people can make everyone better off."
It seems to me that in countries with systemic corruption there is a huge game of prisoner's dilemma being played, with everyone making the 'wrong' decision. Here's a fascinating quote from a book about Kenyan graft [1]: -------------------- Where does each individual draw the limits of his or her compassion, beyond which duties of kindness, generosity and personal obligation no longer apply? I was raised in a househ…
Great post and wonderfully illustrated! The prisoner dilemma also ties into the tragedy of the commons: when multiple players decide to defect and exploit the commons to the fullest, then commons lose their value for all. It is also related to temporal discounting - we prefer to pollute today and ignore the price tag we will face in the future. We know so much about game theory yet we can't apply it in politics, beca…
Lead author of the paper here; AMA. The main novelty about this work is that we had 100 people play repeated PD for a month instead of The findings can be summarized in a sentence as "a minority of nice people can make everyone better off."
In other words, over time, the "compound interest" on the gains the nice individuals lose gets rewarded to the group. Any individual in the group who can game "niceness" benefits the group at the expense of the nice individual. "Good guys finish last," or something of that nature?
Stabilized long-running cooperation seems like a very bad desired(?) outcome, by the way; is that what you're saying is a good thing? Pareto improvements are usually realized / discovered / gained by individuals who eschew tradition and playing nice.
Lead author of the paper here; AMA. The main novelty about this work is that we had 100 people play repeated PD for a month instead of The findings can be summarized in a sentence as "a minority of nice people can make everyone better off."
I'm thinking about same game setting, except that players are asked to give their mugshot and real or fake mugshots of males, females, people different ethnicity, looks and ages are shown to them.