Is Using Someone's Reason Against Them Fraud?

[Selene]

...but not for leveraged "investments".

Greg

Pretty accurate. I just want to grow up and be like Hillary, who has no knowledge of:

1) Whitewater;

2) Rose law firm billing records;

3) a key aide found in Marcy Park;

4) Bimbos and Benghazi;

5) Cattle futures;<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<her "leveraged" investment...gag

6) getting too tired to list the multiple felonies that these two have been involved in...

Obviously qualified to be POTUS.

--Brant

what you ya think it's really all about?

Brant:

I think we have successfully bifurcated this thread into two (2) separate streams that are both completely unrelated to the original post!

Now we just have to make sure that we make them the Eloi...

Great plans have great reach!

[moralist]

...but not for leveraged "investments".

Greg

Pretty accurate. I just want to grow up and be like Hillary, who has no knowledge of:

1) Whitewater;

2) Rose law firm billing records;

3) a key aide found in Marcy Park;

4) Bimbos and Benghazi;

5) Cattle futures;<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<her "leveraged" investment...gag

6) getting too tired to list the multiple felonies that these two have been involved in...

I like to keep in mind that it is not just Hillary alone, as she accurately represents the tens of millions who support her because they also live by the same values she does. It's their support that grants her license to flout the law.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

...but not for leveraged "investments".

Greg

Pretty accurate. I just want to grow up and be like Hillary, who has no knowledge of:

1) Whitewater;

2) Rose law firm billing records;

3) a key aide found in Marcy Park;

4) Bimbos and Benghazi;

5) Cattle futures;<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<her "leveraged" investment...gag

6) getting too tired to list the multiple felonies that these two have been involved in...

Obviously qualified to be POTUS.

--Brant

what you ya think it's really all about?

Brant:

I think we have successfully bifurcated this thread into two (2) separate streams that are both completely unrelated to the original post!

Now we just have to make sure that we make them the Eloi...

Great plans have great reach!

Original post? I don't need no stinkin' original post!

--Brant

[Selene]

I like to keep in mind that it is not just Hillary alone, as she accurately represents the tens of millions who support her because they also live by the same values she does. It's their support that grants her license to flout the law.

Greg

Greg:

Let's save electrons. So stipulated.

A...

[moralist]

I like to keep in mind that it is not just Hillary alone, as she accurately represents the tens of millions who support her because they also live by the same values she does. It's their support that grants her license to flout the law.

Greg

Greg:

Let's save electrons. So stipulated.

A...

I spend electrons as I please.

They're just like bitcoins.

There is the tendency to become fixated upon leaders as if they're the problem, when they're actually only the symptom. Only when enough people change first, will the leaders change along with them as a matter of course.

Greg

[moralist]

...but not for leveraged "investments".

Greg

Pretty accurate. I just want to grow up and be like Hillary, who has no knowledge of:

1) Whitewater;

2) Rose law firm billing records;

3) a key aide found in Marcy Park;

4) Bimbos and Benghazi;

5) Cattle futures;<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<her "leveraged" investment...gag

6) getting too tired to list the multiple felonies that these two have been involved in...

Obviously qualified to be POTUS.

--Brant

what you ya think it's really all about?

Brant:

I think we have successfully bifurcated this thread into two (2) separate streams that are both completely unrelated to the original post!

Now we just have to make sure that we make them the Eloi...

Great plans have great reach!

Original post? I don't need no stinkin' original post!

--Brant

Heck, none of my posts are ever original!

Greg

[Selene]

This article is for ms. n and Bob:

I like the flower girl in the second photo. She is having none of this jumping. She seems to be saying: "I will not sacrifice my dignity."

Needless to say, the second photo got my attention.

I want to tell you how I discovered these two photos. It is a remarkable story. I came across the first step in this story in an article written by James Altucher, who offers a never-ending supply of weird and wonderful stories -- and also depressing ones. This one is wonderful. It is a typical Altucher story: "How to Deal With Crappy People." His titles have a way to grab your attention. Here, I read this:

I was talking about this with Penelope Trunk and Melissa Sconyers who works with Penelope. Penelope has an excellent blog I recommend. She also has Asperger's Syndrome which, from what I can gather, means she can't read social cues on people so has trouble knowing how to respond to people. So she told me her technique what she does.

She uses something called Myers-Briggs to determines someone's personality type. Then, in advance of meeting that person, she looks up the personality type and figures out how she needs to respond and interact with that person.

I had heard of the affliction, but I did not know anything about it.

I had seen Penelope's blog before I read his article. It is beautifully constructed -- a model for what a blog should look like. Take a look: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com.

I clicked the link. On her front page was an article, "How to build a career if you have Aspergers." She began with this:

Roughly 80 percent of adults with Asperger's syndrome do not have full-time work, according to some studies. By the time I figured out I had the disorder, I had been fired from every job I had ever held. I had offended everyone I knew. Think of all the thoughts and judgments that go through your head that you'd never say aloud: You're fat. You're lazy. Your clothes don't fit. Your office smells. I say these things because they're true, and I've since built a career on saying what no one else will say--or maybe I have a career in spite of that.

http://www.garynorth.com/public/12188.cfm

[moralist]

She also has Asperger's Syndrome which, from what I can gather, means she can't read social cues on people so has trouble knowing how to respond to people.

Asperger's also means that a person has an almost complete lack of self awareness.

Because if a person isn't aware of what other's behavior means,

they are equally unaware of the meaning of their own.

Greg

[Selene]

She also has Asperger's Syndrome which, from what I can gather, means she can't read social cues on people so has trouble knowing how to respond to people.

Asperger's also means that a person has an almost complete lack of self awareness.

Because if a person isn't aware of what other's behavior means,

they are equally unaware of the meaning of their own.

Greg

That is not a conclusion that you can make from the underlying facts dude...

[Darrell Hougen]

I realized this morning that neither previous calculation was correct. However, the current calculation is still not correct.

For the player that goes first, the value of dropping out is -(2n - 1) if we start counting at 1. The problem is the assertion that the value of not dropping out is p * (20 - n - 1). First, the formula should be p * (20 - (2n + 1)) for consistent use of n. For example, if Alice bid $1 on turn one, then she would be out $1 if she quit. However, if she bid $3 on round two and Bob didn't bid again, she would win $20 - $3 = $17.

You're right. I had the right equations saved to a png file but it didn't allow me to upload them in my post, and I wrote down the wrong ones by accident but the solutions are right, regardless. In my scheme, n starts at 0 (which is really the second round of the auction), and the right equations are:

-(2n + 1) > p*(20 - (2n + 1))

I still don't think you're using n consistently. If Alice doesn't bid, she loses the amount she bid in the previous round. If she does bid, she might win $20 minus the amount she bid in the current round.

...

This is what I meant when I said that Carl's gambit is not fundamentally different from him holding up Alice and Bob at gunpoint. Hence why I conclude that this kind of gambit is coercive and therefore immoral.

Although Carl might be committing fraud if he is taking advantage of the ignorance of Alice or Bob, I wouldn't call his gambit coercive. Again, it is never in the self interest of either Alice or Bob to play the game.

Let me try this one more time. You have a set of equations, but consider the following. Assume that Bob knows that he will always win but that he doesn't know on which round he will win. For the sake of argument, let's assume he either wins by bidding $10 or $30 and that no other possibilities arise. Let's also assume that Bob has no way of knowing which outcome is more likely, so he assigns equal probabilities to the two outcomes. Then, his expected payoff is:

$20 - 0.5 * $10 - 0.5 * $30 = $0.

The situation is possible of Alice drops out after $10 half of the time and after $30 half of the time.

Now, let's assume that Bob doesn't know whether he will win or not but that the game will still end for Bob after he bids either $10 or $30. That is, if Alice continues to $11, Bob might drop out and take a $10 loss or if Alice continues to $31 Bob will definitely drop out and take a $30 loss. Then, there are four possibilities:

Win | Loss | Net

----------------

20 | -10 | 10

0 | -10 | -10

20 | -30 | -10

0 | -30 | -30

If each situation is equally likely, then Bob's expected payoff is:

0.25 * 10 - 0.25 * 10 - 0.25 * 10 - 0.25 * 30 = -$10.

The above scenario is possible if Alice drops out after Bob bids $10 a quarter of the time, Bob drops out after Alice bids $11 one third of the times that the game gets that far, Alice drops out of the game after Bob bids $30 half of the times that Bob bids that much and Bob always drops out after Alice bids $31.

So, in one of the cases I analyzed, Bob's expected payoff is $0 and in another case his expected payoff is -$10.

My analysis is sort of arbitrary, but so is yours because you're ignoring what happens if the opponent doesn't drop out before the next move. I've analyzed a couple of cases in which Alice and Bob have deployed strategies that they might have devised in advance but which are unknown to the other player and shown that they result in a zero or negative payoff. In fact, if you look at Alice's expected payoff in each of the above cases, it is even worse than Bob's.

Of course, there are combinations of strategies in which either Alice or Bob could have a positive payoff although they couldn't both achieve a positive payoff at the same time. One could try to determine the unconditional expected payoff for Alice and Bob by doing something like averaging over all possible strategies, but that is clearly infeasible. So, it makes more sense to resort to a meta argument.

The meta argument is that there does not appear to be any strategy with a positive expected payoff. If Alice and Bob are equally smart and equally well informed, then there is no way for either to consistently beat the other or beat the game (personified by Carl).

There may or may not be some selection of probabilities for Alice and Bob such that the expected payoffs for Alice, Bob and Carl are all zero. If so, that would represent the best that each could do. If such a fixed point existed, any player that deviated from the optimal would be punished by the other player exploiting the weakness in the first player's strategy. For example, if Alice found a strategy in which she consistently beat Bob and Carl when Bob was using the optimal strategy, Bob would switch to a strategy in which he would beat Alice even more decisively. However, it might be that no fixed point exists and Alice and Bob would just switch strategies endlessly in an attempt to better the other. On average, we should not expect them to adopt strategies that are positive for Carl. So, Carl's expected payoff would also be zero.

Darrell

[moralist]

She also has Asperger's Syndrome which, from what I can gather, means she can't read social cues on people so has trouble knowing how to respond to people.

Asperger's also means that a person has an almost complete lack of self awareness.

Because if a person isn't aware of what other's behavior means,

they are equally unaware of the meaning of their own.

Greg

That is not a conclusion that you can make from the underlying facts dude...

Relax, Adam... it's just one man's minority opinion that no one else holds.

Our narcoculture first reduces every conceivable human condition down to a "syndrome" over which the poor helpless innocent victim has absolutely no control, nor for which do they possess the slightest bit of personal responsibility for their own behavior.

Then comes the kicker.

The pharmaceutical corporations can then market billions of dollars of drugs to "cure" the "syndrome"...

...and the suckers eagerly lap it up like dogs on vomit.

Blaming a "syndrome" is the perfect excuse to absolve everyone of taking responsibility for their own behavior. It's a brilliantly wicked ploy. The Devil himself couldn't have come up with a better one.

Greg

[SoAMadDeathWish]

I still don't think you're using n consistently. If Alice doesn't bid, she loses the amount she bid in the previous round. If she does bid, she might win $20 minus the amount she bid in the current round.

-(2n + 1) > p(20 - (2n + 3))

-2n - 1 > 20p -2pn - 3p

-2n + 2pn > 17p + 1

2n(p-1) > 17p + 1

n < (17p + 1)/(p - 1)

-2n > p(20 - (2n + 2))

-2n > 20p - 2pn - 2p

-2n + 2pn > 18p

2n(p - 1) > 18p

n < 9p/(p-1)

Again, nothing really changes, since the terms on the right hand side are still always negative.

Let me try this one more time. You have a set of equations, but consider the following. Assume that Bob knows that he will always win but that he doesn't know on which round he will win. For the sake of argument, let's assume he either wins by bidding $10 or $30 and that no other possibilities arise. Let's also assume that Bob has no way of knowing which outcome is more likely, so he assigns equal probabilities to the two outcomes. Then, his expected payoff is:

$20 - 0.5 * $10 - 0.5 * $30 = $0.

The situation is possible of Alice drops out after $10 half of the time and after $30 half of the time.

Now, let's assume that Bob doesn't know whether he will win or not but that the game will still end for Bob after he bids either $10 or $30. That is, if Alice continues to $11, Bob might drop out and take a $10 loss or if Alice continues to $31 Bob will definitely drop out and take a $30 loss. Then, there are four possibilities:

Win | Loss | Net

----------------

20 | -10 | 10

0 | -10 | -10

20 | -30 | -10

0 | -30 | -30

If each situation is equally likely, then Bob's expected payoff is:

0.25 * 10 - 0.25 * 10 - 0.25 * 10 - 0.25 * 30 = -$10.

The above scenario is possible if Alice drops out after Bob bids $10 a quarter of the time, Bob drops out after Alice bids $11 one third of the times that the game gets that far, Alice drops out of the game after Bob bids $30 half of the times that Bob bids that much and Bob always drops out after Alice bids $31.

So, in one of the cases I analyzed, Bob's expected payoff is $0 and in another case his expected payoff is -$10.

My analysis is sort of arbitrary, but so is yours because you're ignoring what happens if the opponent doesn't drop out before the next move. I've analyzed a couple of cases in which Alice and Bob have deployed strategies that they might have devised in advance but which are unknown to the other player and shown that they result in a zero or negative payoff. In fact, if you look at Alice's expected payoff in each of the above cases, it is even worse than Bob's.

Your analysis is definitely arbitrary. The problem is that the strategies that Bob is using here are based on information he does not have, and the analysis changes based on that information. For example, in your first case, it could very well be that Bob will win at either $0 or $1, and then his expected payoff is $19.50. Similarly for the second case.

Also, I am not ignoring what happens if the opponent doesn't drop out before the next move. I assigned a probability p to the second term in the inequalities representing the probability of the opponent dropping out. If the opponent doesn't drop out, then n increases, and the game gets re-evaluated.

Look, the problem with this game is that it would be obvious to know whether or not you should play if you had information about how much money your opponent has. If he has less than $20 and less than you, then you should play. If he has less than you, but more than $20, then you shouldn't. If he has more money than you, then again, you shouldn't. The trouble is that you don't know how much money your opponent can bid, and even an infinitesimal chance that he might drop out on some round before your bid reaches $20 leaves you with a positive payoff, i.e. p*(20 - current bid).

Of course, there are combinations of strategies in which either Alice or Bob could have a positive payoff although they couldn't both achieve a positive payoff at the same time. One could try to determine the unconditional expected payoff for Alice and Bob by doing something like averaging over all possible strategies, but that is clearly infeasible. So, it makes more sense to resort to a meta argument.

The meta argument is that there does not appear to be any strategy with a positive expected payoff. If Alice and Bob are equally smart and equally well informed, then there is no way for either to consistently beat the other or beat the game (personified by Carl).

This is true only if you assume that the game cannot end before the bidding reaches $20, but the assumption is too strong.

There may or may not be some selection of probabilities for Alice and Bob such that the expected payoffs for Alice, Bob and Carl are all zero. If so, that would represent the best that each could do. If such a fixed point existed, any player that deviated from the optimal would be punished by the other player exploiting the weakness in the first player's strategy. For example, if Alice found a strategy in which she consistently beat Bob and Carl when Bob was using the optimal strategy, Bob would switch to a strategy in which he would beat Alice even more decisively. However, it might be that no fixed point exists and Alice and Bob would just switch strategies endlessly in an attempt to better the other. On average, we should not expect them to adopt strategies that are positive for Carl. So, Carl's expected payoff would also be zero.

This sounds like pure speculation. I'm gonna have to ask you to prove your conclusions here, though I'm not even sure what they are supposed to be.

[Selene]

Wow...

This like two (2) life forms communicating on Star Trek...

An intergalactic pong...

[moralist]

Wow...

This like two (2) life forms communicating on Star Trek...

An intergalactic pong...

That .gif sums it all up: zero sum

Greg

[dldelancey]

Wow...

This like two (2) life forms communicating on Star Trek...

An intergalactic pong...

Cute, Adam. I, for one, am quite happy that Naomi has found someone, in Darrel, who speaks her language, and I've found their exchange fascinating. I had a professor once a long time ago that used to tell a story about his own college days where he spent most of his time in a building that was named simply "Math and Other Foreign Languages." This conversation between Naomi and Darrel makes me think of that. In any case, I hope she arrives at an answer that resolves the conflict the problem raises for her.

[Frediano]

Where was reason being used against anybody?

James Dean has a fast car. His rival has a fast car. Neither knows what the other has under the hood of their cars.

They decide to race for pink slips. The winner gets both cars. The loser gets no car.

They race, and someone wins, and someone loses.

What does reason have to do with not knowing what the other person has under the hood, and gambling anyway? It is gambling.

Or, is not knowing how much money one has to outbid the other in this example significantly different than James Dean not knowing what is under the hood of the other car?

As long as we are cooking up examples, here is the Altruist Bed of Nails: Supposedly, it is a dilemma of some kind, and supposedly, how you respond says something very deep about you.

There is a button in front of you. If you press it, then everyone in the world except those you know and love will be destroyed. If ten seconds pass and you don't press it, then everyone you know and love will be destroyed but the world will be spared.

What is the ethical/moral thing to do?

Just to be clear, If I was placed on that bed of nails, I'd slam my fist down on that button in a heartbeat; no need to wait ten seconds to agonize over it. I wouldn't want there to be any confusion over the ten seconds.

The only moral lesson to be found is, don't build worlds with buttons in it like that. No doubt when I press that button, I take out the squirrelly bastard who built the button, along with a world that tolerated him. History could blame him. I mean, those I know and love could blame him. after they thanked me. Any world that tolerated the building of buttons like that has no business hanging around.

Would the folks who dream this nonsense up ethically fault the tortured individual for pushing the button, or do reasoned folks everywhere blame the sick mofo who built that button?

Lather, rinse, repeat.

[Selene]

I, for one, am quite happy that Naomi has found someone, in Darrel, who speaks her language, and I've found their exchange fascinating. I had a professor once a long time ago that used to tell a story about his own college days where he spent most of his time in a building that was named simply "Math and Other Foreign Languages." This conversation between Naomi and Darrel makes me think of that. In any case, I hope she arrives at an answer that resolves the conflict the problem raises for her.

Ditto. I meant no harm to either. Darrell's good people.

Naomi, based on her particular sense difficulties, will work well with him.

A...

Post Script: Cute and Adam...now there is a contradiction...

[Darrell Hougen]

Also, I am not ignoring what happens if the opponent doesn't drop out before the next move. I assigned a probability p to the second term in the inequalities representing the probability of the opponent dropping out. If the opponent doesn't drop out, then n increases, and the game gets re-evaluated.

I don't want to wait for the next round for the game to get re-evaluated. I want you to give me a value for the next round before it is played. If you don't you're ignoring the next round in your calculation. As I said before, the value of a play is:

-(2n - 1) + p * (20 - (2n + 1)) + (1 - p) * something.

Until you supply the "something", you're ignoring what happens if the opponent doesn't drop out. There's a probability p that the opponent drops out and a probability 1 - p that he doesn't. If he doesn't, I need to know what will happen.

You can't just ignore what happens and therefore conclude that the value of the game is positive. You can't just assume "something" is equal to zero. What if "something" is a large negative number? Then, the value of the game is negative and the player should drop out.

You can't just say I'm assuming Bob knows things he doesn't know. Even if he doesn't know them, the analysis can't ignore what he doesn't know. If you can't assign a value to "something" then you can't conclude the payoff is positive or even zero. You can't prove it. Your equation is incomplete.

Part of the problem is that the game tree is infinite. So, it is impossible to assign a value to the infinity of possibilities. But no real game is infinite. If the two players kept bidding forever, the game would never end, Alice and Bob would never lose anything and Carl would never win.

So, you could make some reasonable assumption. Assume that each player has $100 and reevaluate the game. What strategy would you employ if you were one of the players?

You can't claim that you can't look ahead to see what might happen. That would be like saying you can't look ahead in chess because you don't know what your opponent is going to do. You just evaluate the possibilities. And, at any rate, if you can't evaluate the possibilities because they're too complicated, you're not entitled to conclude that the expected payoff is positive.

Darrell

[Darrell Hougen]

Where was reason being used against anybody?

James Dean has a fast car. His rival has a fast car. Neither knows what the other has under the hood of their cars.

They decide to race for pink slips. The winner gets both cars. The loser gets no car.

They race, and someone wins, and someone loses.

What does reason have to do with not knowing what the other person has under the hood, and gambling anyway? It is gambling.

Or, is not knowing how much money one has to outbid the other in this example significantly different than James Dean not knowing what is under the hood of the other car?

Would it be rational to enter such a race if you didn't expect to win? Naomi's argument is that all players in her game rationally expect to win because her mathematical analysis shows that all players have a positive expected payoff which is, of course, impossible in a zero sum game.

As long as we are cooking up examples, here is the Altruist Bed of Nails: Supposedly, it is a dilemma of some kind, and supposedly, how you respond says something very deep about you.

There is a button in front of you. If you press it, then everyone in the world except those you know and love will be destroyed. If ten seconds pass and you don't press it, then everyone you know and love will be destroyed but the world will be spared.

What is the ethical/moral thing to do?

Just to be clear, If I was placed on that bed of nails, I'd slam my fist down on that button in a heartbeat; no need to wait ten seconds to agonize over it. I wouldn't want there to be any confusion over the ten seconds.

The only moral lesson to be found is, don't build worlds with buttons in it like that. No doubt when I press that button, I take out the squirrelly bastard who built the button, along with a world that tolerated him. History could blame him. I mean, those I know and love could blame him. after they thanked me. Any world that tolerated the building of buttons like that has no business hanging around.

Would the folks who dream this nonsense up ethically fault the tortured individual for pushing the button, or do reasoned folks everywhere blame the sick mofo who built that button?

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The problem with such an example is that it is, indeed, cooked up. There is no such thing as the button you described and there never will be, so the question can be safely ignored. But, I like your idea of taking out the button builder.

Darrell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I finally caught up with this thread.

I avoided it because the initial problem reminded me a lot of the Prospect Theory, which Kahneman covered a lot in a section of Thinking Fast and Slow. I went through this book at the end of last year and beginning of this one. When he got to that part, I had to grit my teeth because I never think in terms of mathematical loss and gain only. But I plugged through it.

Still, when I looked at this thread, my pain avoidance system kept kicking in.

The danger with the approach in this thread (and in Prospect Theory, including related stuff) is when the term "rational" is meant as mathematical gain only. Some people draw conclusions from a "heuristic" uncovered and described by that standard (or even behavior people exhibited in experiments), then they apply that meaning of "rational" to situations where there are many, many more variables and values at stake. Inevitably they draw conclusions that people are rational or irrational, or that they acted rationally or irrationally, based on a meaning of rational taken from a very limited context--so limited it is useless to the broad situation.

Since the same word is used with two different meanings, it's easy for confusion to result--and some very nasty inferences. So long as the respective meanings of rational are kept, there is no problem. But I have seen several places where a big problem falls precisely here.

I'm a third way person in most dichotomies. The few psychological tests I have taken say I favor being rebellious. So I generally like to step outside the problem as stated, but use the terms in the problem and show where the problem is irrelevant to that new situation.

For instance, in the video below, an eight-year-old kid found a $20 bill and acted perfectly rational in my view. In fact, given his values, I can't think of a more rational manner in which he could have invested that $20. Note that game theory and/or Prospect Theory-like heuristics are nowhere to be seen.

BARF ALERT

(The warning is for those who do not like these things. Which is definitely not Greg. This one tugs hard at the heartstrings. )

In my view, this kid took $20 he did not earn, but found instead, and bought a lifetime of wealth with it. He will always be known as the kid who did that when he was eight and the ripples from that act will go far and wide, both in the present and into the future.

In fact, this video has well over 2 million views as of now.

Michael

[moralist]

I finally caught up with this thread.

I avoided it because the initial problem reminded me a lot of the Prospect Theory, which Kahneman covered a lot in a section of Thinking Fast and Slow. I went through this book at the end of last year and beginning of this one. When he got to that part, I had to grit my teeth because I never think in terms of mathematical loss and gain only. But I plugged through it.

Still, when I looked at this thread, my pain avoidance system kept kicking in.

The danger with the approach in this thread (and in Prospect Theory, including related stuff) is when the term "rational" is meant as mathematical gain only. Some people draw conclusions from a "heuristic" uncovered and described by that standard (or even behavior people exhibited in experiments), then they apply that meaning of "rational" to situations where there are many, many more variables and values at stake. Inevitably they draw conclusions that people are rational or irrational, or that they acted rationally or irrationally, based on a meaning of rational taken from a very limited context--so limited it is useless to the broad situation.

Since the same word is used with two different meanings, it's easy for confusion to result--and some very nasty inferences. So long as the respective meanings of rational are kept, there is no problem. But I have seen several places where a big problem falls precisely here.

I'm a third way person in most dichotomies. The few psychological tests I have taken say I favor being rebellious. So I generally like to step outside the problem as stated, but use the terms in the problem and show where the problem is irrelevant to that new situation.

For instance, in the video below, an eight-year-old kid found a $20 bill and acted perfectly rational in my view. In fact, given his values, I can't think of a more rational manner in which he could have invested that $20. Note that game theory and/or Prospect Theory-like heuristics are nowhere to be seen.

BARF ALERT

(The warning is for those who do not like these things. Which is definitely not Greg. This one tugs hard at the heartstrings. )

In my view, this kid took $20 he did not earn, but found instead, and bought a lifetime of wealth with it. He will always be known as the kid who did that when he was eight and the ripples from that act will go far and wide, both in the present and into the future.

In fact, this video has well over 2 million views as of now.

Michael

This is how Heaven becomes manifest on Earth...

Greg

[SoAMadDeathWish]

I don't want to wait for the next round for the game to get re-evaluated. I want you to give me a value for the next round before it is played. If you don't you're ignoring the next round in your calculation. As I said before, the value of a play is:

-(2n - 1) + p * (20 - (2n + 1)) + (1 - p) * something.

Until you supply the "something", you're ignoring what happens if the opponent doesn't drop out. There's a probability p that the opponent drops out and a probability 1 - p that he doesn't. If he doesn't, I need to know what will happen.

You can't just ignore what happens and therefore conclude that the value of the game is positive. You can't just assume "something" is equal to zero. What if "something" is a large negative number? Then, the value of the game is negative and the player should drop out.

You can't just say I'm assuming Bob knows things he doesn't know. Even if he doesn't know them, the analysis can't ignore what he doesn't know. If you can't assign a value to "something" then you can't conclude the payoff is positive or even zero. You can't prove it. Your equation is incomplete.

We're both wrong. It seems that the game can't be evaluated at all in terms of utilities because evaluations at later stages of the game determine the evaluations at earlier stages. This is of course, an absurdity. Nonetheless, I think you're right in that we can't just assume that the "something" is zero, but then we can't assume that it is anything else either.

Part of the problem is that the game tree is infinite. So, it is impossible to assign a value to the infinity of possibilities. But no real game is infinite. If the two players kept bidding forever, the game would never end, Alice and Bob would never lose anything and Carl would never win.

EXACTLY! That's why they would want to bid forever. In this paper the authors introduce a method for dealing with infinite games. I'm still working through the formalism, but what they're essentially saying is that bidding forever in an infinite game is rational because it is a Nash Equilibrium. Deviating from that strategy by either player on the nth move always results in an immediate loss of n dollars for that player. Sure, the players are digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole, but the catch is that no one cares about losing a large some of money infinity years from now.

So, you could make some reasonable assumption. Assume that each player has $100 and reevaluate the game. What strategy would you employ if you were one of the players?

If both players have an equal budget, then it turns out that there is a strategy that one of them can use to win the auction with a positive payoff. Not sure what it is, though.

[dldelancey]

I finally caught up with this thread.

I avoided it because the initial problem reminded me a lot of the Prospect Theory, which Kahneman covered a lot in a section of Thinking Fast and Slow. I went through this book at the end of last year and beginning of this one. When he got to that part, I had to grit my teeth because I never think in terms of mathematical loss and gain only. But I plugged through it.

Still, when I looked at this thread, my pain avoidance system kept kicking in.

The danger with the approach in this thread (and in Prospect Theory, including related stuff) is when the term "rational" is meant as mathematical gain only. Some people draw conclusions from a "heuristic" uncovered and described by that standard (or even behavior people exhibited in experiments), then they apply that meaning of "rational" to situations where there are many, many more variables and values at stake. Inevitably they draw conclusions that people are rational or irrational, or that they acted rationally or irrationally, based on a meaning of rational taken from a very limited context--so limited it is useless to the broad situation.

Since the same word is used with two different meanings, it's easy for confusion to result--and some very nasty inferences. So long as the respective meanings of rational are kept, there is no problem. But I have seen several places where a big problem falls precisely here.

I'm a third way person in most dichotomies. The few psychological tests I have taken say I favor being rebellious. So I generally like to step outside the problem as stated, but use the terms in the problem and show where the problem is irrelevant to that new situation.

For instance, in the video below, an eight-year-old kid found a $20 bill and acted perfectly rational in my view. In fact, given his values, I can't think of a more rational manner in which he could have invested that $20. Note that game theory and/or Prospect Theory-like heuristics are nowhere to be seen.

BARF ALERT

(The warning is for those who do not like these things. Which is definitely not Greg. This one tugs hard at the heartstrings. )

In my view, this kid took $20 he did not earn, but found instead, and bought a lifetime of wealth with it. He will always be known as the kid who did that when he was eight and the ripples from that act will go far and wide, both in the present and into the future.

In fact, this video has well over 2 million views as of now.

Michael

My son is dyslexic. One way he compensates is to apply musical notes to certain letters that give him diffculty. My child, literally, hears music when he reads. I have no idea how he developed this method or why it works for him, and I never will, but it's a freaking amazing thing that he accomplished.

I think math is Naomi's music, and she's working through how she can apply something that makes total sense to her to something that creates conflict within her. Indeed, it's a unique way of thinking, but kind of amazing, too.

Naomi, forgive me for talking about you as if you aren't here.

[BaalChatzaf]

I finally caught up with this thread.

I avoided it because the initial problem reminded me a lot of the Prospect Theory, which Kahneman covered a lot in a section of Thinking Fast and Slow. I went through this book at the end of last year and beginning of this one. When he got to that part, I had to grit my teeth because I never think in terms of mathematical loss and gain only. But I plugged through it.

Still, when I looked at this thread, my pain avoidance system kept kicking in.

The danger with the approach in this thread (and in Prospect Theory, including related stuff) is when the term "rational" is meant as mathematical gain only. Some people draw conclusions from a "heuristic" uncovered and described by that standard (or even behavior people exhibited in experiments), then they apply that meaning of "rational" to situations where there are many, many more variables and values at stake. Inevitably they draw conclusions that people are rational or irrational, or that they acted rationally or irrationally, based on a meaning of rational taken from a very limited context--so limited it is useless to the broad situation.

Since the same word is used with two different meanings, it's easy for confusion to result--and some very nasty inferences. So long as the respective meanings of rational are kept, there is no problem. But I have seen several places where a big problem falls precisely here.

I'm a third way person in most dichotomies. The few psychological tests I have taken say I favor being rebellious. So I generally like to step outside the problem as stated, but use the terms in the problem and show where the problem is irrelevant to that new situation.

For instance, in the video below, an eight-year-old kid found a $20 bill and acted perfectly rational in my view. In fact, given his values, I can't think of a more rational manner in which he could have invested that $20. Note that game theory and/or Prospect Theory-like heuristics are nowhere to be seen.

BARF ALERT

(The warning is for those who do not like these things. Which is definitely not Greg. This one tugs hard at the heartstrings. )

In my view, this kid took $20 he did not earn, but found instead, and bought a lifetime of wealth with it. He will always be known as the kid who did that when he was eight and the ripples from that act will go far and wide, both in the present and into the future.

In fact, this video has well over 2 million views as of now.

Michael

My son is dyslexic. One way he compensates is to apply musical notes to certain letters that give him diffculty. My child, literally, hears music when he reads. I have no idea how he developed this method or why it works for him, and I never will, but it's a freaking amazing thing that he accomplished.

I think math is Naomi's music, and she's working through how she can apply something that makes total sense to her to something that creates conflict within her. Indeed, it's a unique way of thinking, but kind of amazing, too.

Naomi, forgive me for talking about you as if you aren't here.

Learning Ally the organization I do volunteer work for, is preparing material and courses to help dyslexics. I will bring this technique to their attention. Perhaps it is already being used, but in any case it is useful information.

Thank you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

My son is dyslexic. One way he compensates is to apply musical notes to certain letters that give him diffculty. My child, literally, hears music when he reads. I have no idea how he developed this method or why it works for him, and I never will, but it's a freaking amazing thing that he accomplished.

I think math is Naomi's music, and she's working through how she can apply something that makes total sense to her to something that creates conflict within her. Indeed, it's a unique way of thinking, but kind of amazing, too.

Deanna,

I like this thinking.

And I tend to agree with you about Naomi from what I've seen in her posts. It will be interesting to see of this gets clearer or goes in a different direction.

On a related note, my stepson Sean is on the autistic spectrum. He's high-functioning, but I have found it to be a lot more productive to learn his language and communicate with him through it than to be a wall he constantly crashes into. By doing that, it has become very easy for me to see he's a cool kid.

Still, he has to get along in the world, so I have worked out my own system of helping him by slowly developing a neural pathway in his head that branches out all over the place. It's a give and take neural pathway, too, not just a set of rules.

Some of this may sound silly, but here's what I have done. He had difficulty with behavior in his Taekwondo class. He's had a lot of other difficulties, but I settled on this one because the problem was acute. Basically, I liked it because I could include drama as part of the routines and I'm a bit of a hambone.

He's in Taekwondo because Kat and I found a group that caters to special needs children and believed he needed the physical exercise. Also, I thought this was an excellent resource for him to have against potential bullies. He's a sweet kid, not aggressive, and his demeanor is the kind that invites bullies.

His thing is computers, especially games. But not just playing them. He knows all about the different franchises, character crossovers, etc. Lots of weird details and a lot of technical stuff.

A couple of times in Taekwondo he got violent. That was the problem I used to start building the neural pathway. He had slammed a door on a little girl and he struck someone in the back with a practised blow--the person was standing in front of him. These were surges of emotion and, as I know him, I'm pretty sure they were related to acting out something he saw in a game or video. Since this is a martial art and he does have some skills, he could actually hurt someone, so he was thrown out for a few weeks. The instructor gave him one last chance and said the third time he would be out for good.

He is not a big fan of Taekwondo because he does not like physical activity. The punches and kicks scared him at first, too. So I had several problems to deal with, not just one. I didn't want him to think of Taekwondo as constant punishment, but instead start associating it with things he liked. I wanted him to learn how to handle fear. Also, he needed to accept that there are things we have to do that we don't like. I wanted him to not mess up because he wanted to not mess up, not just follow orders. And I wanted him to start dominating his own mind instead of letting himself fall prey to random surges of emotions and urges.

So I decided to create a neural pathway between the outer world and his inner world. I started by taking what he most valued and set it as a stake. Something to lose. Something to cause real fear when contemplated. Not panic kind of fear, but the fear of loss. Something important and dear.

I told him that if he got thrown out of Taekwondo, he would go for two years without computer. I was pissed when I first said that. But it sure got his attention. So I stayed with it. (I don't think any father would actually do it for real as a punishment. I'm a wuss, so I know I wouldn't. But he believed it, so I stayed with it.)

As I know just saying that was not enough, even though the impression was great, I reinforced this with a pep talk every time I drove him to a class, which was (and still is) twice a week. But rather than make it a lecture, I started playing with it. I would look at a fence, squinting my eyes and acting all serious, and ask him what was written on it. Or I would look at a door on a house. Or a sign. Etc. At the beginning he would say nothing, and I would say, "Two years. Can't you see it? It's written right there beside that green thing. Your name is even written under the two years. Can't you see it? Come on! I wonder what that means."

This would confuse him at first. It was weird to him. He thinks literally, so it took several times for him to realize I was playing with him. From time to time I also added in imaginary aliens and a German piano player with long white hair (Gustav ) from other horsing around activities I've done with him.

After he got used to it, this became a game between us. I also kept asking him to tell me what that "two years" meant in practical terms for him. And he would respond that if he messed up in Taekwondo, it would be two years without computer. I started getting him to visualize exactly how boring that would be and how great it was he had a computer. I had him mentally walk through turning on the computer, booting up, etc. And also, looking at where a computer should be as he went to a bookshelf to get a book. Things like that. Since this pep talk aways happened right before class during the drive on the way, he would have it in mind as he went in.

Over time, I made him memorize the seven tenets of Taekwondo as part of this game--and had him talk through how and why they applied to different situations in his life.

We also started working on mental operations of how to recognize emotional surges. I even asked him to imagine what he would do if one of the pretty female students took off her clothes right in the middle of class. What would he do? I was teaching him how to stay focused when distractions happened. So I sometimes included this man-talk naughty stuff as part of the routine.

One even I laughed at--and God knows where I came up with this stuff. It was with the seven tenets. I was teaching him to put a tenet on each finger to help him memorize them and I would use the middle finger for integrity. And I would make a huge gesture with it as we talked through the tenets. He never failed to crack up.

I started giving him exercises on how to get into "the zone" during his Taekwondo class. This is a state of flow made famous by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. We even talked about Csíkszentmihályi at times. I taught him how to tell his mind, "Get back to now! Focus!" when it started wandering and he caught himself. How to cut the stories running on autopilot in his head. How to cut the past and the future and stay within the present. Also, he now knows all about the triune brain concept and we joked often about his "inner lizard."

There is a huge amount of different angles and topics and emotions and methods, etc., we went over (we still do), but it always started with the game of "two years." Every single time. At least this was until recently when I told him I think the neural pathway was already built. Now I make him tell me what he wants to do to warm up his mind before class. He's got the discipline down cold and now I let him vary it in any manner he wishes.

We did this "two years" routine twice a week for about 4 years. During this time, I kept some things the same and mixed up others, always coming up with at least one new angle on something each time. This way he has had an anchor and an enormous amount of different referents added to it that would have never been associated in his normal way of thinking. And he had enough focused repetition for this kind of thinking to turn into a mental skill.

I always tried to hone in on how he thinks about something and how he can also think about it if he uses the way other people think. That's the essence of the neural pathway I tried to help him build.

I'm totally honest with him about his condition, too. No hiding from facts. But instead of treating it as a handicap, I always told him he has a gift. Because with the training we were doing, he was able to perceive reality in two different manners, his natural way, and the way others think, which he was learning. (Not just with me, of course. But I believe my thing helped him a lot.) So, from that angle, I thought he was ahead of most people. This double way of perceiving was something rare and precious and a lot of creators would give anything to have it. (It helps that I actually believe this. )

We now branch out from that neural pathway and use his concentration and focus skills for things other than Taekwondo. And it works. I haven't cured his condition, but he does have a mental tool he can use that helps him navigate his own self-control.

He has never had another incident of violence, or even misbehavior, in his Taekwondo class and his instructor told me he has become a model student. That's over four years without a single incident. I can't prove a connection, but the number of discipline incidents he had at normal school decreased drastically after this pep-talk stuff started kicking in.

He is already a green belt in Taekwondo (which might be slow for normal people, but quite good for special needs), he writes on Wikis daily with other game geeks (he taught himself Wiki code), and I'm really proud of him.

Like I said, he's a cool kid.

Michael