Game Theory Addendum

I was thinking a bit about the video I shared the other day. 

More particularly, I wanted to talk about when they modified the test so that successful strategies reproduce and grow. The part shown here:

 

First, a brief overview for anyone who hasn't watched the video.

Basically, this game uses the Prisoner's Dilemma (where the incentives stack up so that you benefit most if you're selfish and defect when the the other party doesn't. Second best is both sides cooperate. Next worst is to cooperate when the other side is selfish and defects. And the absolute worst is when both sides defect and refuse to cooperate) as the basis.

People would submit a strategy, and then the different strategies would play against each other repeatedly. (This is important, too.  Because repeated interactions means you can build up a history and what you do in one round may impact what happens in another.)

The interesting thing is that the winning strategies generally, as the video makes clear, share certain traits.

They are: Nice, Forgiving, Retaliatory, and Clear. (Retaliatory is interesting here, because most of the rest of this fits in rather well with what most world religions teach us. But I think in this case it just means 'don't be a pushover', because it's about proportional retaliation. And retaliation that is forgotten and any transgressions forgiven as soon as the other party starts cooperating again.)

And by 'winning' we mean that these strategies gain the most points overall. Though it's interesting to note that the most talked about strategy - Tit-for-Tat, which basically cooperates in the first round and then just does whatever the other player did in the previous round - can never do better than the other player in any one round.

It 'wins', because when it works with a more cooperative player both sides really wrack up the points, and in the ones where the other player isn't cooperative it never does significantly worse. 

Anyways, that's all back story to what I wanted to talk about.

Because when they modified the game to make it more evolutionary, where successful strategies could replicate and grow in number... the 'nice' strategies grow and take over.

And, to draw on all those years of Catholic education, I can't help but remember the biblical story of the mustard seed.

Actually, if you combine that with the allegory of the long spoons, what you could say is this:

We can create 'the kingdom of God' or 'heaven on earth', or any phrase you want to use to indicate a goal where people cooperate and work together if we learn to use 'nice' strategies.

And if you get enough people cooperating and interacting with 'nice' strategies, such strategies will grow exponentially. Like the mustard seed.

And the whole reason why I bring this up is because this is why I am so bothered by so-called 'christian nationalists'. As well as for anyone who claims to be christian and yet supports Donald Trump.

Because it doesn't matter what you label your strategy. It doesn't matter if you call it 'christian' or 'atheist'.

A nice strategy is a nice strategy, a nasty strategy is a nasty strategy.

And if your goal is heaven on earth of the kingdom of god, or whatever - you should be using a nice strategy.

Even if it feels like you always 'lose' in individual encounters, in the long run you win. Handily.

But these people are using 'nasty' strategies, contributing to a nastier world, and they somehow think that just because they named their strategy 'God's will' that it somehow makes it okay.

To really pull out the religious talk - they are moving us farther away from God, society further away from actually having heaven on earth, and it doesn't really matter how they justify it or what pretty excuses they wrap their strategy up in.

This is also why Donald Trump has become such a great litmus test.

Because that guy is as petty, vindictive, and nasty as they come. His strategies are clearly not going to ever create a better world.

And I don't really care how much someone thumps their Bible, or how often they go to church, or how many crosses they wear or pictures of Jesus they hang on their wall - 

If they support that oathbreaker, if they're okay with the nasty strategies that guy uses, then they clearly don't understand the Bible or Jesus at all.

Game Theory

I really liked this video, because it put a lot of what I had learned clearly, with more history and depth, and it's only ~30min

Video on Game Theory

Ugh

Saw the headlines about a Supreme Court Justice, one of the most powerful people in our country, flying an upside down flag and like... 

Why are rich and powerful people such absolute morons?

(I could go on, but I'm frankly tired of it. Doesn't matter if it's the wife behind it either)

Business Leadership

KPIs and metrics can be useful, don't get me wrong. 

But they can never truly replace knowing your company. 

Which often requires just walking around and being present. 

It's when you leave your desk and go out to see things for yourself, that you're truly able to put all those metrics and business tools in proper perspective. 

That's what I was thinking after reading this 

Media and Trump

I saw a letter from the editor today, regarding the response to a column from Cleveland that made a splash recently, in my opinion because it was so refreshing to have a newspaper state the obvious about Trump.

I am pleased to note that there was, as to he author of the column stated, an 'overwhelming response'.

I also agree with his assessment that 'I have a couple or preliminary thoughts on why people shared this so widely, but I also realized early on that I’m not going to figure it out anytime soon.'

It seems to say something important,that a column like that drew so much attention. But what does it really mean?

I know my own reasons for liking it. It's been hard to follow the news lately because I'm frankly rather sickened by the Trump coverage. If they can't call a spade a spade, why should I care about their opinions on anything else? 

I don't know how they keep finding polls that claim Trump has a chance at the general election. I hesitate to say I know better, since I know polling can help us see past our own bubble and get at a better estimate of public opinion, and perhaps it's my own biases that make me think they're wrong.

But a response to the column like that makes me think that I'm right, and that there's something all those polls and pundits are missing. (Or deliberately pretending isn't there, if I want to listen to the more conspiracy minded side of me. How many rich fools keep stepping up to enable Trump, after all? Sometimes it really does seem like a bunch of immoral fools with more money than sense favor a guy who has proven himself a terrible leader and really think they can use their wealth to force that oathbreaking piece of shit back into power.)

Framing

Also, I like to remember that story about statistics.  It went something like this. 

If you were told a medical procedure had a 25% chance of killing you,  would you do it?

What about a 75% success rate?

It's the same data, just framed differently. So all those polls about how Trump won 63.9% (so far) of the Republican primary voters?

Also means 36.1% didn't vote for him, even though he's a former president with a lock on the party.

But sure, continue acting like that oathbreaking disaster is just another candidate. Whatever.  I don't like saying it's impossible for anything to change my mind on how to vote,  but there would have be something on the level of the crap Trump has already done for me to reconsider. 

Ain't That the Truth

From here:

We aren’t asking the Times’s news side to “crusade for change.” We’re not asking it to abandon independence as a “peacetime luxury.” We’re asking the Times to recognize that it isn’t living up to its own standards of truth-telling and independence when it obfuscates the stakes of the 2024 election, covers up for Trump’s derangement, and goes out of its way to make Biden look weak.

I pretty much haven't been posting because there's not really anything new to say.

It's a disgrace that Trump is the main contender for the Republican nomination. At this point,  it's not even just him. He's become a litmus test for how far the rot has grown, and it's disgustingly obvious that the answer is 'pretty far'.