[HN Gopher] "The Traitors", a reality TV show, offers a useful e...
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"The Traitors", a reality TV show, offers a useful economics lesson
Author : helsinkiandrew
Score : 113 points
Date : 2025-01-19 08:56 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| https://archive.ph/FlcDl
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| There is a social game that was popular here when I was a teen.
|
| It was called "Werwolf" and I hated it so much that I stopped
| participating after one game IIRC (I was very fun at parties).
|
| Reading up on it, it drew from the mentioned "Mafia" idea
| mentioned here.
|
| Would have never known, interesting submission.
| Kiro wrote:
| Still super popular and the whole basis for the game Among Us
| and many other computers games as well as board games.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Ah yes, that's the deal with Among us! This one passed me
| too, but I remember the description sounding somewhat
| similar.
|
| Well, maybe should give the type of game another try. Tastes
| change and at the age at which my friends played "Werwolf", I
| was pretty much hating myself and everything around me so
| maybe I'd enjoy it today :)
| noirbot wrote:
| The best versions of these games are set up to provide more
| contextual information than just "Player B Died Last
| Night". Classic Werewolf or Mafia, all information is
| public information, outside of people just talking to each
| other in whispers. Among Us adds a map and location
| information - you have to have been near the person who
| died to kill them, so if someone died in one room, you
| suspect players who were near that room or can't account
| for their location. Clocktower or One Night generally add
| information that only one player gets, such as being able
| to know if they're seated next to a bad player, which is
| powerful, but easy to lie about and risky to just admit
| since it makes you a target for the bad people.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| We used to play this on IRC. Was quite fun.
| bootywizard wrote:
| I've played Mafia several times and enjoy it a lot. However, I
| have also witnessed friendships completely destroyed in the
| process. Some people are capable as seeing it as just a game,
| discard all prior trust or expectations with others during, and
| then at the end, reset completely back to how it was before,
| perhaps having learnt something about people in the process.
|
| For those who cannot do this, they will experience true pain,
| broken trust, and leave with friendships fundamentally changed.
| If this sounds like you, do not play this game!
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| So no non-autistic women, got it.
| ldoughty wrote:
| There's a similar pay game called "Blood on the Clocktower".
| You probably wouldn't like it, but those who like Werewolf or
| Mafia might want to give it a look.
| noirbot wrote:
| I've tried it a few times, but it's so much more complex that
| it really requires everyone who's playing to care deeply
| about reasoning through it. There's so little information
| that's public to everyone, so if even one player with a role
| that lets them get private information doesn't understand or
| communicate that well, the whole game can fall apart.
| 63stack wrote:
| I don't understand how this game gained so much popularity,
| because it's impossible to get any kind of reliable
| information in this game. For example, you have an ability
| that let's you ask the game master (in private) about whether
| one person is evil or not (their alliance). The game master
| is going to give you an answer, BUT it's possible that the
| answer is not the truth, because:
|
| * you are drunk (which you don't know about)
|
| * you were poisoned that night (which you don't know about)
|
| * the target might be protected in some way (which you don't
| know about)
|
| * some powers literally let the game master decide if they
| work or not (you will not be told it did not work)
|
| Imagine the first few nights of mafia style games, where
| nobody knows anything, so everybody is just going on hunches
| and feelings. That's Blood on the clocktower for almost all
| the nights.
| jorams wrote:
| I love it, at least with the right group, because while you
| basically never get _reliable_ information, you do get a
| large amount of it. Some will be contradictory, some will
| match, most will need to be expanded on. You piece together
| narratives matching the evidence, poke holes in these
| narratives, offer alternative explanations, determine
| probabilities that multiple people are both speaking the
| truth. It 's not that nobody knows anything, instead
| everyone knows _something_ and will need to decide when and
| what to share with others. You might be able to get someone
| killed with a random accusation, but you 're just as likely
| to reveal yourself to be a liar to someone in the process.
| xandrius wrote:
| I used to run weekly Mafia/Werewolf parties: casual 2h nights
| with almost always 2-3 new folks.
|
| For me running it (i.e. Being the "god", the narrrator etc.) is
| much more fun in such a context, as it's more about
| storytelling.
|
| The main problem is that the game is quite unfun for the first
| 2-3 days: it's basically impossible to know who's who, so any
| sneeze, look or being the first one to speak will instantly
| make you a target of the crowd. There was a guy who just was a
| chatty guy and always started the conversation and he almost
| never made it past day 1. Absolutely unfair and unfun.
|
| Whenever he wasn't killed on day 1 it was always due to someone
| standing up to the obvious unfairness and getting themselves
| killed, while he would get to live 1 extra night.
|
| That's why we started adding extra unconventional roles and
| rules, to make up for this. For example, having a necromancer,
| who could turn a dead into a ghost who could do an action once.
| These changes would require to be more than 15 people, as you
| need to adjust the mafia in response.
|
| The format is fun, the basic rules get boring pretty fast,
| given how newbies tend to play.
|
| On the other hand, competitive mafia seems more about ninja
| communication and discussion, also I think they can also skip a
| voting.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| One night ultimate werewolf fixes a lot of this. Many roles,
| easy narration, and no player termination (everyone plays
| every round).
| romanhn wrote:
| +1 for One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Removing the need for a
| narrator role and keeping the game short enough that the
| antagonistic behaviors don't have a chance to develop works
| wonders. Friend and couple fights after Mafia are real.
| Werewolf is pretty kid-friendly too.
| stouset wrote:
| I'm that guy who's always killed day one.
|
| The worst part is there's actually nothing you can do about
| it. Decide to clam up and stop making yourself a target?
| Super suspicious, he's the werewolf this time for sure!
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| Its a reality TV based Werewolf game
| thecleaner wrote:
| What is the economics lesson though ? I figured they were talking
| about bounded rationality which the article touches upon in the
| last paragraph. But it would've been nice to get some
| confirmation within the article itself.
| e40 wrote:
| I tried watching the British version and couldn't make it more
| than 10 minutes in. Cringy and dumb, it seemed to me.
| yzydserd wrote:
| The worrying observation I make from Traitors is how easily a
| group of about a dozen people can become so sure of guilt on so
| little evidence, and time after time of being knowingly wrong.
| What if anything can we learn from this to understand the jury
| system and prosecutorial process?
|
| Also, I have watched a bunch of series and I have not once
| noticed anyone click the obvious "hack": the last person to enter
| the breakfast room after a kill night is almost always a
| faithful, because of the TV cliffhanger of viewers hanging on
| which of two faithful survived. It's the best truth signal the
| game gives and I've never seen a player mention it. Maybe TV
| edits the knowledge out.
| solumunus wrote:
| "Almost always". If the entries were completely randomised this
| would still be the case, since the murdered are always faithful
| and the majority of the remaining are faithful. There could
| well be some production bias but it's not the cheat code you're
| making it to be. Traitors can and will enter last.
| jvvw wrote:
| I don't think they have entered last in the current UK series
| so far have they?
| ktallett wrote:
| It's pretty rare, like any guessing game there are
| advantages and on the whole traitors entering last as I
| believe happened less often than the percentage of traitors
| to faithfuls would allow if it was randomised.
| jvvw wrote:
| I do wonder how much meta gaming is going on though. As a
| faithful, given that new traitors are recruited, your goal
| isn't actually to eliminate a traitor but to survive, ideally
| knowing who the remaining the traitors are at the end (and
| making sure they don't end up in a majority at any point too).
| If you are confident that somebody is a traitor, there is
| something to be said for keeping them as a traitor so you know
| who the traitors are at the end.
|
| I suspect most of the players are still trying to identify and
| eliminate traitors though: they do seem genuinely
| surprised/disappointed when a faithful is banished. It is quite
| scary how they latch onto tiny things and become convinced. I
| suspect that as soon as the faithful feel they are being
| targeted, they feel pressured and act in ways that reinforce
| everybody's ideas about them. Defensiveness gets interpreted as
| guilt very easily.
|
| It's really hard to know whether this transfers to the jury
| system. It's hard for there to be an open discussions about how
| decisions get made by juries because people obviously can't
| talk about their experiences. To me juries feel like the 'least
| worst' way to make such decisions and you do need to be
| unanimous or extremely close to unanimous if the judge gives
| permission for that.
|
| I wondered about the order of entry at breakfast too, but I've
| read that they film the scene in multiple permutations so they
| can't just figure it out from that. I don't know if that is
| accurate that film different permutations, but I find it hard
| to believe that nobody has cottoned on to the idea that the
| last couple of people in are faithful.
| silvestrov wrote:
| > latch onto tiny things
|
| I think most people has a very low capacity for _living with
| uncertainty_. They much rather believe something random, e.g.
| whatever religion (or conspiracy theory) at hand, than admit
| that they _can 't know_.
|
| Uncertainty is demanding as it requires you to look at things
| from multiple angles/reasons and evaluate all options. It is
| much cheaper to just select a default reason. This is
| especially true for creating social cohesion in a group.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| This. For all of the hate the rationalist movement gets
| they're effectively teaching people to be comfortable with
| uncertainty. It worked for me- I don't consider myself a
| rationalist, but do feel comfortable noticing "I'm not sure
| about this because I have limited evidence- which is the
| right way to feel about it."
| wat10000 wrote:
| To be fair, the "how to deal with your many cognitive
| biases" part is not what the rationalist movement is
| generally hated on.
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| > what the rationalist movement is generally hated on
|
| Out of genuine curiosity, what causes hatred/resentment
| towards this community?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| They are accused of being basically a doomsday cult for
| intellectuals with an extreme fanatical focus on AI
| doomerism.
|
| They also have a huge number of really unusual social
| norms including using their own ultra nerdy lingo with
| lots of obscure fiction references in regular life,
| widespread polyamory - and often vocal disapproval of
| monogamy, outspoken rejection of sexual norms including
| group sex parties and raising kids communally in
| polyamorous group homes, rejection of all political
| correctness, and willingness to discuss normally taboo
| topics in casual conversation.
|
| In a lot of ways it reminds me of the beatniks- they're
| basically throwing out all of the existing culture, and
| trying to create something entirely new by trial and
| error, sometimes with quite bad results.
|
| I've learned an awful lot of good ideas from the
| community that I've applied directly in my career as a
| scientist, and attended a few events in person, but
| personally wasn't able to connect with the people, I
| always felt like an outsider and I also found a lot of
| their blatant rejection and reinvention of virtually all
| social norms somewhat disturbing in person. There are
| also a lot of really kind, open minded, and brilliant
| people in the community- and I personally think most of
| their concerns over AI are well founded, but not everyone
| agrees.
| Gormo wrote:
| It sounds like your primary critique here is that
| "rationalist" communities overlap in membership with
| other communities that have other, not strictly related,
| inclinations. That may be so, but I'm not sure it's
| relevant -- if a bowling league's membership consists
| primarily of Mormons, I still wouldn't interpret
| criticism of Mormon theology as being relevant to
| discussions of bowling.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I wouldn't characterize the rationalists as just a loose
| knit online community with a common interest in rational
| thinking that happen to overlap with some other unusual
| interests- but as a real life community and culture -
| centered around a particular group of people mostly in
| the Northern California "East Bay Area" with a very
| unusual lifestyle and social norms they've collectively
| invented within the movement, that includes all of what I
| mentioned as central aspects. It's a broad social
| experiment of trying to reinvent everything "rationally"
| instead of just doing what their culture or parents
| taught them.
|
| See for example:
| https://putanumonit.com/2019/10/16/polyamory-is-rational/
| "The Rationalist community isn't just a sex cult, they do
| other great things too!"
|
| I find that post hilarious, because the polling your
| friends and doing statistics on it thing is even more
| stereotypically rationalist than polyamory itself, but
| they conclude from poll data that most of the
| rationalists came to polyamory from within the movement
| itself, not from an existing or outside interest in it.
|
| There is a larger international group of people that
| participate remotely and don't relocate or adopt the full
| lifestyle, but it would be a mistake to think of that as
| something that exists entirely separately, or would exist
| at all without that core community.
| Gormo wrote:
| I'm confused then -- if you _aren 't_ construing the
| larger community of people following these ideas and
| participating remotely as being separate from the "core"
| group, then how do the more unusual lifestyles that only
| the "core" group follow describe the entirety of it?
|
| The way you're describing it seems similar to looking at
| the lifestyles of monastic orders within the Catholic
| church as indicative of the way Catholics live generally.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I was actually thinking of the same exact analogy- of
| having a monastic order and lay people with varying
| levels of commitment, but didn't put it in my reply
| because I couldn't think of a clear way to not overuse
| the analogy.
|
| Nobody would say the Catholics are a group of lay
| religious people that also happen for some reason to
| overlap in membership with another unrelated group that
| enjoys monastic lifestyles. The monastic lifestyle is a
| central key part of the religion, even if it isn't what
| every Catholic chooses to do. It doesn't describe the
| entirety of the religion either. Both the core group that
| follow the full lifestyle together in person, and more
| distant or less involved participants are all together
| the same movement- with both the Catholics and
| Rationalists.
|
| Importantly- when one criticizes the actions of Catholic
| monastics, it is considered relevant as criticism of the
| entire organization and religion, unlike the bowling
| example you gave. People _do_ rightfully blame the
| Catholics for things like the Spanish Inquisition, and
| for protecting child abusers and rapists in their
| monastic communities, even if the average lay person had
| no involvement in these beyond supporting the religion
| financially and socially.
|
| One could be a Mormon and fundamentally disapprove of
| bowling, even if a lot of other Mormons do it, but you
| probably aren't going to make it as a Catholic if you
| think monastic lifestyles are immoral or harmful. You
| probably won't make it as a rationalist either if you
| think things like utilitarian ethics, and nonmonogamy are
| immoral or harmful.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Mostly it's way too full of itself. "Here's how to think
| to be less wrong" (to borrow the name of one of the main
| sites) gives way to "since we know how to think, we're
| smarter than everyone else." Techniques like Bayesian
| inference get used to put a mathematical veneer on total
| guesswork or rationalize what the person wants to do
| anyway.
|
| Take longtermism, for example. This is a segment of the
| rationalist community that focuses on doing the most good
| for humanity in the very long term. The basic idea goes:
| if humanity is able to get off this planet and go
| colonize the galaxy, there are untold quintillions of
| additional lives that would be lived. But that future is
| uncertain. Something that increases the chances of it
| happening by 0.1% would have an expected value of saving
| quadrillions of lives. If you can increase these chances
| by one in a trillion, that's worth orders of magnitude
| more than saving a child's life right now.
|
| This is sound thinking so far. A fun little thought
| experiment. The problem is that you can't rigorously
| apply it practically. Predicting the future of humanity
| is hard and probabilities assigned to various events
| aren't rigorous. In practice, this mindset either leads
| to fairly obvious conclusions like that it's important to
| fight climate change, or it's off the wall stuff like
| being obsessed with AI safety. And the veneer of math
| produces an attitude that anyone who disagrees is not
| only wrong, but provably wrong in a mathematical fashion,
| which doesn't tend to endear.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| The rationalist idea of doing morality as math with
| utilitarian consequentialism always seemed dangerous and
| a big mistake to me. It is easy to rationalize things
| that are obviously awful or absurd from common sense, and
| not meaningfully consistent with normal human experience
| or human brains and motivations. SBF for example
| justified all of his crimes with rationalist logic.
|
| I'm not going to walk past a drowning kid in a lake so I
| can urgently go to a nerd meeting planning to save a
| quintillion imaginary sci-fi distant future kids - even
| if some made up math says the expected value of the
| meeting is a thousand times higher.
|
| Fundamentally, I do have deontological ethics- I think
| the ancient stoics basically had morality/ethics right,
| and admire people that take a Socrates like stand on
| doing what is right on principle even in the face of
| manipulative people trying to control you by creating bad
| consequences.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's not just dangerous, but plainly incorrect in most
| cases.
|
| It's the usual GIGO problem. These arguments almost
| always start with a bunch of completely made-up numbers.
| It doesn't matter how good the math is, the results will
| be useless.
|
| It can work. When a government regulator decides whether
| to mandate some new safety equipment and after rigorous
| technical analysis concludes that it would result in net
| lives lost and so doesn't require it, that's sensible.
| But thats not what happens here.
|
| I occasionally see this problem acknowledged, but even
| then, the given error bars are way too small and then
| it's just full steam ahead anyway.
|
| It could be dangerous anyway, but this makes it even more
| so.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Yeah, I think it is literally provably 'optimal' if you
| can execute it correctly with informative data, don't
| forget or omit any important considerations, and aren't
| just making up BS- all of which are almost always
| impossible for regular humans in real life no matter how
| much 'rationality training' they've had. It makes sense
| both for optimal behavior of some hypothetical
| superintelligent AI to realize its own goals efficiently,
| or for something like a government to weigh pros and cons
| of a difficult regulatory choice with well defined short
| term consequences - neither of which are anything like
| the everyday morality decisions humans make.
| notahacker wrote:
| > I suspect most of the players are still trying to identify
| and eliminate traitors though: they do seem genuinely
| surprised/disappointed when a faithful is banished
|
| tbf, they're also strongly incentivised to _look_ surprised
| and disappointed when a faithful is banished.
|
| And for that matter to latch on to someone else's wild
| suspicions even if they're daft, because if that person's
| theory turns out to be wrong (or even if it's right!), you're
| unlikely to be the person targeted for going along with it.
| Jury service doesn't come with the expectation that you're
| likely to be voted out by teammates or "murdered" if you come
| up with a decent counterargument or spot something tangible
| that nobody else does.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| > It's hard for there to be an open discussions about how
| decisions get made by juries because people obviously can't
| talk about their experiences.
|
| I served on a criminal trial jury (U.S.) for 3 weeks and when
| the trial was over, there was no restriction on who I could
| talk to or what I could say about the experience.
| greensoap wrote:
| In California at least there is no law preventing the jury
| from talking to anyone about the case AFTER the jury
| returns its decision.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Ditto, lengthy trial with a hung jury. Judge instructed us
| that we were permitted but not required to talk after we
| left, although there might have been an admonition about
| personal information of other jurors.
|
| I tried to give useful feedback to both of the lawyers,
| since I suspect neither of them were really happy with the
| mistrial outcome.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| An important difference is that a jury acquittal is not
| saying you think the defendant is innocent, but rather that
| the evidence did not establish guilt beyond a reasonable
| doubt. Innocence is assumed.
|
| You could think somebody is probably guilty but also feel
| obligated to acquit them. For a famous example I somehow
| doubt all the OJ Simpson jurors thought he was innocent, but
| he was acquitted nonetheless.
| wat10000 wrote:
| You could even think somebody is definitely guilty beyond
| any doubt and _still_ acquit them if you think it's the
| right outcome.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Indeed, and I suspect as more people learn about jury
| nullification, the world will grow more just.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| > The worrying observation I make from Traitors is how easily a
| group of about a dozen people can become so sure of guilt on so
| little evidence, and time after time of being knowingly wrong.
|
| I agree, some of the theories they come up with are insane and
| I feel like this (UK) season in particular is characterised by
| a lot of tribalism and anti-intellectualism.
|
| Against that, we have to remember that the aim of the show is
| to be as entertaining as possible to as many people as
| possible. Interpersonal drama is more popular than explorations
| of game theory, so I suspect casting was based on who would be
| the most entertaining rather than the best at the game. I also
| think the editing plays a big role in presenting viewers with a
| particular narrative. They can probably quite easily cast
| people as being good or bad, smart or stupid.
|
| Personally I have always thought the game was inherently quite
| stacked in the traitors' favour. Ultimately information is
| absolutely crucial to the game, and the traitors have a lot
| more of it (at the start of the game, they are arguably the
| only ones who have any at all).
| fatfox wrote:
| Also remember the viewer sees both sides and has complete
| information, whereas all contestants have very little to go by
| and no clues are given.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| It would be interesting if fans edited the episodes into a
| "contestant viewpoint only" version that removed the TV
| viewer's perspective and allowed viewers to play along
| without knowledge of the traitors.
| switch007 wrote:
| People are tribal. It's pretty rare to find someone who acts
| rationally, enlightened and educated at all times. Of course
| all of us here do!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I agree with you, but in fact I have nurtured within myself a
| healthy skepticism that, so far, has protected me from scams,
| etc. I feel like skepticism is a powerful weapon against
| propaganda.
|
| Ask yourself, "Does that person have something to gain by
| lying?" "Yes" should immediately raise a red flag and you can
| go from there.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| >Of course all of us here do!
|
| Phew. You had me worried there for a second.
| therealpygon wrote:
| I would even go as far as to say politics, and extends to
| society as a whole. Repeat a lie for long enough, others will
| begin to believe it as a truth, and if you can convince a
| person they will benefit personally, they are more than willing
| to forgo decency and morality in favor of personal benefits. Of
| course, in this case people are given an excuse for this
| behavior under the guise of a "game".
| captainbland wrote:
| The thing that stood out to me was how, particularly in the
| first season, when people had no idea what to grab onto they
| just grabbed onto the first vague suggestion they heard and,
| not only that, did so with very few dissenters.
|
| I think this is the mechanism propaganda takes advantage of.
| Where there's a gap in people's understanding, they can very
| easily inject their version of events into people's heads and
| people will broadly accept it. The knowledge vacuum wants to be
| filled when pushed for a decision. In fact it doesn't even need
| to be this highly overt form that we saw in the 20th century
| dictatorships, even relatively weak forms can still grip hard
| and then people are reluctant to walk back from them after the
| fact.
|
| Some would accuse faithfuls of potentially being traitors
| merely for voting differently to how the group had done
| previously, on tenuous information, even though they had no
| idea whether the person they voted for was a traitor or not!
| Here we see how, when intentionally directed, propaganda can
| sustain the creation of the scapegoats out of those who
| dissent.
| agumonkey wrote:
| It seems there's a psychological trait of people accepting
| and repeating others ideas while others will keep tickling
| for more information. In business settings I've seen very
| educated people start to repeat the behavior and ideas of
| other less competent people, which I assume was the pressure
| of having something to do or say to fill in blanks, and that
| starts the process.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| So "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" episode from the
| original "The Twilight Zone".
| captainbland wrote:
| Pretty much exactly that, yeah.
| iimaginary wrote:
| A guy from my town was on the Traitors and did attempt to take
| advantage of the loophole you mentioned and they almost
| entirely edited him out of the series.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| My spouse and I are avid consumers of the series and we have
| been hypothesizing on and off why 1-2 game participants each
| season get almost no screen time whatsoever. Originally we
| thought it might simply be that the people in question make
| boring television. This is another possibility we had not
| even entertained - that the producers were punishing people
| for meta-gaming.
|
| Based on my knowledge of the show and commentary around its
| filming, it does seem genuinely mostly unscripted - which
| means that producers are probably reaching for other
| mechanisms to control dialogue and contestant behavior and
| probably _threatening screen time for breaking the 4th wall_
| is an effective one.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| It's hard to know how much of the time they actually believe
| someone is guilty, vs just going along with the group, though.
| There's a strong incentive to vote with the group because
| otherwise if someone is a traitor you look suspicious. And if
| the conversation is going after one person and that isn't you,
| you'd like it to stay that way.
|
| I don't think it necessarily reflects how a jury etc works. If
| you acquit, you don't have to choose someone else to accuse.
| You're not going to face accusations yourself. You don't have
| to repeat the process every day.
|
| On your second point, I'm sure the UK second season changed the
| order to eliminate that, but it's back this season. I'm sure a
| player mentioning it would be edited out though, so it's hard
| to know if anyone assumes it's still the case.
| yzydserd wrote:
| Yes. Another disincentive for finding a traitor in the first
| half of the game is that they just get replaced, and you get
| a target on your back. A good playing strategy is to be just
| vocal enough, with some open opinions.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly why groups of people make me genuinely
| scared. You can't use logic to argue with them.
|
| When I was a kid there were shows where people would work
| together on challenges and vote out the least helpful team
| member, and a friend of mine said once "as a kid I already
| noticed that in these shows it's not the best person that wins,
| but the most clever and cunning".
| azinman2 wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to carry this to the justice system.
| This is a forced scenario where they have to pick one AND
| invent the evidence - they're the jury, judge, and executioner.
| The justice system waits until someone is suspected of
| something and then eventually they go through the system, where
| laws and procedures have been created to try and remove unfair
| processes. Juries are given explicit instructions about what
| can and cannot be considered, evidence can be thrown out on a
| technicality, etc.
|
| Conviction rates are all over the place [1] depending on state,
| where in some places (like MA) you're more likely to not be
| charged than charged. Of course the opposite exists too. Most
| people (97%) who are charged with federal crimes plead guilty,
| suggesting that most of them did in fact do it (yes some may
| not feel like they could win even if innocent, but that won't
| be the majority). The innocence project estimates between 1-10%
| of people are wrongly incarcerated - this is a strong minority
| of the people and a hit rate that's way better than traitors.
|
| Unlike traitors, there are definitions for beyond a reasonable
| doubt, requiring hard evidence, etc.
|
| I think traitors actually argues FOR our current justice system
| - look what happens when you remove all the rules and
| procedures, instead just allowing mob rule.
|
| [1] https://www.paperprisons.org/statistics.html
| no_wizard wrote:
| There is always off screen stuff that pushes the participants
| toward acting a certain way. This holds true for nearly all
| reality TV shows
| EGreg wrote:
| My cofounder Zak and I were on a show called "Planet of the
| Apps" by Apple, many years ago. I met Jessica Alba, Gwenyth
| Paltrow, Will-I-Am, and Gary Vaynerchuk.
|
| I can tell you that a lot of these shows are staged. They tell
| you to "react like X" and then film you again and say "react
| like Y" and they slice and dice footage to show whatever they
| want. In the case of that show, they completely edited us out
| of the final show.
|
| So it's not really easy for contestants to "sneak something
| past the censors" :)
| cortesoft wrote:
| > the last person to enter the breakfast room after a kill
| night is almost always a faithful
|
| Never trust the order things happen in reality tv. They will
| show reaction shots to completely different things, mess up the
| order of shots, cut things completely out of order, etc, to
| drive a narrative.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| Indeed. https://youtu.be/BBwepkVurCI
| adriatp wrote:
| seems like among us without tasks
| frabcus wrote:
| There are tasks in Traitors! They're done in a group with some
| things that traitors have different incentives for. But yes it
| makes it more like Among Us than werewolf!
| hliyan wrote:
| Haven't seen _The Traitors_ , but recently started watching a
| Korean Netflix show called _The 8 Show_ and the plot involves
| some mystery organizer (similar to Squid Game, I suppose)
| creating a setup that is a microcosmic version of trickle-down
| economics. I 'm currently taking a break from the show because
| the behavior of the most powerful player in the game was so on
| point with what we see in reality, it became blood-boiling!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_8_Show
| golyi wrote:
| Just wanted to thank you for the reccomendation, the premise
| looks extremely interesting.
| henrebotha wrote:
| Is there a term for the "I know that you know that I know..."
| thing? It's a fundamental part of fighting game strategy,
| particularly the aspect called "yomi", i.e. reading the
| opponent's intentions so as to preemptively counter them.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| This could go on indefinitely ("I know that you know that I
| know that you know that I know that..."). I always consider
| this related to the Byzantine Generals problem.
| henrebotha wrote:
| Yes and somewhat infamously in the fighting game context,
| high level players can sometimes psych themselves out
| completely in the heat of the moment, trying to recursively
| parse the infinite stack of reads and just completely
| bluescreening and getting hit by the most obvious option
| possible.
| dooglius wrote:
| The term for an infinitely deep chain of that is "common
| knowledge"
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| There is a formalization using Modal Logic :)
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/#Games
| gcanyon wrote:
| Rick vs. Heistotron (starts with an annoying pre-roll, hence
| the start-at-9-seconds parameter)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyOAxh4Iybg&t=9
| mjburgess wrote:
| Theory of mind
| Raidion wrote:
| In poker it's called levels. Fighter pilots call it being
| inside the other persons OODA loop.
| Fearlesspancake wrote:
| In forum mafia this is called "Wine in front of me", or
| WIFOM[0], referencing the Princess Bride scene[1]
|
| [0] https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=WIFOM [1]
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U_eZmEiyTo0
| jks wrote:
| This game (under the "Mafia" name) has been popular in Finnish
| math-contest circles since some time in the 1990s, probably as a
| Russian import. In large groups there can be many more roles,
| such as the axe-wielding lone killer, the police chief who gets
| reliable information from the game master, and the doctor who can
| rescue a victim if they guess correctly. Lots of fun.
|
| Someone mentioned _Blood on the Clocktower_
| <https://bloodontheclocktower.com/> which has many more roles and
| a more complicated game that can take hours. The upside is that
| you aren't out of the game when you are eliminated.
|
| In the other direction, there is a _One Night Ultimate Werewolf_
| ruleset <https://www.wargamer.com/one-night-ultimate-
| werewolf/review> that leads to a much faster game because it's
| not iterated.
| skulk wrote:
| I also learned about Mafia from participating in math
| competitions (in the US)! My teachers were Turkish immigrants
| and they introduced us to the game and we had a blast. it did
| suck for the person who died on night 1, though.
| roenxi wrote:
| Describing John Bercow as a "disgraced British parliamentarian"
| is underselling him. He is a disgraced speaker! That isn't a
| minor post. And quite a funny speaker. He bought a little bit too
| much personality into it but was an intelligent man and a very
| interesting study into managing a room and giving flavour to
| proceedings.
| kpmah wrote:
| I watch this show, but one of the most annoying things about it
| is that the traitors are incentivised to murder the smartest,
| most intuitive players first, leaving people they can manipulate
| easily. Maybe you could argue the smartest move is to play dumb.
|
| This is at its worst in the second Australian season, which is an
| incredibly frustrating watch.
| hndc wrote:
| That was one of the most frustrating seasons of any television
| show I've ever watched, right up until the finale--which
| completely redeemed it for me! What an ending.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Maybe you could argue the smartest move is to play dumb.
|
| Does playing smart advertise you as smart on a popular TV show,
| while minimizing the tedious reality-TV drama that you have to
| go through? The expected winnings aren't all that much. And
| most (desirable) employers are would rate "smart" as a more
| desirable trait than to "gullible" or "underhanded".
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| This 9 minute BBC youtube video of how a 'traitor' got through to
| the end is a good overview of the show:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYaBWiepkNk
| atemerev wrote:
| Played the game (Mafia offshoot with some more complications)
| with my Swiss friends. The first round was very cringe, and
| everyone was fully predictable. Then, when people got the taste
| of it, I've seen their eyes glow, as they suddenly understood.
| Then we had alliances, counter-alliances, regular people adopting
| the mafia behavior so they won't be accused this round, layers of
| trickstery, and all that. Fun times!
| dmje wrote:
| We've been struck by how there really isn't a strategy that works
| for the Faithful. As other people have pointed out, there's a
| fairly scary tribalism to the voting, but very very little logic.
| And I'm not sure anything would actually "work" as a strategy
| unless you had skills reading body language or in NLP.
| mjburgess wrote:
| It's not clear to me the behaviour isn't fairly rational. It
| only seems irrational because the host tells the audience that
| the faithful are supposed to be finding traitors -- but they
| arent. Not at all. They're each aiming to win. Eliminating
| faithful is a necessary and prudent step.
|
| Indeed, traitors have almost all of the power -- the ideal
| strategy as a faithful is to eliminate talented faithful and
| ally or sus-out for oneself who the traitors are.
|
| In this light, any faithful expressing actual _out-loud_
| competence is a target for everyone, esp. other faithful.
|
| It seem to me a good strategy is to play dumb, pretend to be
| confused that a competitor-faithful is a traitor, and target
| them.
| mef wrote:
| yup. traitors tend to keep dumb-presenting faithful around
| because they give the impression of both not being a traitor
| as well as being unsavvy and easy to manipulate
| 0898 wrote:
| I must say, it's strange watching Traitors after watching Beast
| Games. It feels slow and lazy.
|
| Traitors is one idea padded out with endless cringey "ceremony".
| (Claudia Winkleman walks down a corridor in a cape! Claudia
| Winkelman whispers "murder"! People gather and read out names
| slowly.)
|
| In the Mr Beast version, the entire series would be boiled down
| to one 8 minute segment - and there would be 15 other original
| ideas besides it.
| mjburgess wrote:
| That's why God made 1.5x speed.
|
| British TV shows have long targeted a extremely aged
| demographic. Most TV seems to operate as if you're a little
| senile and aren't really following what's going on, or would be
| too uncertain and scared by quicker edits and more emotional
| intensity.
|
| That said -- there's little 1.5x doesnt paper over about bad
| pacing choices.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| As well as 1.5x, jumping a couple of minutes after a screen
| goes dark often jumps the 'now you would've watched some
| adverts on real TV, here's a recapitulation of what you may
| have missed in the first part (you forgetful bastard)'
| semanticist wrote:
| There's no ad breaks on the BBC.
| valiant55 wrote:
| I have a hard time watching anything for too long at 1.5-2x
| speed. After a while it feels like my internal monologue is
| running at the same speed and it's incrediblely distracting.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Hmm, mine already is ...
| dbbk wrote:
| The Traitors is for my grandma. Beast games is for teenagers
| who are used to TikTok.
| efitz wrote:
| Sounds like "Among Us"
| motohagiography wrote:
| They should just call the game _Bureaucracy_. I used to tell new
| consultants in govt, "beware the stupid, their powers are
| hidden, and you can't imagine what they will do to surive."
|
| while the article states the show is a finite game, it's a
| relatively open or infinite game in an institution, and with
| similar strategies. the underlying mechanism of the game (or
| quality) the players are optimizing for is actually _perfidy_. I
| 'd argue the effect of the games even starts to yield a
| physiognomy after a while, and we percieve it as hidden culture
| codes, but these are just the effect of strategies over time.
|
| this flow of games, incentives, strategies, survivors, and
| evolved attributes is what makes beauty a moral standard in
| nature. it's pretty fascinating stuff.
| xyst wrote:
| > ... offers a useful economics lesson ...
|
| > With talk cheap, the only way to find a traitor is to study who
| is murdered and banished. One way of solving such a game is known
| as the "perfect Bayesian equilibrium".
|
| Great, more propaganda to push pseudoscientific neoclassical
| economics and neoliberalism policies.
|
| What a load of horse shit. It's a game. Nothing more. Nothing
| less. No economic lesson here.
|
| Economist is nothing more than a neoclassical, "trickle down
| economics" propaganda machine.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| I agree. In a short, finite game with limited number of
| observations -- observation and logic is of little help.
| Rationally, when presented with unfair/unwinnable rules, the
| logical thing is to "cheat" or break the rules.
|
| I am interested in what ways players have tried to cheat the
| game. For example, if I am a faithful, I would mandate that
| will be no private conversations to minimize the ability of the
| traitors to communicate and plan. I would enforce a rule that
| everyone must stay within eyesight of everyone else as much as
| possible. When people sneak out to have conversations, I would
| use that as data on who the possible terrorists are.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| I didn't understand what the article meant by "The perfect
| Bayesian equilibrium, according to those who have studied Mafia,
| is voting randomly according to a pre-set public rule."
| mettamage wrote:
| I see a lot of comments about werewolf. The best strategy I found
| as a civilian is to ignore all rhetoric and simply analyze voting
| behavior. That is, assuming no one is paying too close attention
| you analyze voting behavior.
|
| I've seen some crazy stuff. I remember one person playing like a
| complete werewolf but my intuition said he was just a very
| ignorant civilian. It turns out that I was right. After asking
| him why he played how he played, he genuinely thought he was
| making the best moves. It taught me that some people can seem
| malevolent but ultimately mean really well.
|
| It taught me that there are many matches where it's 100% known
| that someone is the seer, gives the winning piece of information,
| gets killed off by the werewolfs and the village somehow manages
| to completely not act (or worse forget) on what the seer said,
| allowing the werewolfs to win the game.
|
| Werewolf has taught me a lot about group dynamics, which is also
| why I find certain political realities in multiple countries
| right now not that weird. I've seen weirder behavior with
| werewolf, albeit on a smaller scale in a fantasy setting with
| solely highly educated people.
| sopooneo wrote:
| > Some see a university education as an example of this: it costs
| cleverer and more conscientious types less to get a degree than
| stupider and lazier ones, allowing employers to distinguish
| between the two.
|
| Wait, how? If two people both have a degree, how does that help
| distinguish who is stupid?
| porkbrain wrote:
| on average the "cleverer" ones get the degrees easier, hence
| there's a higher chance to pick a "cleverer" candidate if
| selecting by this criterion than when selecting at random
| macleginn wrote:
| I think they mean it probabilistically: given the cost, a
| "stupid and lazy" person is less likely to get a degree, so
| employers can hope that the percentage of such people among
| university grads will be lower than in the general population.
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