[HN Gopher] Non-Zero-Sum Games
___________________________________________________________________
Non-Zero-Sum Games
Author : 8organicbits
Score : 298 points
Date : 2025-12-30 11:42 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nonzerosum.games)
(TXT) w3m dump (nonzerosum.games)
| reeeeee wrote:
| I'm still exploring the content, but that website is very pretty.
| It's nice to see something that stands out between all the copy-
| and-paste AI slop.
| joshribakoff wrote:
| Personally I clicked off because the fonts appear to be
| something like comic sans, it is a chore to read.
| max-amb wrote:
| This website seems really well made, and the posts are
| interesting, thanks for sharing!
| optymizer wrote:
| I personally found the text hard to read (both because of the
| typeface and the small size), the animations distracting during
| scrolling (while I'm trying to skim the content), and the
| background colors too dark for dark text on them with jarring
| full white (#FFF) colored text.
|
| I understand they're trying to go for a whimsical and fun
| feeling, but imo as implemented it is far from "really well
| made".
| nottorp wrote:
| I don't mind the layout and colours but it stutters when
| scrolling - or are those pointless animations?
| cryptica wrote:
| I think a major flaw of all these models is that they
| underestimate:
|
| 1. How easy it is to start fresh and shed your past reputation if
| you get caught doing something bad.
|
| 2. How forgiving people are and how tolerant they are to
| deception, abuse and immorality. I hate to say it but a lot of
| people are attracted to abusers. They keep going back to the same
| kinds of people who will abuse them over and over. These same
| people who tolerate abuse often seem to show disrespect and look
| down on good, honest people. I cannot overstate how powerful this
| effect is; and it seems to be getting worse over time! And these
| people keep coming up with narratives to gaslight themselves
| about their abusers "they're not so bad"... People will
| especially do this when their abuser has power over them
| (Stockholm Syndrome).
|
| Once you factor these two things, cheating is the clear winning
| strategy. By a mile... It's objectively a superior strategy. If
| we just follow game theory; it will take us somewhere really
| dark. Game theory isn't what's keeping the world civilized.
| Society literally all rests on people's irrational emotions and
| moral principles.
|
| The desire to do the right thing is completely irrational and is
| a net loss to the individual. If we continue with the current
| system and current assumptions, all moral individuals will be
| wiped out because they are at a HUGE disadvantage. To solve our
| social problems, we need to be more moral; we need to learn to
| judge ourselves and other people through the lens of morality and
| be very firm about it.
| oersted wrote:
| This doesn't make sense to me, our current prosperity is
| founded on an enormous mountain of collaboration and shared
| beliefs. Usually not out of selflessness of course, often
| guided and forced by strong leadership and/or strong
| institutional structures to bend selfishness into selflessness
| (like capitalism to a degree).
|
| Poor countries tend to stay poor not due to fundamental
| resource constraints but due to self-reinforcing loops of
| desperate crab-bucket like behavior, where everyone is cheating
| one another out of necessity (or culture). Broad collaboration
| and institution building is always the only way out of the
| hole, although the hole can be very deep and collaboration can
| be very costly until you get out.
|
| You are right though, that for an individual living in a good
| collaborative system, often cheating is very effective, it's
| just that the system can only handle a certain amount of that
| behavior before it collapses.
|
| As is discussed in the first scene of Plato's The Republic
| (surprisingly entertaining to modern tastes), the best play
| tends to be "to be unjust while seeming just". If people are
| going to be assholes, it is actually much better if they are
| discrete about it and keep a pretense of civilization. When
| people start acting conspicuously like assholes, out of a weird
| sense of honesty, that's when it propagates and the whole thing
| collapses, like a bank-run. It's an ancient story that we are
| still living.
| clrflfclrf wrote:
| > Poor countries tend to stay poor not due to fundamental
| resource constraints
|
| Sometimes highly shrewd rich countries infiltrate the power
| structure of poor countries through N-pronged strategy to
| keep them stuck in a rut so that they don't become future
| threat, also extract their resources in the meantime.
| oersted wrote:
| Indeed, the way out of that is also broad collaboration,
| sometimes not peaceful or clean.
|
| And the last century showed that this also works at a large
| scale, we all got a lot richer as a global community by
| letting poor countries develop and doing business with
| them, instead of exploiting them to death.
| cryptica wrote:
| Yes, strongly believe this is the case. The corrupt leaders
| are rarely chosen by the people; they are installed by
| foreign powers. There are many cases you can dig into which
| are absolutely atrocious; like people getting paid big
| money by western leaders to assassinate their friends to
| take power and pass laws which facilitate the extraction of
| resources by foreign corporations.
|
| Like the story of Thomas Sankara's assassination by his
| trusted childhood friend Blaise Compaore is quite
| disturbing. It seems like Compaore was leader for a very
| long time and is still in politics... I cannot think of a
| more morally deprived individual. If game theory was as
| claimed; nobody should want to work with such deeply
| disloyal and psychopathic individual. It's just like I say;
| people have a strong tolerance, even attraction to abusers.
| If you look at the real story, you notice this pattern over
| and over... but we are so badly gaslit about such things
| (aka 'PR') that we don't notice.
| clrflfclrf wrote:
| Ed Witten here : "So first of all thanks very much. I'm
| very honored to have the chance to give this talk. Of
| course Nima and I both wish we could do more for peace
| than just to give talks at an online meeting for peace.
| Unfortunately we know that there are lots of bad things
| happening in the world and we hope that there will be
| better days ahead. Hopefully as one would say in Hebrew
| [..] which means soon in our own day.
|
| https://youtu.be/Ta5Dx327KQc?t=4899
| cryptica wrote:
| > the best play tends to be "to be unjust while seeming just"
|
| Yep this is a huge problem now. I think wealth inequality is
| also making this worse because people often turn a blind eye
| to the bad behaviors of people who have power over them. This
| is an extremely powerful effect; it's everywhere. For
| example, Christians turning a blind eye to certain negative
| character traits of God as he appears in the old testament.
| Employees turning a blind eye to the immoral actions of their
| boss and coming up with justifications to keep them on a
| pedestal...
|
| The social structure is not determined by morality; it's the
| other way round; morality is determined by the social
| structure.
|
| It reminds me of an old French fable in which a lamb tries to
| reason with a wolf why he should let him live... The wolf
| listens to the lamb's logic but then he eats it anyway and
| the story ends with a sentence like "The reason of the
| strongest is always the best one."
| oersted wrote:
| My point (and Plato's) was rather that some people will
| definitely cheat, because it's locally rational, and it's
| actually better for everyone if they are "classy" about it
| and don't flaunt it too much. A minority will get away with
| terrible things, but somewhat bounded by conspicuousness,
| and at least the majority remains blissfully (willfully?)
| unaware and propping up the civilized system which is so
| much better for all of us.
|
| It is quite a cynical point of view of course. It's a hard
| balance, when it gets bad sometimes it's better to air the
| dirty laundry and go through the pain of purging those
| cheaters.
|
| But the worse thing is to have people be loud and proud
| cheaters, which is happening more and more. That's a deadly
| virus to a civilized society, everyone starts thinking they
| are dumb for not cheating, and we quickly go back to the
| dark ages.
|
| It's a bit like calling out the bank for being a fraud
| because they don't have all the money in a vault, and
| rushing to get your cash out. If people start taking the
| red pill and shouting that society is just a game of
| pretend, which it kind of is, then our very real prosperity
| can vanish overnight.
| cryptica wrote:
| >> then our very real prosperity can vanish overnight.
|
| This sentence assumes a certain degree of shared
| prosperity. I think this is increasingly an illusion.
| IMO, Social media tends to create filter bubbles which
| create illusions of shared prosperity. Most of the social
| bubbles I participate in, the view is much more like
| 'monopolized prosperity' than 'shared prosperity'.
|
| I've been in a unique position to have mingled with
| billionaires/millionaires and also normal people and the
| contrast is significant. In some circles; it's like even
| the company cook, janitor, receptionist and wall-painter
| is getting rich... In others, it's like there are some
| really talented people who keep failing over and over and
| can't make any money at all from their work; like they're
| suppressed by algorithms.
|
| I think most people wouldn't mind seeing the whole system
| collapse as they don't feel they have any stake in it;
| their experience is that of being oppressed while
| simultaneously being gaslit about being privileged! It's
| actually deeply disturbing. I don't think most people on
| the other side have any idea how bad it is because their
| reality looks really wonderful.
|
| My view is that the oppression which used to be carried
| out at a distance in Africa is now being carried out to
| large groups of people within the same country; and
| filter bubbles are used to create artificial distance.
|
| My experience of the system is that it works by
| oppressing people whilst keeping them out of view so that
| those who benefit from that system can enjoy both
| physical as well as psychological comfort. The physical
| comfort is real but the psychological comfort is built on
| the illusion of meritocracy; which can be maintained by
| creating distance from the oppressed. It's why the media
| keeps spreading narratives about homeless people being
| 'crazy' and 'on drugs' IMO. Labeling people as crazy is a
| great way to ensure that nobody talks to them to actually
| learn about their experience. It's the ultimate way to
| dehumanize someone. Because their experiences would shock
| most people and create deep discomfort; it would sow
| distrust in the system.
| svara wrote:
| > This sentence assumes a certain degree of shared
| prosperity. I think this is increasingly an illusion.
| IMO, Social media tends to create filter bubbles which
| create illusions of shared prosperity
|
| I think it's exactly the other way around? Wealth
| inequality (in the US, as an example) has actually not
| drastically changed in the past few decades, but I do
| agree the perception of unfairness has increased a lot.
|
| My hunch is that everyone is now being fed wealth porn on
| social media and comparing themselves to influencers or
| actual billionaires who actually do live or pretend to
| live a .01%er lifestyle.
|
| Life's never been fair; but feeling shortchanged for
| living a solid middle class lifestyle because Bezos has a
| big yacht seems new.
|
| Ultimately it all feels depressingly materialistic to me.
| Go work on something actually meaningful!
| clrflfclrf wrote:
| > For example, Christians turning a blind eye to certain
| negative character traits of God as he appears in the old
| testament.
|
| If I were to extend your analogy, the problem in modern
| world has become aggresive. E.g. you have committed a crime
| or fraud. Everyone else has proved decisively and beyond
| doubt that you have committed fraud such that it has become
| common knowledge. yet the justice system isn't acting. In a
| sense, you are taunting and teasing me, "what you gonna do
| about it?" This is inviting violence. The guy killing
| insurance company CEO has exactly this line of thinking.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > Poor countries tend to stay poor not due to fundamental
| resource constraints but due to self-reinforcing loops of
| desperate crab-bucket like behavior, where everyone is
| cheating one another out of necessity (or culture)
|
| This doesn't seem true and I'd be interested in any stats
| that back this up. It reminds me of a very interesting result
| (that most never internalize) which is that the number one
| way to avoid corruption is to pay public servants handsomely
| such that the job rivals the private sphere. Most developing
| countries can't do that, and that's why most of them have
| issues with corruption.
|
| Rich countries also have crab-bucket like behavior. You don't
| have to look twice at the current US administration to see
| lots of corruption and cheating and fraud, for example.
| oersted wrote:
| I didn't mean it so literally. Having robust taxation and
| well supported institutions is what I mean by "broad
| collaboration" and an effective "culture", as in a social
| operating-system a set of values and habits, that
| continually support and self-heal such constructions.
|
| I don't meant that everybody should be nice, and that poor
| countries are somehow culturally nasty, absolutely not.
| Real collaboration cannot be just founded on morals and
| good faith, it's not sustainable, it's more about
| incentives engineering.
|
| In terms of references, the main one that comes to mind is
| the economics Nobel price from 2024: "for studies of how
| institutions are formed and affect prosperity".
| mf_tomb wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/thumbnail/self-
| reported-t...
|
| Pretty clear trend: low-trust societies have low gdp and
| high-trust societies have high gdp, regardless of resource
| distribution. Africa/South America are resource rich,
| japan/iceland are resource poor.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Which direction does the causation within that
| correlation (if any) flow?
|
| I can easily conjure a scenario where high per-capita GDP
| makes trusting easier (either because there's enough to
| go around and/or because there are reliable
| police/judicial sanctions for violating trust) than in a
| hardscrabble low per-capita GDP society with lower
| (insufficient?) lawfulness.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| That's terrible proof. Anything better?
|
| Yemen and the US are equal shades on that trust polling
| map. That alone should show you it's not really a factor.
|
| India has a higher GDP and GDP per capita than it's
| neighbor Pakistan, but Pakistan has quite a higher trust
| score on your map than India.
|
| There are many more examples, just these jumped out at
| me.
| clrflfclrf wrote:
| > the number one way to avoid corruption is to pay public
| servants handsomely such that the job rivals the private
| sphere
|
| if this is true, then the public servant would earn only
| till he becomes rich equivalent to private sphere job. but
| nope, they go all the way in.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Re: Plato/Socrates
|
| "Therefore Socrates said that it wasn't enough to use the
| intellect in all things, but it was important to know for
| which cause one was exerting it. We would now say: One must
| serve the "good cause." But to serve the good cause is--to be
| moral. Thus, Socrates is the founder of ethics.
|
| "Socrates opened this war, and its peaceful end does not
| occur until the dying day of the old world."
|
| Plato/Socrates are the original ghost story tellers. I spit
| on their grave. Republic is easily one of the worst books
| written in human history in terms of its impact. Right up
| there with Das Kapital.
| svara wrote:
| Cooperation has been "invented" in evolution many times
| independently and is long term stable in many species.
|
| If your comment was true that fact wouldn't exist.
|
| We may consider the world we live in today competitive, but at
| the end of the day, humanity is a globe spanning machine that
| exists due to cooperative behavior at all scales.
|
| Comments such as yours are really missing the forest for the
| trees.
|
| I suspect that it's really the fact that cooperation is so
| powerful and pervasive that makes it normal to the point where
| any deviation from it feels outrageous.
|
| So you focus on the outrageous due to availability bias (seeing
| the trees rather than the forest).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You seem to be misunderstanding the GP.
|
| Evolution does not work maximizing individual success.
| svara wrote:
| But it does? What do you think it optimizes other than
| individual fitness?
|
| I think I understand the GP pretty well. Cheating, or
| defection in the language of evolutionary theory, is
| subject to frequency based selection, meaning it is
| strongly selected against if its frequency is too high in
| the population. It's not a stable strategy.
|
| It can be a winning strategy for a few individuals in a
| cooperative environment, yes, but it breaks down at a point
| because the system collapses if too many do it.
|
| And yet, cooperative systems are common and stable, which
| is my point.
| clrflfclrf wrote:
| A world where everyone is a Giver is not a stable world.
| Ask Gemini or Claude to explain. Cheating by definition
| works only in minority. If everyone is in line to buy
| tickets, only few cheaters can get early tickets and it
| is a stable strategy. But everyone is a cheater, everyone
| is worse off.
| integralid wrote:
| >What do you think it optimizes other than individual
| fitness?
|
| Chance to pass genes forward. This is only equivalent to
| individual fitness for very solitary species and humans
| aren't.
|
| As an extreme example, take soldier termites - their
| chance to pass their genes is zero, but the chance for
| the colony to survive grows. Also gay people exist (they
| also - usually - don't reproduce, but help others
| instead).
|
| Humans naturally care about their family and tribe
| because this increases the chance of their bloodline to
| survive.
| svara wrote:
| That's a distinction without a difference. Worker ants
| have high individual fitness if their colony successfully
| reproduces because they pass their genes forward.
|
| In evolutionary theory this is made clear by using the
| term "inclusive fitness" - worker ants actually pass
| their genes on to future generations more effectively by
| taking the detour, if you will, through the queen.
|
| If you want to be nitpicky and argue we should consider
| the individual gene the unit of selection, as Dawkins
| famously argued, I'm not going to disagree, you can see
| it that way too.
|
| That specific distinction very rarely leads to different
| predictions though.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| > Evolution does not work maximizing individual success.
|
| Yes it does. In fact, unless you want to get nit-picky
| about intra-gene, inter-allele selection, that is _exactly_
| what it does.
| 578_Observer wrote:
| Writing from Japan. You are absolutely right about the "Finite
| Game". If you can reset your reputation and start over,
| "Cheating" is indeed the winning strategy.
|
| However, here in Japan, we have a different operating system
| called "Shinise" (companies lasting over 1,000 years). They
| play an "Infinite Game". Their reputation is tied to a "Noren"
| (shop curtain) or a family name that has been built over
| centuries. You cannot simply discard it and respawn.
|
| There is a movie hitting theaters here in Tokyo right now
| called "KOKUHO" (National Treasure). It depicts Kabuki actors
| who inherit a "Name" (Myoseki) with 400 years of history.
| Watching it, I realized: In their world, cheating doesn't just
| mean losing a job. It means "killing the Name" for all
| ancestors and future generations. The penalty is infinite.
|
| When the "Reset Button" is removed from the game, "Honesty" and
| "Sanpo-yoshi" (Three-way satisfaction) naturally become the
| mathematically dominant strategies. Cheating only works when
| you plan to exit.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Japan having the most insane, high effort culture in the
| world is exactly why they are continuing to slowly die by
| lack of fertility. Same with South Korea.
|
| Japan will either lose its traditional culture including this
| long term aversion to "cheating", or they will lose their
| nation. It's existential and their refusal to embrace
| globalism will destroy them.
|
| Zero sum game, and yes they (ZSGs) do actually exist nearly
| everywhere in real life and are the norm. I can't physically
| be in the same place as another person. Time spent on one
| action is time not spent on everything else. Every bit of
| food I eat is food denied from every other person.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 1. How easy it is to start fresh and shed your past
| reputation if you get caught doing something bad.
|
| True, but this is a necessary feature of a society or workplace
| to discourage cheating and abuse.
|
| If a person could easily shed their reputation and start over
| on an equal footing with everyone else, cheating would be a
| zero-cost option. Cheat until you get caught, then start over
| and repeat.
|
| This is why trust and reputation are built over time and are so
| valuable. It's frustrating for newcomers or those who have lost
| reputation somehow, but it's a necessary feature to discourage
| fraud and cheating.
| yanivleven wrote:
| The 3D tetris is genius
| 5-0 wrote:
| I liked it too, especially the presentation, although I'm not
| sure what I think about "leftovers" falling down.
|
| Perhaps you'd like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockout .
|
| Yours sincerely, a TGM-fan
| skibidithink wrote:
| Lots of interesting insights, but their affirmative action take
| is a miss.
|
| > Critics of affirmative action often commit the fallacy of
| letting a failure in one area doom the entire enterprise. This
| ignores the interdependent nature of affirmative action. [1]
|
| Affirmative action sets up a zero-sum game where fixed resources
| like university admissions and employment offers are
| redistributed to people with the "correct" demographics. The
| conflict is not a disagreement over effectiveness. It's a
| misalignment between meritocracy and equity.
|
| [1]: https://nonzerosum.games/unlockingsolutions.html
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| But those resources are already redistributed (from a
| distribution that somewhat aligns with demographics) with
| things like personal relationships (think legacy admissions or
| a father's buddy handshake internship). AA is meant to correct
| historical instances of this which snowball into familial /
| generational wealth and (most difficult to diffuse) social
| capital that was distributed unfairly.
|
| That's the argument for it, not my belief. The argument for AA
| is that the so-called meritocracy had/has its own unequal
| distributions.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| >AA is meant to correct historical instances of this which
| snowball into familial / generational wealth and (most
| difficult to diffuse) social capital that was distributed
| unfairly.
|
| If that was the case it would be based on family
| wealth/income.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Social capital is not measured in family wealth / income,
| but it can very easily translate into jobs and other
| valuable things (like when your father knows someone who
| can get you an interview)
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I'd argue that they're very highly correlated. It would
| be an unusual outlier for someone to have high social
| capital but low wealth/income.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Do you disagree that some critics of AA are committing that
| fallacy?
|
| AA is being used as an example of the failure mode where:
|
| "The failure of a single component does not mean the program is
| fatally flawed; rather, it highlights the need for a
| comprehensive, coordinated approach"
|
| Indeed, I'm sure the author would agree that part of the
| comprehensive solution is to increase the amount of university
| admission slots.
| Aurornis wrote:
| That feels more like a cop-out than a legitimate criticism of
| a fallacy.
|
| If the author could propose an affirmative action program
| that didn't have that "single component" at the core of how
| it operates then I'd be more interested in the argument, but
| as-is it just feels like an attempt to forcefully ignore
| valid criticisms.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| The "single component" in this example is scholarships. The
| goal is successful education outcomes for minorities. The
| other measures required for success are to fix the things
| the article mentions about why the students are still
| dropping out, besides tuition. I.e. the program would be
| comprehensive beyond just admissions slots.
| skibidithink wrote:
| Even if some critics of AA are committing that fallacy,
| debunking a weaker argument when a stronger argument exists
| is ineffective.
|
| The implicit argument is that AA's largest challenge is a
| coordination problem. It's not. It's a clash in values and a
| fight over zero-sum rewards.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| The argument is that critics of AA are committing the
| Fallacy of Composition. Specifically when saying that since
| giving out scholarships doesn't result in equal educational
| outcomes, then we should stop giving out scholarships.
|
| I am with the author on this one. Creating better
| educational outcomes (for all students) is a coordination
| problem.
| XCabbage wrote:
| I certainly claim that _almost_ nobody "commits" that
| "fallacy" and that it is not a remotely notable viewpoint in
| the civic discourse of any country I know about.
|
| No doubt in a world of 8 billion people, there exists
| someone, somewhere, who has for some reason voiced the belief
| described - i.e. that if institutions _really heavily_ based
| their selection of applicants on skin color rather than
| merit, that would be good, but that because in reality
| institutions have only been convinced to _somewhat_
| compromise on merit-based selection in favour of skin-color-
| based selection, it 's bad, and should thus be abandoned
| completely in favour of total meritocracy. But that belief
| would really be rather odd, and I have never seen it
| expressed even once in my entire life.
|
| Nor am I convinced, despite its oddness, that it is properly
| considered to contain a fallacy! After all, sometimes it
| really is the case, for various reasons, that some endeavour
| is only worth doing if total success can be achieved, and not
| worth the downsides if you can only succeed partially. No
| doubt if someone really held the allegedly fallacious view
| described, they would believe affirmative action is exactly
| such an endeavour and be able to explain why!
| anon84873628 wrote:
| You haven't remotely described the alleged critics' belief.
| Which is that since scholarship recipients still drop out
| at a higher rate, the scholarships don't work.
|
| How many people actually hold such beliefs is a debate
| between you and the author.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >Indeed, I'm sure the author would agree that part of the
| comprehensive solution is to increase the amount of
| university admission slots.
|
| A large part of the value of elite education is its scarcity,
| and adding more slots dilutes that value.
| autoexec wrote:
| > A large part of the value of elite education is its
| scarcity,
|
| That's a stupid thing to value. Nothing worthwhile is
| gained by limiting education to a select few. The value of
| an elite education should be the actual education. Plenty
| of very wealthy idiots get a golden ticket to an "elite
| education" and are still uneducated idiots afterwards. If a
| large part of the value is nothing more than giving others
| the perception of having a lot of money or connections we
| should probably come up with other ways to signal that.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| I agree it's incredibly stupid. Just saying that our
| current society's valuation of scarcity makes access to
| an elite education very much a zero-sum game.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| If what skibidithink says is true, doesn't it mean that it's
| not a fallacy at all? And that the failure he identifies does
| undermine the entire thing?
|
| Either way, seems like a very narrow distinction you are
| drawing when he is making the meatier claim that affirmative
| action is fundamentally flawed.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| They are in fact committing the exact fallacy by focusing
| solely on competition for admission slots instead of how we
| comprehensively improve educational outcomes for
| underprivileged kids.
|
| Admittedly, the article does a bad job framing that as the
| real goal while AA is a specific component. It makes it
| sound like AA in admissions is the goal itself.
|
| There is a lot more work to do to prove that "investing in
| education for historically disadvantaged groups" doesn't
| improve society at large.
| friendzis wrote:
| > Do you disagree that some critics of AA are committing that
| fallacy?
|
| This is is such a weird non-argument dressed as some gotcha.
| "Some critics of x are committing y fallacy" is probably
| universally correct statement. It is so devoid of any meaning
| that this particular type of discourse has not only a name,
| but a mascot too.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| The point of the text was to give an example of a
| coordination problem, not conclusively prove AA or
| something. For me the example works.
| asimpletune wrote:
| I think something that often isn't considered with affirmative
| action is the benefits that are conferred to the people who are
| not in a minority. In other words it is a genuinely useful
| thing to go to a university with a broad spectrum of people and
| ideas.
|
| In a purely meritocratic sense, all other beings equal a
| university that provides a diverse faculty and student body
| will better educate its students than a university that
| doesn't, all other things remaining equal.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The problem in practice is that these programs don't actually
| select for diverse ideas, they select for demographic traits
| like gender or ethnic background.
|
| If the team uses relational databases but someone shows up to
| an interview with a strongly held belief that NoSQL is the
| way to go, they're likely to be rejected because their ideas
| don't match the team's. Same if the team strongly believes in
| some version of agile but a person they interview doesn't
| like agile. Diversity programs in practice never even attempt
| to push diversity of ideas, they ignore all of that and focus
| on things like gender and ethnic background.
|
| This feels like a dangerous opinion to voice, but the
| workplace affirmative action programs I've seen in practice
| have been very poor in their implementation. At my last
| workplace that instituted diversity targets, HR would just
| start rejecting hires if they thought it would skew the
| diversity numbers in the wrong way. So you'd hit a wall where
| the only candidates you were allowed to hire couldn't be, for
| example, men or of Asian descent or some other demographic
| trait they thought was over-represented. None of this
| improved diversity of _ideas_ , it became a game to find a
| person whose ideas matched the team who also happened to have
| the right gender or skin color to keep our diversity
| statistics going in the direction HR demanded.
| analog31 wrote:
| To counter that, though without a precise economic analysis,
| both university admissions and employment grew during the
| affirmative action era.
|
| Everything looks like zero-sum if viewed as a static, local
| model.
| skibidithink wrote:
| It's only positive sum if they grew because of affirmative
| action. And if affirmative action caused net friction, it'd
| be a Moloch.
| VinLucero wrote:
| Are you assuming elite college admission counts are rigid
| in the count of people admitted because of real teaching
| constraints or reducing the supply of prestige?
| skibidithink wrote:
| None of my arguments require any assumption on why. But I
| would say that it's because of prestige and signaling.
| eru wrote:
| University admission is arguably bad for society.
|
| (See Caplan's Case Against Education.)
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >The conflict is not a disagreement over effectiveness. It's a
| misalignment between meritocracy and equity.
|
| A lot of proponents of affirmative action will agree with this.
| They'll explicitly acknowledge that people admitted under AA
| will be underqualified, due to factors mentioned in the
| article: [Minorities] may lack foundational
| skills (taken for granted in more affluent households and
| schools) and therefore might require breaks from study, which
| can lead to dropping out. They might have developed unhelpful
| habits or attitudes formed in teen years, or a sense of
| identity tied up with being part of a historically maligned
| group, affecting confidence and performance. [Affirmative
| action] does nothing to address these factors.
|
| Said proponents would agree that AA is a failure if assessed
| strictly by these criteria. However, they would then go on to
| say that the benefits conferred by an elite education to the
| current crop of AA beneficiaries lead to future generations of
| minorities being less likely to experience the aforementioned
| issues, so after accounting for all future externalities, AA is
| a net good. As Justice O'Connor famously wrote in Grutter v.
| Bollinger (2003) [0], It would be a sad day
| indeed, were America to become a quota-ridden society, with
| each identifiable minority assigned proportional representation
| in every desirable walk of life. But that is not the rationale
| for programs of preferential treatment; the acid test of their
| justification will be their efficacy in eliminating the need
| for any racial or ethnic preferences at all. [...] It has been
| 25 years since Justice Powell first approved the use of race to
| further an interest in student body diversity in the context of
| public higher education [California v. Bakke (1978)]. Since
| that time, the number of minority applicants with high grades
| and test scores has indeed increased. We expect that 25 years
| from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be
| necessary to further the interest approved today.
|
| That said, it's been almost 25 years since she wrote that (and
| 50 years since California v. Bakke), and it's debatable whether
| those future externalities have manifested.
|
| [0] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/306/
| skibidithink wrote:
| And many against affirmative action will agree that there
| have been massive historical injustices for certain
| demographics that have lingering effects. The difference
| between these two sides is which value they prioritize.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >The difference between these two sides is which value they
| prioritize.
|
| Yup. Though there is a third option: completely ignore the
| meritocracy vs. equity zero-sum game and simply argue that
| demographic-based weighting of applicants is an ineffective
| way to rectify those historical injustices. It is treating
| a symptom, not the underlying disease.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > simply argue that demographic-based weighting of
| applicants is an ineffective way to rectify those
| historical injustices. It is treating a symptom, not the
| underlying disease.
|
| Is there any effective way to rectify them or the
| underlying disease that you'd recommend?
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Singapore does the whole "race based quotas for everything"
| and they have by many metrics, the best standard of living in
| the entire world.
|
| It turns out that the government forcing racial integration
| actually works! Being a "quota ridden society" would be good
| for America.
| zahlman wrote:
| > Singapore does the whole "race based quotas for
| everything"
|
| By American constructions of race, almost everyone in
| Singapore is of the same race.
|
| Even going by genetically objective ethnicity, almost three
| quarters of people in Singapore are Han Chinese. It's not
| remotely comparable to the American situation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_in_Singapore
|
| > and they have by many metrics, the best standard of
| living in the entire world.
|
| As self-reported by people from cultures that happen to
| share common values. They rate higher on HDI than the US,
| sure; but so does the UAE, and Slovenia is almost as high.
| They're unusually wealthy per capita, but so is Ireland
| (capitalist shell games). And there are a lot of things the
| average American probably wouldn't like about that society,
| e.g. the strict rules against littering and the threat of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore .
| jrm4 wrote:
| University admission is a zero-sum already deeply unfair game
| (with slots going to the rich and privileged)
|
| AA just pushes against THAT, for better or worse.
| skibidithink wrote:
| AA doesn't prevent the rich from buying admissions. It
| redistributes slots from middle and lower class folks with
| the wrong ethnicity.
| firejake308 wrote:
| I went to a school in the suburbs with kids from middle
| class families and lower-middle class families. Many of us
| wanted to get into the Ivy League schools, but what I saw
| was that, presumable because of AA, the middle class kids
| from over-represented minorities (Asian, white) did not get
| into the Ivies, and the 1 or 2 who did get in were middle
| class kids from under-represented minorities (Black,
| Hispanic). But their families were still pretty well-off.
| Under no circumstances did a kid from a lower-middle class
| family make it into an Ivy, regardless of race. I really
| don't get why AA has to be about race, if we just did AA
| based on parental income alone, I would support it 100%. I
| think most concervatives would be happy because it wouls
| support poor whites, and most liberals would also be happy
| because it would in actuality URMs would still be the most
| benefited because they are the majority of low-income
| families. My only assumption is that it doesn't leave any
| openings for the rich and powerful to game the system, so
| people with the power to make changes will never make that
| change.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I never said it did that; It pushes back against the
| phenomenon.
|
| The most neutral way I can put it: _Every_ school turns
| away a LOT of equally qualified applicants, at some point
| decisions must be made. Next issue, schools don 't exist
| purely for the benefit of the students, but the world at
| large. This is why you want a -- dare I say it -- diverse
| population. To maximize the good your students can do.
|
| Now, one may not love race as a proxy for this, but it's at
| least arguably a workable solution.
| skibidithink wrote:
| You did say it.
|
| > with slots going to the rich and privileged) [...] AA
| just pushes against THAT
|
| It doesn't give away the slots reserved for the rich.
|
| And it's not a tiebreaker between equally qualified
| candidates. At Harvard, Africans who performed in the 4th
| decile were admitted more often than Asians in the 10th
| decile. [1]
|
| [1]. See page 11 (by document numbering). https://www.sup
| remecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/169941/202...
| didibus wrote:
| It depends, there were a lot of studies that showed prejudice
| and bias in the meritocratic process. You had examples of CVs
| with woman names removed getting more callbacks, and anonymous
| interviews having higher rates of hire and such.
|
| Due to this, people considered affirmative actions to correct
| for this skew. That would actually make it a meritocratic
| motivated AA.
|
| And then you have the idea of missed potential. Those who
| weren't given the opportunity to develop, it limits the pool of
| exceptional candidates. It's similar to when black athletes
| weren't allowed in sports. We thought we had a meritocratic
| process, but we were artificially limiting those with
| potential. The challenge is bigger here, so you need a
| bootstrapping process, because you're faced with a chicken and
| egg situation. You wouldn't know if it works or not unless you
| give it at least one if not two generations to take effect. I
| admit that this is the more controversial one, as it means
| temporarily favoring disadvantaged groups to bootstrap things.
| I just wanted to point out that there's a meritocratic angle to
| it as well.
|
| Equity doesn't mean give those that suck a boost. It means give
| those that weren't given the environment to develop their full
| potential a chance at it, they may end up being even better
| than the alternative.
| robocat wrote:
| You are stawmanning. You are attempting to say what _they
| think_ meritocracy is - and your basing your thoughts on your
| own stereotypes.
|
| > You had examples of CVs with woman names removed getting
| more callbacks
|
| That is _not_ meritocracy.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| But that's what we live in. We can't force meritocracy on
| people when they have the ability to accept and reject
| candidates in a biased way
| didibus wrote:
| Yes, that's what I'm saying. These systems claimed to be
| meritocratic but empirically weren't. AA was introduced as
| a corrective, not a rejection of merit. Was it successful
| at correcting it, did it introduce other defects, I don't
| know, but you can see that implementation of AA can result
| from wanting to be more meritocratic, not less.
| zahlman wrote:
| > It depends, there were a lot of studies that showed
| prejudice and bias in the meritocratic process.
|
| A meritocratic process _by definition_ is not prejudiced or
| biased. There were studies that claimed to show processes to
| _not actually be_ meritocratic. In my experience, these
| findings either haven 't reproduced or don't appropriately
| account for confounders; and if they held up they would be
| pointing at things that are already illegal (and irrational).
|
| > It's similar to when black athletes weren't allowed in
| sports. We thought we had a meritocratic process
|
| What? How do you come to the conclusion that "we" thought any
| such thing? The term
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy) was coined in the
| 50s for socialist criticism invoking satire. The discourse
| had nothing to do with race and was about disputing how merit
| is measured, not about supposed prejudices (except perhaps
| class privilege). Nor did coaches, managers etc. imagine any
| inferiority on the part of black athletes in regards to
| physical prowess. Segregation was to keep the peace; see e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_color_line :
|
| > Before the 1860s Civil War, black players participated in
| the highest levels of baseball.[2] During the war, baseball
| rose to prominence as a way to bring soldiers from various
| regions of the country together. In the aftermath of the war,
| baseball became a tool for national reconciliation; due to
| the racial issues involved in the war, baseball's unifying
| potential was mainly pursued among white Americans.[3]
|
| Anyway,
|
| > You wouldn't know if it works or not unless you give it at
| least one if not two generations to take effect.
|
| This time lapse isn't required for a moral judgment, however.
|
| > Equity doesn't mean give those that suck a boost. It means
| give those that weren't given the environment to develop
| their full potential a chance at it, they may end up being
| even better than the alternative.
|
| An employer, or a college admissions officer, cannot provide
| what was missing from someone's "environment" during the
| formative years, and should not be expected to try; nor ought
| they shoulder the risk of anyone's "full potential" being
| absent. Everyone might as well hire randomly from the general
| population at that point.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| I was more thrown off by their definition of "Coordination
| Problems" than anything. They say:
|
| > We sometimes run into problems where a number of factors have
| to be addressed simultaneously in order for them to be
| effective at all. One weak link can ruin it for the rest. These
| are called Coordination Problems.
|
| Coordination problems are about multiple _actors_ choosing
| interdependent outcomes, rather than a problem that needs
| everything to be done right. This sounds more like a "Weakest
| Link" problem than a coordination problem.
|
| Not that it invalidates the rest of the post, but it did make
| me dig in more into the person's background and showed that
| they're more of a journalist than a game theory expert.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Yeah, they are assuming that different actors are responsible
| for those different links, probably with different
| incentives. And it is also a resource allocation problem.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Affirmative action sets up a zero-sum game where fixed
| resources like university admissions and employment offers are
| redistributed to people with the "correct" demographics.
|
| I wish I could find the source, but the vast majority of
| universities don't have a fixed admissions quota. They are
| criteria based (if you meet the criteria, you get in). In
| principle, AA admissions did not prevent others from getting a
| seat.
|
| Of course, it's possible the general admissions criteria is
| raised slightly to compensate, but again - for most
| universities, AA admissions wasn't a significant number, and
| however much the bar raised, it was likely minuscule.
|
| I'll be blunt. Everyone I've personally known who didn't get
| admissions in a particular university and blamed AA for it was
| trying to get into a top school, and likely didn't earn his
| spot.
| verteu wrote:
| CA Prop 209 is a good natural experiment:
| https://reappropriate.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Total-
| UC...
| BeetleB wrote:
| This tells me only about a few universities, and there are
| too many confounding variables.
| skibidithink wrote:
| It's better data than the people in one person's life.
| wek wrote:
| A bit hard to read but some fun images and examples. I
| appreciated his post on capitalism as not a zero sum game.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Capitalism is 100% a zero sum game and capitalists love to try
| to pretend that it's not
|
| The fact of resource extraction from society and externalities
| like pollution not being counted by capitalist because they
| "can't count them "and just bundle them as externalities
| demonstrably destroy any concept of non-zero sum game
|
| There are limited resources on the planet and that's the sum.
|
| If you want to take it even further the extraction pace is even
| more important than the total gross amount of resources because
| of inefficient allocation and distribution processes
|
| So no the universe itself is zero some we're not creating more
| Mattar and especially in the context of humans on earth the
| functional and numerical reality is zero sum
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >The fact of resource extraction from society and
| externalities like pollution not being counted by capitalist
| because they "can't count them" and just bundle them as
| externalities demonstrably destroy any concept of non-zero
| sum game
|
| The article explicitly addresses this: The
| fact that Capitalism is non-zero-sum doesn't mean it is
| necessarily positive-sum. An economy that gets out of balance
| can produce very negative results (which are still non-zero).
| Cons of capitalism: -- Can not be relied on to provide
| adequate social services, including healthcare and education.
| -- Can be expected to run at a cost to externalities like the
| environment. -- Can produce products that are detrimental to
| well-being.
|
| Based on your other comment [0], it seems you have a bad-
| faith axe to grind against this site.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434065
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This is exactly my problem
|
| you're sitting here saying "this person addressed it" and
| I'm saying no they didn't.
|
| They are entirely misguided and ignorant about this
| argument and you're taking it as though it's a reasonable
| argument because apparently you're also ignorant about this
| argument
|
| it's entirely wrong and is at best a naive capitalist
| propaganda interpretation with absolutely no grounding in
| history
|
| There are literally dozens of philosophers who have tomes
| of more research on this going back to the 16th and 17th
| centuries that demonstrably show that what we call
| capitalism is definitionally zero sum
|
| All you have to do is go read proudhon what is property
| chapter 4
|
| Here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/pierre-
| joseph-proudh...
| SapporoChris wrote:
| If capitalism is zero sum then how do countries with
| capitalism manage to succeed and grow for hundreds of
| years?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| By pillaging and conquering nations that have abundant
| resources through violence and coercion
|
| Like this is the entire history of capitalism and it's
| not even close
|
| the fact that other organizations (USSR, China) do the
| same thing (horde property and then use consolidated
| resources to enforce economic heirarchy) but don't call
| it capitalism doesn't make it any less true
|
| They can say "communism" all day but if the functional
| properties of the system of the Russian Federation or CCP
| are that Property control is limited to a small group of
| elites who then use those resources to create a command
| economy that is purely capitalist philosophy.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| The hording and eliteness is not a property of the
| capitalistic system. It might be an unwanted side effect.
| Imperialism, greed, urge to expand control, subordination
| of others are unfortunately human traits. You might
| attribute that behavior to any system, why single out
| capitalism?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Because capitalism explicitly encodes transactionalism
| into the social structure by alienating labor from the
| fruits of the labor.
|
| There's no period of time where that has not been true
| for some portion is society, but we reached a point to
| which there are no places where that is not true.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > By pillaging and conquering nations that have abundant
| resources through violence and coercion
|
| That's pretty much backwards. The industrial revolution
| was the first time in human history where people could
| get rich on a very large scale via some way _other_ than
| pillage and conquest. If you think "capitalism" started
| in the late 18th century and is essentially coterminous
| with industry (which is quite nonsensical since you had
| forms of capital as far back as ancient farming
| societies, but that's the way many scholars choose to use
| the term) that's exactly what let us choose something
| that was _not_ plunder and conquest.
| cowpig wrote:
| Calling people ignorant and naive while doing nothing to
| address the actual arguments isn't going to convince
| anyone.
|
| In the passage you linked to, the author argues that
| property is impossible, which seems like a rather
| different argument than the one you are making.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| in fact it's the opposite
|
| If you read Prudhon thoroughly you'll understand that his
| critique is that the entire concept of capitalism is
| based on the concept of property (undisputed) and the
| concept of property is an entirely made up mythical thing
| (disputed)
| cowpig wrote:
| Opposite of what?
|
| And what does that have to do with non-zero-sum games?
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I don't believe capitalism is a zero sum game. Capitalism
| is not the holy grail, but when combined with laws that
| balance the uneven distribution of the wealth it
| _creates_, and laws that protect resources and
| cleanliness, it turns out it is the best system we as a
| human species employed so far. I'm open to be proven
| wrong.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| If this is the best we can do then we do not deserve to
| survive as a species
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Deserve, by whom's standards?
| stackghost wrote:
| Perhaps it's merely the best we have been able to
| achieve, _thus far_.
| robocat wrote:
| When you call people ignorant, you are trying to say you
| know better than them. It is not only rude, but against
| guidelines.
| ifethereal wrote:
| I'm replying without having read the entirety of the text
| you've referred to by Proudhon, but it looks interesting
| --thanks.
|
| Some raw thoughts of mine if I may (feel free to add
| seasoning):
|
| You mention that capitalism is definitionally zero-sum,
| and you seem to be facing quite a bit of resistance. I've
| had similar thoughts (perhaps still premature) that
| capitalism is zero-sum, but only (?) under a strong
| definition of "zero". I've not fleshed out my thoughts
| completely, but I suspect there are intangible/abstract
| dimensions along which we maintain some kind of
| equilibrium, regardless of what we do. "Do" here is quite
| abstract, but as a first approximation in the realm of
| economics, it might refer to any act of investment,
| compensation, or labour. (I may be abusing some technical
| terms in economics here--not my home turf.) A separate
| question could then emerge as to how significant these
| intangible/abstract dimensions are.
|
| Actually, I'm not even sure that this is specific to the
| context of capitalism. However, whether something is a
| zero-sum game would seem relevant to systems obsessed
| with objective quantification, and where that
| quantification is heavily involved in steering moral
| views (or decision making), and I view capitalism as one
| of them.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| It's definitely not specific to the context of capitalism
|
| capitalism however makes transactionalism the explicit
| structure such that it cannot coexist with any other type
| of ownership regime by function
|
| That is to say, if you look at anarcho socialist
| philosophy it can theoretically coexist with other
| philosophies inside the same state and action space
|
| Historically however, we have not found a stable
| equilibrium for the lived reality of our experience such
| that we could map it cleanly onto some discreet and
| identified philosophical framework
|
| So neither anarcho-socialism nor capitalism is a
| sustainable equilibrium point due to the constraints of a
| human biological substrate
|
| Claiming that "it could" or "can" or "is the best we can
| do" are all beside the point, because they ignore the
| intractable fundamental fact of separating human systems
| from all other systems
|
| Every possible game is zero sum because the universe
| isn't creating more matter or energy, it's just moving
| around. How we move it around is the problem to solve and
| anyone using weak justifications with bankrupt
| epistemological foundations is just wasting everyone's
| time.
| Xirdus wrote:
| That's a very reductionist view of economy. For starters, it
| ignores the entire services sector, which is like half of GDP
| of most developed capitalist countries. Services are an
| extremely clear example of positive sum - no resources
| disappeared from the world, as much money was gained as was
| spent, but on top of it somebody got something of value.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| You should read about Baumol cost disease if you want to
| understand why what you just said is totally misguided
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
|
| If I pay somebody to dig a ditch and I pay somebody else to
| fill it in was something of value created? Unequivocally
| no.
|
| Whether or not that allowed somebody to survive and feed
| their family is entirely orthogonal to the question of the
| zero-sum nature of the universe
|
| Nothing is free
|
| energy comes from somewhere and you have to eat food which
| takes from the environment, that somebody else can't eat or
| some other process can't utilize, so by a function of your
| existence you cost energy to maintain that would've
| otherwise gone to some other mechanical process
|
| No free lunch theorem describes this mathematically and you
| can go all day reading about that
| eru wrote:
| Your argument would at most prove that you can't have a
| positive sum. But it doesn't say anything about not
| having a negative sum.
|
| We CAN needlessly increase entropy without that
| benefiting anyone. It's easy.
|
| The sum doesn't have to be zero.
|
| And, of course, once you agree that the sum can go
| negative. Then we can work on trying to avoid that. Game
| theory doesn't actually care all that much about any
| finite offset. Whether the maximum we can reach is 0 or
| ten quadrillion, it's all the same to the theory.
| cowpig wrote:
| > energy comes from somewhere and you have to eat food
| which takes from the environment, that somebody else
| can't eat or some other process can't utilize, so by a
| function of your existence you cost energy to maintain
|
| Your assertion that "energy comes from somewhere" seems
| to be borrowing a concept from thermodynamics and apply
| it, at the scale of the entire universe, to an opinion
| about the properties of economic/political system.
|
| Our planet, as a system, is unequivocally energy-
| positive. We are inundated with energy from the sun. Does
| that mean capitalism is positive-sum on Earth?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Humans can't convert sun energy into biological energy.
| We aren't plants.
|
| However we eat plants and we eat the things that eat
| plants. So do you consider plants and animals part of
| your environment or not?
|
| Is the basic requirements for having an economy being a
| set of humans in a society that has language and culture
| and exchange?
|
| There's no free lunch
|
| Human activity takes from the non-human environment.
|
| Under an abstracted society which you could call
| capitalism if you like these resource extractions are
| done with no view to externalities and we know this
| because even in a basic undergraduate economics degree
| you will be told companies do not price externalities and
| there are no pricing mechanisms for externalities outside
| of Reactionary measures historically
|
| Again I'll reference here the entire history of ecology
| and cybernetics has tried to make this abundantly clear
| that these are all connected and the fact that you seem
| befuddled about these connections tells me everything I
| need to know about this conversation
| when_creaks wrote:
| In your opinion which society / nation / government in
| human history is closest to your ideal of how things
| should be?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Closest seems to be the mondragon cooperative
| Xirdus wrote:
| Let's stop at the first half. If I pay somebody to dig a
| ditch. Period. End of story. Let's assume I'm not
| clinically insane and I actually needed that ditch for
| something. Is the sum still zero?
|
| Just because pointless things are possible doesn't mean
| not pointless things are not possible.
|
| Nothing is free, but the service isn't free either. It's
| not free because people find it valuable, so valuable
| they're willing to pay for it. More than the cost of food
| needed to compensate energy spent. Way more in most
| cases. Is the sum still zero?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| You're describing positive-sum outcomes in subjective
| preference space.
|
| I'm describing conservation laws in physical state space.
|
| Preference gains don't violate thermodynamics, but they
| also don't escape zero-sum reality once you include
| energy, ecology, and time.
|
| You're doing what I'm complaining about separating
| Economics from ecology - there's a very firm reason why
| climate changes the most important topic of our decade is
| because we have to merge our lived experience with the
| work experience and kill this embedded dualism that
| somehow human environments are different than the rest of
| the universe.
|
| It's like you're trying to do control theory without
| energy constraints.
| Xirdus wrote:
| Ah, so you indeed are doing the extremely reductionist
| view of economy that completely ignores services. And
| then calling capitalists wrong. While not even talking
| about the same subject as capitalists. This is lalala I
| can't hear you with extra steps.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I can't believe I wasted my time thinking through that
| thoughtful response to you
|
| Thats on me
| Xirdus wrote:
| I'm very open to a serious discussion. But only if it's
| actually serious. I don't consider reducing economy to
| thermodynamics to be serious.
|
| Any statement about any economy is meaningless if you're
| ignoring services. Especially when discussing the
| totality of an economic system, such as the question
| whether capitalism is zero-sum. I am happy to hear actual
| arguments how the value of services always, necessarily,
| by definition comes at the cost of some environment
| somewhere. I'm not happy to hear arguments that dismiss
| existence of services entirely.
|
| I was sure you were a troll yourself after that hole
| digging line. My bad.
| 52-hertz_whale wrote:
| RSS feed is broken
| yuppiepuppie wrote:
| Looks really nice! However, the rss feed seems broken. Probably a
| missing/malformed character somewhere
| cjmcqueen wrote:
| The link to the RSS feed gets put on your clipboard when you
| click it.
| kashyapc wrote:
| The article on "effortocracy"[1] is pretty very well done.
| Quoting the end of the article:
|
| _"... if you take anything away from this, it is to recognise
| that if meritocracy is based on achievement only, then we must be
| sure not to confuse it with effortocracy when it comes to its
| moral weight. "_
|
| Related reading: _The Tyranny of Merit_ , by Michael Sandel (I
| was hoping the article would reference this, and it does.)
|
| [1] https://nonzerosum.games/effortocracy.html
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I don't think we actually want an effortocracy. Why should we
| aim to reward pointless, Sisyphean tasks at the expense of
| actual achievement? There's no inherent moral worth to futile
| effort that doesn't actually yield any reward, regardless of
| how laborious it might be.
| VinLucero wrote:
| Then why do we have books on grit? And why is grit such a
| good indicator of successful founders?
| ronsor wrote:
| A lot of meaningful things are difficult and laborious, but
| not all difficult and laborious things are meaningful.
| wijwp wrote:
| Because you need effort + the ability to create value, not
| one or the other. Some people have one but not the other
| and seek out help to bridge the gap.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Yes, also effort is something a person can influence
| directly, while ability cannot or only indirectly
| (education ...) so it makes sense to focus on things
| people can influence, but but achievement is the ultimate
| target.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I don't believe in the least that the _only_ thing a
| person can influence directly is brute effort, and that
| 's the argument you'd need to make in order to build a
| case for "effortocracy" over rewarding good outcomes. A
| whole lot of effort out there in the real world is wasted
| due to entirely preventable errors and mistakes.
| autoexec wrote:
| I'd be willing to bet that grit has a lot less to do with
| successful founders than luck and/or access to a lot of
| money. There are way more unsuccessful founders filled with
| grit than successful ones.
|
| The reason there are so many books on grit is because it's
| a very compelling lie that anyone can succeed if they just
| try hard enough without giving up. It's useful for the
| person who hasn't succeeded because it gives them hope.
| It's useful for the person who has succeeded because it
| implies that they earned/deserve what they have because
| they were better than others or tried harder than others
| did. These are lies, but they are comforting to a lot of
| people and so they sell a lot of books. Books that say
| things like "Be born to wealthy parents, preferably in a
| rich nation or your odds of success are highly unlikely,
| then also get really lucky" just aren't going to sell as
| well.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The thing is, an "unsuccessful" startup founder filled
| with grit has many side-opportunities after the fact
| despite her "failure". Founding a startup is so risky
| that these side benefits are actually a far bigger part
| of the draw, since success is ultimately just as rare as
| a winning lotto ticket - compare the number of failed
| startups with the handful of unicorns, and it's pretty
| much in the same ballpark.
| willturman wrote:
| > And why is grit such a good indicator of successful
| founders?
|
| Based on what? Biographical accounts by successful
| founders?
|
| Nassim Taleb's Fooled By Randomness [1] covers the topic of
| mis-attribution of some causal factor X (i.e. grit) to some
| phenomena (i.e. business success) that can be effectively
| explained solely by randomness. In the specific case of
| successfully starting a business, causal factors are often
| mis-attributed post-facto through a lens that blatantly
| ignores survivorship bias [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
| cgannett wrote:
| This is further complicated by the difference between direct
| and indirect value. I build a thing that produces n value and
| is directly attributable to me. I also do things that help
| 100 others produce 10% more value themselves but most of that
| is attributed to themselves producing 10 * n value overall.
| How will I be rewarded if at all? Most likely as someone who
| produced n value.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| This is the inherent friction of most overly "scientific"
| management systems. A decent line manager is aware of who
| on their team lifts up the team with glue & peer
| acceleration type soft work.
|
| Systems that try to get too "objective" fail to recognize
| this as most KPIs are on direct outcomes that are easy to
| measure, though often less important.
|
| No joke I once worked at a company with multi-category
| numeric ratings that then rolled up to a total rating score
| that had 2 decimal places of precision.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I got a review with that exact method and amount of
| (false) precision in an engineering team that was under
| 30 total people.
|
| To that boss' credit, the text feedback was actually
| useful, but the numeric scores were comical.
| cgannett wrote:
| ugh what a pain
|
| Another issue is that often effort is the only lever one
| has in providing value as what tasks you are assigned
| constrains potential value output.Hypothetically, If my
| boss assigns me a stupid project destined to failure and
| tells me to shut up when I push back I'm really not going
| to get much value regardless of how much effort I put
| in... unless I was wrong in my assesment which is
| admittedly possible. Good management I suppose would then
| use effort as a proxy to try to find projects with
| potential to match one's effort.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| To strong-man their argument, they don't seem to be arguing
| to reward effort only, in their words:
|
| > "To truly measure and reward by an effortocratic measure we
| need both a top-down and bottom-up approach
|
| - At the top, reward people who have overcome more to get to
| the same point
|
| - At the bottom, level the playing field so that potential,
| wherever it is, can be realised"
|
| The way I think of it is using a vector analogy. They're
| arguing that a meritocracy only reward the end point, and
| that instead we should value both the magnitude of the vector
| in addition to its end point. You're interpreting
| effortocracy (not unfairly IMO) as only rewarding the
| magnitude of the vector, which is indeed absurd.
|
| In my opinion however, they themselves are straw-manning what
| they point to as "moral meritocracy". As I understand it,
| their main gripe is that achievements are not only rewarded,
| but also ascribed higher moral weight, which is plain false.
| People vastly prefer rag-to-riches story to born-rich ones.
| So much so that you have many rich people straight up lying
| about their origin stories to make it sound more rag-to-
| riches than it is.
|
| Edit: removed last bit that was harsher than intended.
| kashyapc wrote:
| _> Why should we aim to reward pointless, Sisyphean tasks at
| the expense of actual achievement?_
|
| Of course that would be ridiculous. You're trivializing the
| author's point. I'm not sure you've actually read the article
| in full. The author admits the difficulty in measuring it and
| that we may have to rely on "non-scientific" measurements.
|
| Many of the tech robber barons and VCs (who call themselves
| "angels") carry the air of "my winnings are entirely of my
| own making". They rarely acknowledge the role of good fortune
| (in various aspects) in any meaningful way.
|
| They inhale their success too deeply, as Michael Sandel
| memorably puts it.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > The author admits the difficulty in measuring it and that
| we may have to rely on "non-scientific" measurements.
|
| But that's the whole reason why we reward outcomes in the
| first place. If it was possible to reward only "well-
| directed" effort regardless of outcomes, we'd be doing that
| already!
| zajio1am wrote:
| Well, i would say that there are two common fallacies w.r.t.
| meritocracy:
|
| 1) Mixing up merit (ability to provide achievement) with
| effort.
|
| 2) Assuming it has anything to do with moral weight. While it
| primarily targets just decision making and distribution of
| deserts (rewards).
|
| Why distribution of deserts should be meritocratic? Because
| that ensure that collaboration is positive-sum for everybody
| involved. Considering this, fair reward for participation in
| some group effort has to satisfy a condition that reward is at
| least as large as a missed opportunity (of collaborating in
| some other group, individually, or not collaborating at all).
| missinglugnut wrote:
| I thought that article was impractical and totally divorced
| from reality.
|
| Effort can't be fairly measured so in practice the attempts
| toward "effortocracy" always seem to replace objective systems
| with a mess of human biases.
|
| Look at college admissions: instead of SAT scores colleges want
| to look at skin color and how sympathetic your essays sound.
| That doesn't measure how much a person has overcome in life, it
| measures a person by how they fit in to the admissions office's
| prejudices.
|
| The merit based approach, giving academic opportunity to people
| with a history of academic success, isn't as fair as we want,
| but it is useful. Broken, gameable, biased measures of effort
| are neither fair nor useful.
| firejake308 wrote:
| The only way for cooperation to be a winning strategy in a
| prisoner's dilemma is if people have memory/reputation/trust.
| However, that is very difficult to build in the modern digital
| world where everyone is a faceless username.
|
| https://nonzerosum.games/cooperationvsdefection.html
| esafak wrote:
| Computers make it easy to track such things. eBay's success --
| enabling strangers throughout the world to trade with
| confidence -- was built on it.
| yannyu wrote:
| Sure, it worked and then it stopped working. Upvotes,
| reviews, social media, and word-of-mouth have been co-opted
| by advertising and marketing.
| Ethan_Barry wrote:
| I'm a sucker for anything with game theory in the title. Can't
| wait to read more; thanks for sharing!
| eru wrote:
| > Hi, I'm Non-Zero-Sum James, your companion on this exploration
| of win-win games [...]
|
| That sounds hopelessly naive.
|
| In a zero-sum game, you just min-max and that's it. No hard
| feelings.
|
| Non-zero-sum games is where you pre-emptively nuke your
| neighbour.
|
| See also
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tJQsxD34maYw2g5E4/thomas-c-s...
| jmward01 wrote:
| One thing I have always thought was missing in game theory (and
| it is probably there but I just haven't looked hard enough) is a
| mathematical framework for how to build trust to increase the
| infinite payout for everyone. If in the decision making the idea
| of an offering is added in then it brings up the possibility of
| gauging trust and building trust so that future actions can
| capture more value until an optimal infinite policy is attained.
| So, for instance, I look at all my possible options and I choose
| one based on how much I trust the other party AND how much I want
| to increase that trust in the future. So I give them an offering,
| select an option that gives them a little more but at a cost to
| me, to prove that I am willing to increase trust. If they
| reciprocate then I loose nothing and the next offering can be
| bigger. If they don't then I gained knowledge and my next
| offering is smaller. Basically, this is like tit for tat but over
| time and intended to get to the optimal solution instead of the
| min max solution. Clearly I'm not a mathematician, but I bet this
| could be refined to exact equations and formalized so that exact
| offerings could be calculated.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Nature already solved that and implemented it. It's all around
| us with relationships. Not just among humans. They typically
| last over a single interaction. Especially if you don't ignore
| the rules of the game.
|
| But the game theory of nature also leaves room for other sort
| of players to somehow win over fair play. I thought this was a
| bug but over time realised it is a feature, critical to making
| players as a whole stronger. Without it there would be no point
| for anyone to be creative.
|
| If you can solve the issue and make a playbook so that everyone
| do tic for tac, it won't take long for a bad actor to exploit
| it, then more, then you are back to where we are now.
| benlivengood wrote:
| With an optimal way of determining fair splitting of gains like
| Shapley value[0] you can cooperate or defect with a probability
| that maximizes other participants expected value when everyone
| act fairly.
|
| The ultimatum game is the simplest example; N dollars of prize
| to split, N/2 is fair, accept with probability M / (N /2) where
| M is what's offered to you; the opponents maximum expected
| value comes from offering N/2; trying to offer less (or more)
| results in expected value to them < N/2.
|
| Trust can be built out of clearly describing how you'll respond
| in your own best interests in ways that achieve fairness, e.g.
| assuming the other parties will understand the concept of
| fairness and also act to maximize their expected value given
| their knowledge of how you will act.
|
| If you want to solve logically harder problems like one-shot
| prisoners dilemma, there are preliminary theories for how that
| can be done by proving things about the other participants
| directly. It won't work for humans, but maybe artificial
| agents. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.5577
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapley_value
| jmward01 wrote:
| Thanks. I'll take a look!
| elliotto wrote:
| This is the TCP backoff algorithm, specifically the slow start
| to find the optimal bandwidth. In your analogy, it would find
| the optimal amount that a person is willing to reciprocate.
|
| Not only does this algorithm exist, but we're using it to
| communicate right now!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_congestion_control
| jmward01 wrote:
| I have noticed this algorithm in many places which is why I
| think it is a missing piece in game theory and why
| formalizing it could be powerful. People use this
| instinctively in their interactions with others and
| algorithms (like the one you pointed out) have been created
| using the basic concept so a formalization of the math is
| likely in order. Consider the question of how big the
| offering should be. What if all parties are actually getting
| the optimum result, what mechanism stops the increase/why?
| Does it stop? Could this lead to both parties paying the
| other larger and larger sums forever? It is a fun thing to
| think about at least.
| elliotto wrote:
| Yes, this is AIMD and it's well formalised and understood.
| jmward01 wrote:
| For those reading this far into the thread, here is a
| reference to AIMD [1]. Reading through, there is cross-
| over in the idea but I don't think it 100% covers things.
| A good starting point to look at though.
|
| [1] https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/computer-networks/aimd-
| algorit...
| michaeljx wrote:
| Look into cooperative game theory. If I remember correctly,
| trust is modelled as a way of exchanging information and
| influencing the probabilities that other players place on your
| next action
| semanticc wrote:
| Do you have an example of this in mind where the known "tit for
| tat" strategy falls short?
| unholiness wrote:
| Loving the blog in both style and content, hope to have time to
| read more in the future!
|
| A random note in case Non-Zero-Sum James is looking: It's
| frustrating that reading footnotes[0] requires scrolling back and
| finding your previous place. A link from the footnote back to the
| original place in the text _or_ something that reveals a footnote
| in-place (e.g. on hover) is fairly universal and very helpful!
|
| [0] e.g. https://nonzerosum.games/emergencespirals.html#notes
| ultrasounder wrote:
| Wow!. Such an original piece of "non-AI slop" content in a long
| time. Kudos for making this as I myself tipping my toes to
| explore this concept after hearing about it from multiple
| sources(Naval Ravikant incl). Thanks for making this and looking
| forward to more podcast episodes. Cheers
| constantcrying wrote:
| Just aesthetically one of the worst websites I have ever seen.
|
| It is obviously impossible to engage with every single idea
| proposed at once, but I think the main thrust of the argument is
| encapsulated in
|
| >"Personally, I feel like the world might be a happier, more
| cooperative place if situations were by default framed as Stag
| Hunts."
|
| Which is just so bizarrely and obviously false. Especially when
| just sentences before the issue of climate change came up, which
| certainly is not a positive sum game and we would be lucky if it
| was a zero sum game, but given all evidence it is very obviously
| a negative sum game, where governments get to talk about who has
| to bear the most pain. (And it isn't clear that cooperation even
| is the best opportunity for survival)
|
| The optimism strikes me as so blindingly naive that it makes it
| hard to take anything said seriously. Maybe this is just a
| generational divide, many of the older people I know, in their
| 40s or older, seem much more optimistic about the state of the
| world. And the attempt to justify affirmative action is just so
| bizarre. If historic grievances are legitimate arguments for
| preferential treatment, then you will never get me to accept that
| this is anything but a brutal race to the bottom, which is about
| who can make the other suffer most. No, the world is not a
| positive sum game and I will never live under the delusion that
| it is.
| saghm wrote:
| It's probably a good thing that James isn't zero sum, since
| otherwise he would have an evil twin out there somewhere trying
| to get people to be more selfish.
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