[SEQ RERUN] Fairness vs. Goodness
post by MinibearRex · 2013-03-08T05:48:29.463Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 5 commentsToday's post, Fairness vs. Goodness was originally published on 22 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
An experiment in which two unprepared subjects play an asymmetric version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Is the best outcome the one where each player gets as many points as possible, or the one in which each player gets about the same number of points?
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Wise Pretentions v.0, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
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comment by buybuydandavis · 2013-03-08T10:04:44.308Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There was a recent article about cross cultural differences in behavior of the Ultimatum game. Similar issues. You can fight for a fair outcome, or you can accept the game as an unquestioned fact where one player had the good fortune to have the advantage.
It largely seems a matter of how you frame the issue. Will I ever play this game again? Will I play other games with this person? Both players seemed to frame the issue to their advantage.
I'm generally not on the "fairness" side, but in this rather arbitrary universe, where payoffs come from the sky for no known rhyme or reason. I have more sympathy for AA's defections. JW could have given up some of his advantage in the game to AA, allowing him to defect without retribution. Throw him a bone because of his superior but in no way deserved advantage. Likely it wouldn't take so many bones for AA to feel mollified. JW preserves his advantage without escalations into tit for tat escalations.
BTW: The link in original post to the log of comments from the game no longer works.
Replies from: wedrifid↑ comment by wedrifid · 2013-03-08T11:53:38.706Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There was a recent article about cross cultural differences in behavior of the Ultimatum game. Similar issues. You can fight for a fair outcome, or you can accept the game as an unquestioned fact where one player had the good fortune to have the advantage.
There are games where such an advantage is an unquestioned fact. The Ultimatum game doesn't happen to be one of them. The agent going first only has an advantage if the agent going second is implementing a terrible decision making algorithm (eg. one based off CDT).