4 ms·

Smarter Parts Make Collective Systems Too Stubborn

50 points by headalgorithm 8y ago

paultopia 8y ago
Hah, I feel like this explains faculty meetings right in one sentence.
alexpetralia 8y ago
Interesting paper and results, but this patently does not extrapolate to "smarter parts make collective systems too stubborn." Try: "simulated, independent agents exclusively with left/right movements collectively begin to perform worse after they are able to remember beyond 7 prior moves."
- microcolonel 8y ago
  I think maybe the author extrapolated a moral opinion ("too stubborn"), and then edited out everything that supported that opinion until left with just the confusing title.
gojomo 8y ago
The non-intuitive result, where more memory hurts, reminds a bit of two interesting games linked off of cryptographer Wei Dai's homepage (http://www.weidai.com/ http://www.weidai.com/), under "social costs of intelligence": • Why good memory could be bad for you: game theoretic analysis of a monopolist with memory. http://www.weidai.com/monopoly-memory.txt http://www.weidai.com/monopoly-memory.txt • Why cleverness could be bad for you: a game where the smarter players lose. http://www.weidai.com/smart-losers.txt http://www.weidai.com/smart-losers.txt
- occamrazor 8y ago
  In the first link, memory-less case, the seller’s expected profit should be 0.25, not 0.5: he sells its product for 0.5 half of the times.
  - Majromax 8y ago
    Both the seller's expected profit and the buyer's surplus are summed over two periods. The buyer has an expected surplus of 0.25 when the sale is made, but the sale is only made 50% of the time.
- TagAsDelusion 8y ago
  collective deceit grows when intelligence is concentrated
galaxyLogic 8y ago
It's a nice video but I don't understand how one would assign a numerical goodness measure to the starlings collective behavior. If the starlings were smarter the flock might behave differently but what would make us say that the change in behavior had a beneficial or adverse effect?
bkohlmann 8y ago
"Over the past few years, he and others have found that medium-size groups of animals or humans are optimal for decision-making" As someone intrigued by the mechanics of politics, this really struck home. Autocracies are bad for a variety of reasons - and so too are true democracies (where everybody can vote on many issues...see the CA ballot initiative chaos in public policy). Representative democracy strikes this "goldilocks" balance with fewer actors than full representation, but far more than a restrictive oligarchy.

50 points by headalgorithm 8y ago

Hah, I feel like this explains faculty meetings right in one sentence.

Interesting paper and results, but this patently does not extrapolate to "smarter parts make collective systems too stubborn." Try: "simulated, independent agents exclusively with left/right movements collectively begin to perform worse after they are able to remember beyond 7 prior moves."

microcolonel 8y ago
I think maybe the author extrapolated a moral opinion ("too stubborn"), and then edited out everything that supported that opinion until left with just the confusing title.

gojomo 8y ago

The non-intuitive result, where more memory hurts, reminds a bit of two interesting games linked off of cryptographer Wei Dai's homepage (http://www.weidai.com/ http://www.weidai.com/), under "social costs of intelligence": • Why good memory could be bad for you: game theoretic analysis of a monopolist with memory. http://www.weidai.com/monopoly-memory.txt http://www.weidai.com/monopoly-memory.txt • Why cleverness could be bad for you: a game where the smarter players lose. http://www.weidai.com/smart-losers.txt http://www.weidai.com/smart-losers.txt

occamrazor 8y ago
In the first link, memory-less case, the seller’s expected profit should be 0.25, not 0.5: he sells its product for 0.5 half of the times.
- Majromax 8y ago
  Both the seller's expected profit and the buyer's surplus are summed over two periods. The buyer has an expected surplus of 0.25 when the sale is made, but the sale is only made 50% of the time.
TagAsDelusion 8y ago
collective deceit grows when intelligence is concentrated

galaxyLogic 8y ago

It's a nice video but I don't understand how one would assign a numerical goodness measure to the starlings collective behavior. If the starlings were smarter the flock might behave differently but what would make us say that the change in behavior had a beneficial or adverse effect?

bkohlmann 8y ago

"Over the past few years, he and others have found that medium-size groups of animals or humans are optimal for decision-making" As someone intrigued by the mechanics of politics, this really struck home. Autocracies are bad for a variety of reasons - and so too are true democracies (where everybody can vote on many issues...see the CA ballot initiative chaos in public policy). Representative democracy strikes this "goldilocks" balance with fewer actors than full representation, but far more than a restrictive oligarchy.