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> The game can't be played with higher stakes; the whole point is that the 2X payoff can only be guaranteed in the first place if the stakes are too low Al

> The game can't be played with higher stakes; the whole point is that the 2X payoff can only be guaranteed in the first place if the stakes are too low Also a good point about how contrived the experiment is. Double your money is always too good to be true. > That is the basic reason why these games played in academic settings are useless for understanding the actual world outside academia. I am always wary of assumed dichotomies between "the real world" and "academia". Please let me try to explain why I tire of that jaded trope... Actually there's three domains of interest here. There is "academia", which is indeed a cloistered madhouse of egotistical and socially stunted Luftmensch. And there is the world outside it.. which is often deflated into something like "Industry" - to which people attach pompous tags like "the real world". Rot. I've worked in both and neither encompass the "real world". Neither capture the reality of the Favela, the terminal cancer ward, the battlefield.... Both are microcosms with big ideas about their own scope. Thirdly, separate and distinct there is the abstract mathematical world of Game Theory, being neither the academy nor the factory boardroom, but a non-existent and inscrutable world of equations and theories. It makes few if any claims. One may derive utility from it, apply it, or not.

pdonis 3y ago
> Actually there's three domains of interest here. None of which, as far as I can tell, are "the real world". So there is obviously a fourth domain that you didn't cover (although you briefly described some aspects of it). And that kind of disconnect is what I was talking about. Abstractions are all very well, but unless they ultimately bottom out in something getting improved in the actual real world (not "academia" or "industry" or "game theory", but the world of Favelas and terminal cancers and battlefields and so on), they are useless.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  You're right and I enjoy this conversation. How do we focus minds on beneficent applications instead of "museums of ideas for loafers in the garden of knowledge" and cheap, ignorant industrialism for it's own sake? I've taught thousands of students now, and looking back I'm haunted by their intelligent enthusiasm and burning passion for real-world problems. Those kids education totally failed. By the time they were only 25, and had been through the "university" system, they were beaten down by the need to shoehorn brilliant ideas into merely profitable ones, and "Make a living" despite their higher talents and God given rights, and prove themselves to gatekeepers of mediocrity and the status-quo. Business, academia, knowledge, money, prestige; all of these are insufficient drives for the emerging generations.

pdonis 3y ago

> Actually there's three domains of interest here. None of which, as far as I can tell, are "the real world". So there is obviously a fourth domain that you didn't cover (although you briefly described some aspects of it). And that kind of disconnect is what I was talking about. Abstractions are all very well, but unless they ultimately bottom out in something getting improved in the actual real world (not "academia" or "industry" or "game theory", but the world of Favelas and terminal cancers and battlefields and so on), they are useless.

nonrandomstring 3y ago
You're right and I enjoy this conversation. How do we focus minds on beneficent applications instead of "museums of ideas for loafers in the garden of knowledge" and cheap, ignorant industrialism for it's own sake? I've taught thousands of students now, and looking back I'm haunted by their intelligent enthusiasm and burning passion for real-world problems. Those kids education totally failed. By the time they were only 25, and had been through the "university" system, they were beaten down by the need to shoehorn brilliant ideas into merely profitable ones, and "Make a living" despite their higher talents and God given rights, and prove themselves to gatekeepers of mediocrity and the status-quo. Business, academia, knowledge, money, prestige; all of these are insufficient drives for the emerging generations.