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Non-Zero-Sum Games
- reeeeee 10mo agoI'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 10mo agoPersonally I clicked off because the fonts appear to be something like comic sans, it is a chore to read.
- NonZeroSumJames 9mo agoMost browsers have a reading mode button in the URL bar. Apparently these sorts of fonts are actually easier for people with dyslexia to read. But I'm more interested in creating a unified visual aesthetic that says—this is not a scientific paper, read at your own leisure / risk.
- max-amb 10mo agoThis website seems really well made, and the posts are interesting, thanks for sharing!
- optymizer 10mo agoI 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 10mo agoI don't mind the layout and colours but it stutters when scrolling - or are those pointless animations?
- max-amb 10mo agoI just found reading it fun, but I didn't skim it so I can imagine its a bit much when skimming, I am not much of a designer. I like the style of whimsy, but I think its just a matter of preference.
- NonZeroSumJames 10mo agoThanks max-amb, it's a bit clunky in places.. but with a little crowd-sourced bug-fixing it's getting there!
- cryptica 10mo agoI 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 10mo agoThis 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.
- yanivleven 10mo agoThe 3D tetris is genius
- 5-0 10mo agoI 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockout . Yours sincerely, a TGM-fan
- skibidithink 10mo agoLots 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 https://nonzerosum.games/unlockingsolutions.html
- aprilthird2021 10mo agoBut 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 10mo ago>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 10mo agoSocial 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 10mo ago
- wek 10mo agoA bit hard to read but some fun images and examples. I appreciated his post on capitalism as not a zero sum game.
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoCapitalism 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 10mo ago>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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434065
- AndrewKemendo 10mo ago[flagged]
- 52-hertz_whale 10mo agoRSS feed is broken
- NonZeroSumJames 10mo agoI think I've fixed it now... it's working in my reader, please let me know if it's still not working for you.
- AndrewKemendo 10mo ago[flagged]
- Loughla 10mo agoI didn't realize that morality and philosophy had concrete black and white answers, and that adding your own thoughts to the discussion regarding those things was discouraged. I'm not trying to be a shit, but your post comes across as either very gatekeeping or just snotty for no good reason. Do you have arguments to support what you're saying other than a hand-waving dismissal of the site?
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoThe entire premise is not philosophically rigorous Read any serious philosophical work and the first thing it does it tells you what it’s assumptions are about the world and basis for reality. At no point does this website do that at all it just assumes a lot of background and then jumps into this concept that there exist these “win-win games” with a bare grounding in game theory, and that all we need to do is pull the concepts out of existing structures without acknowledging any of the foundational structures or any of the epistemological Foundations of the claims. My primary problem with it is that it sneaks in a bunch of factually incorrect and problematic concepts like the idea of capitalism as win-win which has been thoroughly debunked by Proudhon in “What is Property” and expanded on by Graeber in his book Debt
- cowpig 10mo agoProudhon and Marx were two philosophers making observations about a rapidly-changing economy nearly two centuries ago. Society, politics, and economies have all drastically changed since then. I don't think "Proudhon debunked this" is going to change anyone's mind. I don't find his arguments particularly compelling, even taking the historical context into account. I see him as trying to take a moral position and then trying to shoehorn it into an economic theory. The spirit of the underlying moral position is much more interesting than his pseudo-intellectual attempt at rigour.
- yuppiepuppie 10mo agoLooks really nice! However, the rss feed seems broken. Probably a missing/malformed character somewhere
- cjmcqueen 10mo agoThe link to the RSS feed gets put on your clipboard when you click it.
- elestor 10mo agoWhere do you find the RSS feed? I can't see a link to it anywhere
- yuppiepuppie 10mo agoYou can find it toward the bottom. And yes, the link is copied to the clipboard. Not sure if it was fixed after posting, but there was def a broken link.
- kashyapc 10mo agoThe 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 https://nonzerosum.games/effortocracy.html
- zozbot234 10mo agoI 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 10mo agoThen why do we have books on grit? And why is grit such a good indicator of successful founders?
- ronsor 10mo agoA lot of meaningful things are difficult and laborious, but not all difficult and laborious things are meaningful.
- wijwp 10mo agoBecause 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 10mo agoYes, 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.
- firejake308 10mo agoThe 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 https://nonzerosum.games/cooperationvsdefection.html
- esafak 10mo agoComputers make it easy to track such things. eBay's success -- enabling strangers throughout the world to trade with confidence -- was built on it.
- yannyu 10mo agoSure, it worked and then it stopped working. Upvotes, reviews, social media, and word-of-mouth have been co-opted by advertising and marketing.
- immibis 10mo agoOne failure mode is when someone makes 1000 accounts and upvotes everything that benefits them and downvotes everything that doesn't. And you have to balance letting new users into the system with not letting the same user into the system twice, and with not requiring a picture of each user's passport. Or some orange guy convinced 1000 people that what's good for him is objectively good and what's bad for him is objectively bad and facts aren't real and words don't have meanings, which has the same effect as a user with 1000 accounts, but even scanning passports won't help you.
- hackable_sand 10mo agoIt's not
- Ethan_Barry 10mo agoI'm a sucker for anything with game theory in the title. Can't wait to read more; thanks for sharing!
- eru 10mo ago> 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-schelling-s-strategy-of-conflict https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tJQsxD34maYw2g5E4/thomas-c-s...
- jmward01 10mo agoOne 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 10mo agoNature 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.
- zdc1 10mo agoI think this comes down to the fact that we can keep a mental ledger on the reputations of 50–100 people, so our in-built reputation system breaks down at the current scale. You could try building a social credit system to scale things up, but that tends to upset people...
- unholiness 10mo agoLoving 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 https://nonzerosum.games/emergencespirals.html#notes
- TheMiddleMan 10mo agoFYI your browser back button should bring you back where you were.
- NonZeroSumJames 10mo agoThanks unholiness—fair point on the footnotes, I'll put that on my to-do list. As you can see, it's all very hand-made, so some of those basics are missed sometimes.
- ultrasounder 10mo agoWow!. 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
- NonZeroSumJames 10mo agoThanks ultrasounder!
- constantcrying 10mo agoJust 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.
- NonZeroSumJames 10mo agoI love this response.
- saghm 10mo agoIt'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.
- MinimalAction 10mo agoThis discourse in the comments reminded me of co-operative game strategies, a multi-party Prisoner's dilemma in some sense. If you want to see this in action amongst a group of individuals, you might enjoy this game by Tom Scott [1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJSI7QTAt_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJSI7QTAt_o