7 ms·

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 som

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 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  > 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 9mo ago
    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 9mo ago
    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 Compaoré is quite disturbing. It seems like Compaoré 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 9mo ago
      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 https://youtu.be/Ta5Dx327KQc?t=4899
svara 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  You seem to be misunderstanding the GP. Evolution does not work maximizing individual success.
  - svara 9mo ago
    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 9mo ago
      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 9mo ago
      >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.
ajjahs 9mo ago
[dead]
578_Observer 9mo ago
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 9mo ago
  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.
  - 578_Observer 9mo ago
    I understand your pessimism. Looking at the demographics, Japan seems to be in a "Game Over" state. I live in rural Gunma, surrounded by *empty houses (Akiya) and elderly people*, so I feel this reality every day. However, living right in the middle of it, I have started to see it differently. Japan is running a global experiment: *"How to sustain a civilization without growth."* As you said, if the world is finite (Zero Sum), then "Scale or Die" will eventually stop working physically for everyone. Every country will hit the same wall. We are just hitting it first. We are the *test subjects* to see if humans can mature into a "Steady State" or if we just collapse. I am here to document the result.
Aurornis 9mo ago
> 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.

oersted 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
> 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 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
  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 Compaoré is quite disturbing. It seems like Compaoré 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 9mo ago
    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 https://youtu.be/Ta5Dx327KQc?t=4899

svara 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
You seem to be misunderstanding the GP. Evolution does not work maximizing individual success.
- svara 9mo ago
  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 9mo ago
    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 9mo ago
    >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.

ajjahs 9mo ago

[dead]

578_Observer 9mo ago

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 9mo ago
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.
- 578_Observer 9mo ago
  I understand your pessimism. Looking at the demographics, Japan seems to be in a "Game Over" state. I live in rural Gunma, surrounded by *empty houses (Akiya) and elderly people*, so I feel this reality every day. However, living right in the middle of it, I have started to see it differently. Japan is running a global experiment: *"How to sustain a civilization without growth."* As you said, if the world is finite (Zero Sum), then "Scale or Die" will eventually stop working physically for everyone. Every country will hit the same wall. We are just hitting it first. We are the *test subjects* to see if humans can mature into a "Steady State" or if we just collapse. I am here to document the result.

Aurornis 9mo ago

> 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.