The Prisoner's Dilemma

I'm continuing my tour of Poundstone with "The Prisoner's Dilemma" This is a history, Game Theory, the people that created it, it's use and impact on history, and a few simple games…

 

Stag Hunt. This is a game similar to the tragedy of the common. To hunt a stag, you need two or more people working independently. While you are hunting, there is no guarantee that you will land a stag. It would be best if you did, but it's long hard work. Now, if you take a detour while searching for a stag, and hunt some easy to find birds instead, then it's ok for you, since you've found a little food, but your hunting partner won't succeed.

 

Deadlock—a situation where it's best for opponents to keep fighting.

 

Chicken—Two people drive headlong towards each other. The one who swerves is the chicken. If neither swerve, then both die.

 

Prisoners Dilemma. Two prisoners are being questioned about a crime in separate rooms. Each is offered a choice… "If you rat out the person in the other room, then you will get a lesser sentence. The other person will get a long sentence." But, if both of you stay silent, then you both go free. Would you trust the person in the other room to not rat you out?

 

Suckers Bet—A dollar bill is put up for auction. You can bit any amount and bids continue until there are no more. The catch is that the 2^nd last person who bids also has to pay his bid, but gets nothing in return. What's vicious about this game is that if someone pays $1.00 to buy the $1.00, then it makes sense for the person who bid 95 cents to bid $1.05 to get the dollar, since he will loose five cents by over paying, but 95 cents if he comes in second place.

 

Iteration—the dynamic of many games changes if you play the prisoners dilemma, or chicken once, then the strategy is very different than if you have to play it repeatedly—the best way to get cooperation is through an ongoing relationship and not a one shot transaction.

 

With many of these games, chicken is the best example, it's the most unstable party who has the advantage. This is not a happy thought.

 

Tit-For-Tat. This is a very robust strategy for dealing with iterative games. Many strategies only work if they are secret, if other people figure them out, then they loose there value. But, Tit-For-Tat works well when everyone knows that's how you operate. It works well if everyone plays that way.

 

The one catch with Tit-for-Tat is that the size of the Tit must be the same as the size of the Tat. If the two are different (perhaps due to subjective judgement) then Tit-for-Tat can spiral out of control with endless tit's responding to subjective tat's.

Rock Paper Scissors

More William Poundstone.

Humans re terrible at being random. This has consequences thought our lives…

The game of rock paper scissors has patterns to it. Women are most likely to pick scissors first. Men Rock. After the first round, people tend to pick the thing tat would win over the thing that lost—its too obvious to pick the thing that would win over the thing that won.

Fake accounting records follow detectible patterns

Multiple choice—the right answer is probably the longest answer. You can only be right in one specific way. You can wrong in many ways.

I'm enjoying going though William Poundstone's books. His older books are deep investigations. His newer books are simple and more pragmatic. I wonder what drove that.

 

This is your Brain on Music

By Daniel J. Levitin.

 

Any interesting dive into the science of music—what is it? How to do we hear and perceive it? Why do we like it? How do we develop preferences? How do we get good at playing?

 

My notes from this book were more about music that I wanted to listen to, then things I wanted to remember…

Of course Kindle won't let me easily copy…

1.      Surprise Symphony by Haydn. Symphony #94 in G Major. Second movment.

2.      Sindig's The Rustle of Spring or Chopin's Fantasy Impromptu. The notes go by so quickly that an illusiory melody develops.

3.      Chelsea Morning and Refuge of the Roads by Joni Mitchel are great examples of non-standard tunings.

 

"On average, successful people have many more failures than unsuccessful people"

 

 

 

Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge

By William Poundstone.

 

I must read more Poundstone. His books have great tiles like…

               Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It)

               Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street

               Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody

 

This book was very interesting. It tackles the question "What are the limits of our knowledge. Why lays beyond" Of course an naive optimist would say we can understand anything. But that's not entirely true.

 

Poundstone explores age old puzzlers like…

               Are we a brain in a vat?

               The Voynich Manusript.

               NP Completeness.

 

So how does one prove that the universe was not created five seconds ago with all our memories the way they are? How can one prove that our brains are plugged into the Matrix?

 

The answers come from pragmatism. The theory that we were created five seconds ago, or that are brains are part of the Matrix, are not useful theories. They don't yield better predictions than a theory that the world exits basically as we perceive it.  So how do we know that we are not part of the Matrix? We can't really know that, but Occam's Razor says that idea should be clipped out.

 

Occam's Razor isn't a rhetorical short cut. It's an argument against entropy. The more complex a system is, the less likely it is to work or be sustainable.

 

 

 

 

 

              

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The Organized Mind

By Daniel J Levitin.

 

Put a key tray by the front door.

 

I read this book about six months ago.  Looking over my notes, I realized that I hadn't written about it and now I couldn't remember what it was all about. After going over it again, I think it's safe to summarize that this book is about the neurobiology behind why putting a key tray is a smart thing to do.

 

A few other things to remember….

 

1.      Organize your physical environment to do as much remembering for you as possible. Junk drawers are OK. If they get too large you need to categorize again. You also need a way to call out "unassimilated" items.

a.      A mislabeled item or location is worse than an unlabeled item

b.      If there is an existing standard, then use it.

c.      Don't keep what you can't use.

2.      Gricean Maximus about orderly cooperative speach…

a.      Quantity. Make sure your contribution to a conversation are as informative as required. Do not make your contribution more informative than required

b.      Quality. Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

c.      Manner. Avoid obscure expressions. Avoid Ambiguity. Be brief. (Avoid unnecessary prolixity) Be orderly.

d.      Relation. Make your contributions relevant.

3.      Think Baysean. Think statistical.

 

 

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Me, Myself & Us

By Brian R. Little

In Jan I wrote...

A deep discussion of personality theory, and how much 'we' shape our lives. What makes a hardy person? A creative person? A proactive person? I must read this again in a year.

Five months later while perusing through the new reads section of the library, I came upon this book again. I didn't remember it though. It looked interesting, so I checked it out.

I got Deja vu reading the first chapter. I had a feeling of Presque vu, I looked this book up in the blog, and found, that yes, yes I had read this book before.

This book is hard for me to summarize. Perhaps what I want to take away is that, of course we have our personality traits. We may be extraverts, or open to new experiences, or consciences, or whatever. Beyond all that, we are flexible. We can learn. We can grow. An introvert can act extroverted for a while. There my be a cost to this, but there is no harm. You can choose your response, especially if you are aware of who you are.

So, have a dialog with yourself. Reflect on yourself. Know yourself. Beaware than your default responses are not all that you are capable of.

The Fabric of the Cosmos

Time, as we know it, may not be experienced the same way by atoms and other small particles. The other way around, the cosmos as experienced by small particles, may be very different than what we experience. But, small particles do not live in isolation. When they get together, they create new things—like time for example.

 

There is a lot in this book. And as fascinating as it is, I'm not sure what to do with it. What does it mean to me that the world may have 11 dimensions?

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