
Game Theory Explained: Why The Joker and Not Batman is Our Savior - sthatipamala
http://thisorthat.com/blog/why-the-joker-and-not-batman-is-the-savior-of-us-all
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RugerRedhawk
This is an interesting article, but The Tragedy of the Commons is only 1 of 7
Nash Equilibrium possible. It was cherry picked for a funny thought experiment
where Joker is the good guy. Now let's try the Volunteer's Dilemma.

In the Volunteer's Dilemma a group is faced with an inevitable negative, and
the only way prevent it is for one member to assume the negative unto himself.
The classic example is jumping on the grenade. Nobody wants to do it, but
somebody has to or everyone dies.

1) Assume Cooperators and Defectors only. Cooperators will eventually
volunteer, Defectors never will. There can be a balance where Cooperators
significantly outnumber Defectors, but if this balance is disturbed the
population will eventually end.

2) Add Jokers. Jokers in this case would be like Defectors and never
volunteer. Worse, however, is that Jokers would probably be so interested in
the destruction that they would actively prevent volunteering. There can be no
balance in a group with even one Joker still alive, and the population will
end.

3) Add Batmen. Batmen neutralize the Jokers' ability to prevent volunteers,
and are willing to volunteer themselves. The balance is restored as long as
there are enough of these individuals to restore moral and put the group
first.

So now in my thought experiment, Jokers are harbingers of the end while Batmen
are necessary for survival.

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bilbo0s
How is scenario 3 different from scenario 1?

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bilbo0s
Just re-read your post.

Scenario 3 includes a population of Jokers. That is the difference.

So your assertion... is that Batmen only provide a benefit where there exist
Jokers in the population. At least in the Volunteer's Dilemma.

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mikk0j
"Game theory explained" with too many assumptions. Such as that punishment is
so costly that it creates another problem of the commons, as the punishers
(who are a subset of the cooperators) get less our of it than the non-
punishing cooperators. I'd say this is wrong: in repeated games punishment is
not a cost but an investment. A threat must be carried out in order to be
credible in the long run, and thus a cooperator who punishes a defector (or a
'joker' for that matter) is better positioned in subsequent games to be
treated fairly.

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colanderman
The analysis doesn't seem to hold up very well in terms of US post-9/11.
Jokers (terrorists) caused a ruckus, which the defectors (military-industrial
complex) overplayed as a call to arms for cooperators (US populace). The
cooperators then produce excess benefit for the defectors (control of oil-
wealthy regions, superfluous security contracts).

I can't pin my finger on what makes post-9/11 US different. Were the jokers
not destructive enough? Does the model not account for power structure, or
psychological needs (i.e. security) and exploitation thereof? Is the effect of
a single joker short-lived (which would correspond to the outpouring of
national unity post-9/11)? Did the 9/11 attacks actually increase the
cooperator/defector ratio in the long term in a way that is not apparent to
me?

~~~
katovatzschyn
Could it perhaps be that a very simple thought experiment is not a strong
model for the chaotic actions of hundreds of millions of people over several
years?

~~~
colanderman
Oh indeed! I'm just trying to figure out the most likely reason why :)

~~~
saraid216
There is probably something to be said for network resiliency, as well, but I
haven't the faintest idea what.

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suprememoocow
For a contrary view on game theory, I highly recommend watching the excellent
BBC documentary series "The Trap" by film maker Alan Curtis.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(television_documentar...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_\(television_documentary_series\))

In the first episode, Curtis examines the rise of game theory during the Cold
War. It discusses John Nash's paranoid schizophrenia and shows footage Nash in
his later years acknowledging that his paranoid views of other people at the
time were false.

~~~
cliffbean
There are two sides of Nash's work. One is the actual math, which can be
evaluated without considering the credibility of the author. The other is
Nash's attempt to use it to describe the real world, which necessarily
involves assumptions and simplifications. This second side is where the
obvious problems are.

Game theory remains popular because people can easily take the underlying math
and apply it with their own assumptions. Of course, if you make too many
simplifications you risk achieving a near-useless comic-book view of reality
(literally, as in the blog post here).

~~~
Natsu
> Of course, if you make too many simplifications you risk achieving a near-
> useless comic-book view of reality (literally, as in the blog post here).

For a moment there, I thought you were going to invoke Rorschach as an
example.

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utopkara
To answer the question, if there has to be a Joker to stop Defectors, who is
the Joker?

Joker does not need to be a person; it could be anything that destroys
benefits with some good success. You get where I am going with this; Joker is
any disaster that causes loss. For living things, death does the job pretty
well. However, in real life, people are not the only entities which gather
benefits, there are organizations that live beyond the lifetime of an
individual. In that case, the Joker could be paradigm shifts, weariness, anti-
trust cases, scientific theory, or the occasional market crash (you get 1
point for finding each entity these destroy).

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Maro
The actual paper is here:

<http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.3257>

~~~
32ftpersecond
Thank you, $39.99 for the paper on the link seemed steep. If it went to the
authors I would have no problem paying for it but as we all know - it's not.

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snippyhollow
Just the day I _really_ read "Non-cooperative Games (1951) John Nash, Annals
of Mathematics". If you're mathematically inclined, I can only advise you to
look it up: a pure piece of powerful and concise theory.

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trevelyan
The Prestige and Inception have been two of the most literary films of the
last ten years. Christopher Nolan keeps getting better and better.

So I'd be interested to read a serious analysis of the new Batman films since
it wouldn't surprise me if Nolan has something up his sleeve here at this
point. That said, this post is not it, so if anyone has any recommendations
please share.

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kstenerud
One big problem I see here is a tendency for black & white thinking. People in
the real world don't fit into a neat little "cooperator" or "defector"
package. A person's tendency to cooperate can be dependent upon a huge number
of factors, including what the subject of cooperation is, how they're feeling
that day, current events, political, moral, and religious opinions in vogue,
illness and injury, the size of the potential benefit, relationships to other
people who may be defecting or cooperating, whether they are a leader or a
follower, etc.

Running a simulation of simple, unchanging people doesn't produce much useful
information for the real world. Real life cooperation relationships are a lot
more intricate and complex.

~~~
fragsworth
Your complaints are not really a huge problems with this statistical
population model. In the end, you took goods out of a system and/or you put
goods back into it - everyone falls somewhere along this scale in their
lifetimes. All the reasons behind their choices are largely irrelevant, and
you can simulate the model based on it.

~~~
stinkytaco
You can sometimes emulate the model, but not always. See the other post in
this thread about post 9/11 America.

The problem is that a few well positioned people who behave in a way that is
not predictable, or larger forces that the model cannot anticipate (socio-
economic, the weather, etc.) can distrupt the model.

Not that the model doesn't 1. Do a good job of explaining a concept and 2.
Possibly fits into a larger, more complex model.

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chubbard
I'm having trouble understanding who is a defector, who is a cooperator, and
who is the joker. The author has copious asides where he asserts "the
financial industry; most of the people you work with, and probably you, too"
are the defectors. However, I'm having trouble understanding the leap. Clearly
he wants to relate this game to an insight about society at large as judged by
all of his asides. So I'm trying to understand his position.

In our society most people must perform work to earn money, that money is
taxed, to provide public services to all of us regardless of if we work or
not. Therefore, the people paying taxes have a cost and get a benefit of the
public services which fits his definition: "Cooperators generate a benefit,
shared by all, but they pay a cost to do so." If someone pays taxes that must
make them a cooperator. Of course we can have shades of cooperation based on
how much is paid because no one give all of their money to the IRS. We do have
the other extreme where no money is paid.

Now, there are people who pay less taxes or none at all as much or at all can
enjoy those same services less cost or no cost all. That's his definition:
"[Defectors] sit back and enjoy the group benefit without paying the costs."

In the sliding scale we are all both cooperators and defectors, but to what
degree our role alters the equilibrium of the system (ie causing more
cooperators or defectors).

That seems pretty straightforward, but he seems have flipped even the
definitions: not just the joker/batman role.

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jhales
In real life, the financiers Lloyd Blankfein represents are not simply
"defectors." I would argue that they contribute (or at least could). However,
a less contraversial point, especially in light of the recent crash, is that
they cause a whole lot of destruction, e.g. they function as "jokers" as well.

~~~
chubbard
Well this is where I think the term of joker should be clarified. Jokes must
not consume the public good, but they must destroy it. Lloyd certainly
benefits and certainly destroys, but his benefits exclude him from being a
joker. Defectors cause the tragedy of the commons by not paying a cost. Or
maybe as steep of a cost as others because in the real world Lloyd definitely
paid a cost, but it was a mere fraction of his wealth where others were wiped
out.

It was hard to understand the role of the joker and how it creates an
equilibrium, but if the joker is random destroyer then he destroys the
cooperator AND the defector equally. If defectors out pace cooperators then
the likelihood a defector will be wiped out is greater. By wiping out a
defector that shifts the balance (ie the defector dies, or the defector turns
to a cooperator from the joker's actions). That's the only way I can
understand the joker as a force of "good". And jokers turn out to be a better
solution to the problem of equilibrium.

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cinquemb
Fun to read! Thanks for sharing! Although, i think the author talked to much
about the ins and outs without explicitly stating for everyone that the joker
allows everyone else to cooperate (to eliminate the joker) :P

who are the jokers of our time?

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traversal
I'm not a game theorist (and I'd welcome an opinion/correction from one), but
I don't think the original paper's conclusion is very interesting, or has much
bearing on real life.

Their result (that jokers, defectors, and cooperators will cycle) depends on
some bizarre features of the joker:

\- Jokers don't damage other jokers. This is why jokers drive out defectors.

\- Jokers don't benefit from public goods. This is why jokers don't arise when
there are lots of cooperators.

\- The public good benefits that jokers forgo are redistributed back onto the
cooperators. This is why cooperators flourish in joker populations: they
produce a benefit for a large population, which then gets focused back on
their small population.

This last feature is the really weird one. No public good I can think of can
be redistributed this way [1]; indeed, goods that _can_ be efficiently
reallocated like this tend to be naturally modeled as private goods.

Consider a public good: say, clean air. In this model we would have
cooperators, who go out of their way to keep the air clean; defectors, who
prefer air to be cleaner, but save effort by polluting; and jokers, who are
indifferent to air pollution, produce a large amount of pollution, and somehow
transfer the health benefits of clean air back onto the cooperators. Thus, if
we added a single cooperator to a population of jokers, the cooperator would
get a massive health benefit from not polluting, because of all the jokers
"not consuming" the benefit. This is clearly nonsensical.

In short, the paper's conclusions follow from its premises, but its premises
have nothing to do with any real situation that I can think of [2].

[1] There are a lot of public goods that degrade as more people use them, but
not in a way that matches the math in this paper. Can anyone think of an
example where this paper's conclusion would hold?

[2] Of course one can say that all game theory is an abstraction, which is
true, but it still proceeds from a simplified model of reality, rather than
totally arbitrary assumptions. This paper in particular would be getting no
attention if the "joker" strategy didn't have a compelling real-world
analogue. Furthermore, the problem here is not that their model is too simple,
but that it adds weird, artificial features without explanation or
justification.

(EDIT: Changed "small amount of pollution" to "large amount of pollution", as
jokers do more damage than defectors.)

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zby
It's like the cholesterol saga - based on real research - but 'storyfied'
beyond recognition of it's humbly narrow thesis.

What is really the relation between good writing and exploiting automatisms of
human minds?

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dfc
I stopped reading when I got to "tragedy of the commons." I'm having trouble
deciding if I think the definition is condescending or just plain ignorant. Is
the rest of the article as ignorant/condescending?

~~~
dfc
I get down voted for not agreeing with the article? Or did you think the
definition of tragedy of the commons was accurate?

From the discussion it seems like the article may be interesting but based off
of the definition of tragedy of the commons it seems like madness lies ahead.
If the tragedy of the commons definition is indicative of what is to come
reading the rest does not seem like a good choice for leisure reading.

I genuinely am interested in knowing if the definition of tragedy of the
commons is indicative of the rest of the work? (Sorry the edit button is gone
from my original post)

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Drbble
You are right, the article's definition of tragedy of the commons was poorly
and bizarrely written, but you were downvoted because your criticism wasn't
clearly expressed. You complained about the article but didn't specifically
cite or correct its error.

~~~
dfc
Is the rest of the article written in the same manner?

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ktizo
I would be interested in how it changes the model if you assume that everyone
is a continually varying mix of Joker, Cooperator and Defector, with also a
value for how impressionable/stubborn they are.

Fixed roles and actions with a narrowly defined intents seem to be very common
in these kind of thought experiments, mainly, I suspect, because it makes them
easier to model. However I think it robs them of any real utility, and worse
can give an illusion of insight that is entirely based on flawed assumptions.

