
Smarter Parts Make Collective Systems Too Stubborn - headalgorithm
https://www.quantamagazine.org/smarter-parts-make-collective-systems-too-stubborn-20190226/
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gojomo
The non-intuitive result, where more memory hurts, reminds a bit of two
interesting games linked off of cryptographer Wei Dai's homepage
([http://www.weidai.com/](http://www.weidai.com/)), under "social costs of
intelligence":

 _• Why good memory could be bad for you: game theoretic analysis of a
monopolist with memory.[http://www.weidai.com/monopoly-
memory.txt](http://www.weidai.com/monopoly-memory.txt)

• Why cleverness could be bad for you: a game where the smarter players lose.
[http://www.weidai.com/smart-losers.txt](http://www.weidai.com/smart-
losers.txt) _

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occamrazor
In the first link, memory-less case, the seller’s expected profit should be
0.25, not 0.5: he sells its product for 0.5 half of the times.

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Majromax
Both the seller's expected profit and the buyer's surplus are summed over two
periods. The buyer has an expected surplus of 0.25 when the sale is made, but
the sale is only made 50% of the time.

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alexpetralia
Interesting paper and results, but this patently does not extrapolate to
"smarter parts make collective systems too stubborn."

Try: "simulated, independent agents exclusively with left/right movements
collectively begin to perform worse after they are able to remember beyond 7
prior moves."

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microcolonel
I think maybe the author extrapolated a moral opinion ("too stubborn"), and
then edited out everything that supported that opinion until left with just
the confusing title.

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paultopia
Hah, I feel like this explains faculty meetings right in one sentence.

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bkohlmann
"Over the past few years, he and others have found that medium-size groups of
animals or humans are optimal for decision-making"

As someone intrigued by the mechanics of politics, this really struck home.
Autocracies are bad for a variety of reasons - and so too are true democracies
(where everybody can vote on many issues...see the CA ballot initiative chaos
in public policy).

Representative democracy strikes this "goldilocks" balance with fewer actors
than full representation, but far more than a restrictive oligarchy.

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galaxyLogic
It's a nice video but I don't understand how one would assign a numerical
goodness measure to the starlings collective behavior. If the starlings were
smarter the flock might behave differently but what would make us say that the
change in behavior had a beneficial or adverse effect?

