

Rational Suckers - KC8ZKF
http://www.science20.com/hammock_physicist/rational_suckers-99998

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bo1024
See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_of_anarchy>. A way of analyzing
the difference between the "optimal" outcome and the "rational" one. Common in
the computer science literature, slowly infiltrating the economics literature
I think.

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bcoates
I think economics got there first; that looks like
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm> : companies form, even
in an efficient market, because they can potentially globally optimize groups
of individuals into more efficient interactions than the individuals
themselves could in any market.

The other side of it is that such optimization doesn't scale and a
sufficiently large firm will be unable to find practical solution at all.

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bo1024
Cool, seems interesting and related, but also very different and more
specific. The point of price of anarchy is to take any game and quantify the
"loss" due to selfishness or lack of cooperation.

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stcredzero
1) Someone posts something about game theory

2) Someone comments that the scenario is unrealistic or contrived, then makes
clever points bringing in nuances of real world behavior/situations.

3) [Optional] Original poster responds explaining why the situation
reductively captures some underlying mechanism or why the commenter is
mistaken

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waps
4) Somebody posts how this means communism is the solution

Actually 4) should probably be 1).

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xyzzy123
I see your communism and raise you self-driving cars.

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amirhirsch
it's interesting that if you replace the cars with electrons and change the
graph to its electronic analogs, the electrons would do the super-rational
thing and go along separate paths.

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nene
The same would happen with cars if the drivers didn't care of getting to their
destination faster, just enjoying the ride for the ride's sake.

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hcarvalhoalves
> Asking these questions is admitting to the wishful thinking that competitive
> optimization should lead to an optimum. Such is not the case, competitive
> optimization leads to an equilibrium and not to an optimum.

Well, that explains a lot about capitalism and social inequality.

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josscrowcroft
> _"Altruism, evolutionary driven cooperative behaviors, and mystical concepts
> like super-rationality are put forward as missing features in game theory."_

Is Superrationality considered "mystical"?

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jstanley
Very interesting read. I wonder if there are any concreate examples of this
situation happening in the real world?

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elpool2
In Seattle there are many people who commute across Lake Washington to get to
work, where you have the 520 bridge, the I-90 bridge, or you can just drive
around the lake. After reading this article I wonder if it would be effective
to divide everyone who makes this commute into two groups. On even numbered
days group A can use the bridge while group B must drive around the lake. On
odd numbered days they would switch. Could such a scenario effectively reduce
the overall time spent commuting for all drivers?

