Alexei comments on Interlude for Behavioral Economics - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Yvain 06 July 2012 08:12PM

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Comment author: TraderJoe 06 July 2012 08:11:32AM 5 points [-]

The results: If you tell the second player that the first player defected, 3% still cooperate (apparently 3% of people are Jesus). If you tell the second player that the first player cooperated.........only 16% cooperate.

Is there really anything exceptional in the 3% figure? 3% of people facing a player who chose "Foe" preferred to transfer money from the game show owners to that player. 97% preferred the game show owners to keep the money. If anything, 3% is below what I would have expected. More surprising [IMO] is the fact that 16% co-operate when they know that it costs them to do so. I have no idea what that 16% were thinking.

Comment author: Alexei 06 July 2012 09:46:01PM 7 points [-]

I have no idea what that 16% were thinking.

I think you can apply TDT of sorts: if I was in the other person's position, I would want them to cooperate. Coupled with the fact that the roles were selected randomly, you could essentially make a precommitment: if another person and I are in this situation, I'll cooperate no matter what. I think that doesn't change your expected value, but it does reduce variance.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 July 2012 08:01:44AM 5 points [-]

BTW, lots of LWers said they'd give money to Omega in the Counterfactual mugging.