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radical_negative_one comments on 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong
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Survey completed in full. Begging for karma as per ancient custom.
I choose DEFECT because presumably the money is coming out of CFAR's pocket and I assume they can use the money better than whichever random person wins the raffle. If I win, I commit to requesting it be given as an anonymous donation to CFAR.
EDIT: Having been persuaded my Yvain and Vaniver, I reverse my position and intend to spend the prize on myself. Unfortunately I've already defected and now it's too late to not be an asshole! Sorry about that. Only the slightly higher chance of winning can soothe my feelings of guilt.
The money is coming out of my pocket, it is not funging against any other charitable donations, and I am in favor of someone claiming the prize and using it to buy something nice that they like.
In that case, I pre-commit that if I win, I'll spend it on something leisure-related or some treat that I otherwise wouldn't be able to justify the money to purchase.
I co-operated; I'd already committed myself to co-operating on any Prisoner's Dilemma involving people I believed to be rational. I'd like to say it was easy, but I did have to think about it. However, I stuck to my guns and obeyed the original logic that got me to pre-commit in the first place.
If I assume other people are about as rational as me, than a substantial majority of people should think similarly to me. That means that if I decide that everyone else will co-operate and thus I can defect, there's a good chance other people will come to the same conclusion as well. The best way to go about it is to pre-commit to co-operation, and hope that other rational people will do the same.
Thanks for the chance to test my beliefs with actual stakes on the line :)
My reasoning on this is in complete agreement of yours.
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That's the correct response when playing against rational players who are also trying to win, but if you actually look at the comments you'll see that most people are deciding to cooperate or defect for a variety of reasons. So I think in this case cooperation is (sadly) not the best move.
Sure other survey-takers may be roughly as rational as you, but that doesn't mean they're likely to do something as specific as precommitting to cooperation on prisoner's dilemmas.
I am not sure I follow.
If you predict that majority of 'rational' people (say more than 50%) would pre-commit to cooperation, then you had a great opportunity to shaft them by defecting and running with their money.
Personally, I decided to defect as to ensure that other people who also defected won't take advantage of me.
Well, I can't argue with that. I'm editing my previous comment to reverse my previous position.
I think the money is coming out of Yvain's pocket, actually.
I cooperated, and I precommit to waiving my prize if I win.
I believe there is a strong argument for taking the prize, even if you don't need it, and not donating the prize, even if you would like to, so that people who are actually motivated by prizes do not feel they are obligated to waive or donate their prize. (A prime example of this is George Washington, one of the richest men in America at the time, who thought it was silly that he was getting a salary as president, and that it would be more public-minded of him to not collect his salary. He was convinced that if he did so, he might set a precedent, and this would prevent anyone but the independently wealthy from seeking the presidency.)
Schelling had something to say about that too.
I defected, for similar reasons (without having read the comments, I just assumed that I'd be likely to prefer funds to whoever volunteered to fund this than to a random survey-taker, particularly weighted towards a survey-taker who defected). I'm afraid Yvain's answer here would not be enough to get me to switch.
If the rest of the $60 prize was to be burned -- effectively a wealth redistribution among capital holders -- I'd cooperate.