rationalnoodles comments on 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong

78 Post author: Yvain 22 November 2013 09:26AM

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Comment author: Kurros 26 November 2013 12:08:34AM *  2 points [-]

Lol, I cooperated because $60 was not a large enough sum of money for me to really care about trying to win it, and in the calibration I assumed most people would feel similarly. Reading your reasoning here, however, it is possible I should have accounted more strongly for people who like to win just for the sake of winning, a group that may be larger here than in the general population :p.

Edit: actually that's not really what I mean. I mean people who want to make a rational choice to maximum the probability of winning for its own sake, even if they don't actually care about the prize. I prefer someone gets $60 and is pleasantly surprised to have won, than I get $1. I predict that overall happiness is increased more this way, at negligible cost to myself. Even if the person who wins defected.

Comment author: Ander 26 November 2013 01:09:11AM 1 point [-]

Agreed, I think that the rational action in this scenario depends on one's goal, and there are different things you could choose as your goal here.
I also think I shouldve set a higher value for my 90% confidence of the number of people who would cooperate, because its quite possible that a lot more peopel than I expected would choose alternate goals for this other than 'winning'.