Lumifer comments on Open Thread August 31 - September 6 - Less Wrong
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I'm looking for a good demonstration of Aumann's Agreement Theorem that I could actually conduct between two people competent in Bayesian probability. Presumably this would have a structure where each player performs some randomizing action, then they exchange information in some formal way in rounds, and eventually reach agreement.
A trivial example: each player flips a coin in secret, then they repeatedly exchange their probability estimates for a statement like "both coin flips came up heads". Unfortunately, for that case they both agree from round 2 onwards. Hal Finney has a version that seems to kinda work, but his reasoning at each step looks flawed. (As soon as I try to construct a method for generating the hints, I find that at each step when I update my estimate for my opponent's hint quality, I no longer get a bounded uniform distribution.)
So, what I'd like: a version that (with at least moderate probability) continues for multiple rounds before agreement is reached; where the information communicated is some sort of simple summary of a current estimate, not the information used to get there; where the math at each step is simple enough that the game can be played by humans with pencil and paper at a reasonable speed.
Alternate mechanisms (like players alternate communication instead of communicating current states simultaneously) are also fine.
Bridge, the card game. Bidding is the process of two players exchanging information about the cards they hold via the very limited communications channel (bids). The play itself is also used to transfer more information about which cards remain in the hand.
I don't know if that will work as a demonstration of the Aumann's Theorem, though, bridge gets very complicated very fast :-/
That's an excellent practical example, though it doesn't really have the explicit probability math I was hoping for.
In particular, I like that you'll see stuff like which player thinks the partnership has the better contract flips back and forth, especially around auctions involving controls, stops, or other specific invitational questions. The concept of evaluating your hand within a window ("My hand is now very weak, given that I opened") is also explicitly reasoning about what your partner infers based on what you told them.
I think the most important thing here might be that bridge requires multiple rounds because bidding is limited bandwidth, whereas giving a full-precision probability estimate is not.
If you want explicit probability math, you might be able to construct some kind of cooperative poker (for example, allow two partners to exchange one card from their hands following some very restricted negotiations). The probabilities in poker are much more straightforward and amenable to calculation.