Open thread, Oct. 27 - Nov. 2, 2014

MrMind

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

If we're stipulating that the allocation is by lottery, I think equality is optimal due to simple diminishing returns. And also our instinctive feelings of fairness. This tends to be intuitively obvious in a small group; if you have 12 cupcakes and 4 people, no-one would even think about assigning them at random; 3 each is the obviously correct thing to do. It's only when dealing with groups larger than our Dunbar number that we start to get confused.

Assuming that cupcakes are tradable, that seems intuitively false to me. Is it just your intuition, or is there also reason? Not denying intuitions' values, they are just not as easy to explain to one who does not share them.