One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come to you and show you a nice, brand new deck of cards on which (Sky snaps fingers) the seal has not yet been broken. This man is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of that deck and squirt cider in your ear. Now son, you do not take this bet, for as sure as you stand there, you are going to wind up with an earful of cider."

• Sky Masterson(Marlon Brando) Guys and Dolls

One thing that might be worth changing/clarifying in the victory conditions is how a Friendly AI wins alongside its creator. At the moment, in order for a Creator/FAI team to win (assuming you're sticking with Diplomacy mechanics) they first have to collect 18 supply centres between them and then have the AI transfer all its control back to the human; I don't think even the friendliest of AIs would willingly rebox itself like that. Even worse, a friendly AI which has been given a lot of control might accidentally "win" by itself even though it doesn't want to. If this corresponds to the FAI taking control of everything and then building a utopia in its creator's image (since it's Friendly this is what it would do if it took control), this should be an acceptable winning condition for the creator.

I think a better victory condition would be that if a creator and FAI collect 18 supply centres between them, then they win the game together and both get 50 points.

This method does have one disadvantage in that a human can prove that an AI is not friendly if the game should have ended if it was, but I don't expect this to affect much because by the time this comes into effect either the unfriendly AI is sufficiently strong that they should have backstabbed their creator already, or they are sufficiently weak (And thus of the 18 centres held by human and AI almost all are held by the human) that the creator should soon win.

Later that year, CF reasons as follows: If I keep my current price of $20...

...life would be great, but what does that crowd of townies with torches and pitchforks is doing outside of my house?

Teenage stupidity is magical. At that age, you're so dumb that you may think you know you're dumb, but you're actually so ignorant (and arrogant) that you think you're smart and wise for knowing you're dumb. In reality, you're just dumb. Take away the recursive loop of delusion and any sense of how wise you are even though you're so young, and the truth is all that remains: You Are Dumb.

Cracked

Thinking about this game-theoretically: Let's say you get awarded points for getting what you want (+10), subtracted points when a Guesser refuses your request and is miffed that you even asked (-10) and you get no points (+0) if you don't ask, or if you get a friendly refusal from an Asker.

Askers always ask; guessers decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether or not to ask. In principle, this means guessing ought to dominate as a strategy.

On the other hand, in real life, Askers probably are less upset than Guessers by rejection in general. Even when an Asker asks a Guesser and gets an angry refusal, he's probably less bothered by it than he would be if he were a Guesser. So it's probably in your best interest to cultivate the flexibility of a Guesser but the unflappability of an Asker.

Also, obviously, a world full of Guessers is riskier than a world full of Askers -- every time you ask a favor, you risk that (-10) disaster. So, in a world full of guessers, if they're risk-averse, nobody ever asks for anything. The expected value for everyone is zero. In a world full of askers, the expected value is positive. I'd rather live there!

The ideal world is where everyone is an asker; however, in a world with some guessers, it may be optimal to be a guesser.

Consistent does not mean true. When I was reading Yoga books, there were some real physiological and medical facts, and there were spiritual facts about chakra and prana mechanics, souls and reincarnation. I could agree with the former and disagree with the later. "There exists a worldview in which all of these statements are consistent" is a valid thing to say, but hardly useful. I am not reading books to learn validity, only truth. And if something is not true, you should disagree with it, not say "there exist statements that are consistent with this statement", especially if the cosistency of the statements is the reason why they are in the book to begin with.

There's the classic economic textbook example of two hot-dog vendors on a beach that need to choose their location - assuming an even distribution of customers, and that customers always choose the closest vendor; the equilibrium location is them standing right next to each other in the middle; while the "optimal" (from customer view, minimizing distance) locations would be at 25% and 75% marks.
This matches the median voter principle - the optimal behavior of candidates is to be as close as possible to the median but on the "right side" to capture "their half" of the voters; even if most voters in a specific party would prefer their candidate to cater for, say, the median Republican/Democrat instead, it's against the candidates interests to do so.

At first James thought they were joking because, "You know, Hidden Object Games". But then, after a moment, James realised they were absolutely right. Why hadn't we done a show on Hidden Object Games?

Extra Credits react to their surprise.

We often like to think of World War II as a triumph of freedom over totalitarianism. We conveniently forget that the Soviet Union was also one of the winners.

Paul Graham

We often like to think of World War II as a triumph of freedom over totalitarianism. We conveniently forget that the Soviet Union was also one of the winners.

Paul Graham