honesty

20May09

So when people play a game like the Prisoner’s Dilemma, what do they actually do? According to Peter Lunn in Basic Instincts, about half  “co-operate” He mentions how honesty boxes work on a similar principle (see BBC article). Is this a kind of “superationality” at work? – that we know that we’ll get more out [...]

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Tags: anthropology, choice, dilemma, honesty, logic, Lunn, mind, morals, paradox, prisoner, psychology, zemblanity

three monks no water

17May09

We all know that sometimes it does work like the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Take this Chinese story, Three Monks No Water: Everyone is somehow “forced” to settle for less than the best, even if it is an “equilibrium”.

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Tags: choice, dilemma, logic, monks, morals, prisoner, psychology, zemblanity

actual behaviour

14May09

Yes, it doesn’t correlate with human beings’ actual behaviour. Behavioral economics, the branch of economics that looks at people’s actual economic behaviour, has a well-known example that has basically the same structure as the prisoner’s dilemma. It’s called a public goods game.  Both players get €10. They can keep it, or put it into a [...]

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Tags: anthropology, choice, dilemma, logic, Lunn, morals, psychology, zemblanity

the trap

12May09

… what the whole story is I don’t know, of course. But one of the great things about wikipedia is the links, the “see also”, that sometimes take you off in a new direction. For instance, there’s a link to Adam Curtis’s documentary The Trap: But there was a small problem with Nash’s equations. They [...]

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Tags: anthropology, choice, dilemma, history, Laing, logic, morals, Nash, paradox, prisoner, psychology, video, zemblanity

prisoner’s dilemma

10May09

It’s kind of magic, the prisoner’s dilemma. It gets you thingking about how people relate and why (although some people I know don’t like it). Here’s one version. You and your partner either Co-operate or you Defect. You both co-operate -> you get two each. You Defect while he co-operates -> you get three, he [...]

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Tags: anthropology, brain, dilemma, happiness, logic, mind, morals, paradox, prisoner, psychology, zemblanity

the paradox of the heap

12Mar09

Here’s one I haven’t seen treated from the psychological point of view: the paradox of the heap. Wikipedia calls it the Sorites Paradox, which means the same thing: The name ‘Sorites’ derives from the Greek word for heap. The paradox is so-named because of its original characterization, attributed to Eubulides of Miletus. The paradox goes [...]

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Tags: choice, logic, mind, paradox, psychology, zemblanity

logic

01Mar09

Searching for the tourist website for Novaya Zemlya, I came across this from the writings of the Russian psychologist, Alexander Luria. He’s talking about how “nonliterate subjects often failed to perceive the logical relation among parts of a syllogism”… Another syllogism was presented: “In the far north, where ther is snow, all bears are white. [...]

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Tags: anthropology, bears, logic, psychology, zemblanity