Thursday, May 24, 2007
Traveler´s Dilema
How some people have problems to get into the substance of problems
Soon, however, it strikes her that if she wrote 99 instead, she would make a little more money, because in that case she would get $101. But surely this insight will also occur to Pete, and if both wrote 99, Lucy would get $99. If Pete wrote 99, then she could do better by writing 98, in which case she would get $100. Yet the same logic would lead Pete to choose 98 as well. In that case, she could deviate to 97 and earn $99. And so on. Continuing with this line of reasoning would take the travelers spiraling down to the smallest permissible number, namely, 2. It may seem highly implausible that Lucy would really go all the way down to 2 in this fashion. That does not matter (and is, in fact, the whole point)--this is where the logic leads us.
This is a part of description of so called TD, travelers Dilemma, compared to well known PD, Prisoners Dilemma, taken from Scientific American: The Traveler's Dilemma
It shocks me how some people do not see the real substance of humans or just cannot describe properly what they think.
The whole problem consists of two problems: first is the relation of traveler A to the captain of airplane and second the relation to the fellow traveler B. These are two levels of relation, two levels that human beings always consider at the same time, without knowing it.
At first level, that means only the relation of travelers to the captain, here it would be logical to get as much as possible, that means writing $100. At the second level there comes envy in play and both travelers might incline to solutions that will bring them the same amount.
Actually, there is a joke to this human feature: A man comes to church and complains that his neighbor´s got a second cow. God tells him to quote “Father” 5 times and then he will have the second cow at home too. The man gets angry and says that he does not want the second cow. God irritated asks what he wants and the man replies: his cow should die.
So instead of getting better with the help of God (as captain in TD game) the man prefers to stay equal with his neighbor.
This type of equalitarian thinking is typical for simple minded humans who only want to prevent envy, and believe that all humans are equal, which is not true.
So the only reasonable solution to the TD is writing 100, the highest possible number allowed by the captain.
Soon, however, it strikes her that if she wrote 99 instead, she would make a little more money, because in that case she would get $101. But surely this insight will also occur to Pete, and if both wrote 99, Lucy would get $99. If Pete wrote 99, then she could do better by writing 98, in which case she would get $100. Yet the same logic would lead Pete to choose 98 as well. In that case, she could deviate to 97 and earn $99. And so on. Continuing with this line of reasoning would take the travelers spiraling down to the smallest permissible number, namely, 2. It may seem highly implausible that Lucy would really go all the way down to 2 in this fashion. That does not matter (and is, in fact, the whole point)--this is where the logic leads us.
This is a part of description of so called TD, travelers Dilemma, compared to well known PD, Prisoners Dilemma, taken from Scientific American: The Traveler's Dilemma
It shocks me how some people do not see the real substance of humans or just cannot describe properly what they think.
The whole problem consists of two problems: first is the relation of traveler A to the captain of airplane and second the relation to the fellow traveler B. These are two levels of relation, two levels that human beings always consider at the same time, without knowing it.
At first level, that means only the relation of travelers to the captain, here it would be logical to get as much as possible, that means writing $100. At the second level there comes envy in play and both travelers might incline to solutions that will bring them the same amount.
Actually, there is a joke to this human feature: A man comes to church and complains that his neighbor´s got a second cow. God tells him to quote “Father” 5 times and then he will have the second cow at home too. The man gets angry and says that he does not want the second cow. God irritated asks what he wants and the man replies: his cow should die.
So instead of getting better with the help of God (as captain in TD game) the man prefers to stay equal with his neighbor.
This type of equalitarian thinking is typical for simple minded humans who only want to prevent envy, and believe that all humans are equal, which is not true.
So the only reasonable solution to the TD is writing 100, the highest possible number allowed by the captain.
# posted by Dalibor @ 1:56 AM 
