Game Theory For Baby Names

[Xerographica]

Have you ever been responsible for helping to choose a baby's name? If so, how was the decision made? Was it made by voting? If so, this would explain why so many people have stupid names...

Boaty McBoatface. That was the name chosen by the British public when asked to name a new scientific research vessel in April 2016. And of course, it was. It’s funny! You see, when you ask a lot of people for input on a topic that is not that important to them you’ll get a great deal of silly inputs. — Aran Rees, The stupidity of crowds

Let's imagine that your significant other is pregnant. The two of you decide to crowdsource the baby's name. Except, you want to filter out all the people who don't actually care what your baby is named. So you decide to replace voting with spending.

Your friends and family come up with a list of over 400 potential names. Here are the rules of the "game"...

1. Each participant can spend as much money as they want on their preferred names.
2. Participants can see each other's allocations.
3. Participants can change their allocations as many times as they want.
4. There's no time limit.

When no more "pareto improvements" can be made, whichever name has the most money will be selected. Assume that all the money will go into a college fund.

Is there an optimal strategy? Is there a "legal" way to "cheat"?

[Fartsniffage]

You just pick a name and then give everyone enough money until they agree with you. Do you have any other threads?

[Galloism]

Do you have any other threads?

All signs point to no.

[Thermodolia]

Um there is a time limit, it's called birth. Ya need a name before the kid is born. Also I'm extremely confused about how my future boyfriend is pregos

[The Holy Therns]

Um there is a time limit, it's called birth. Ya need a name before the kid is born. Also I'm extremely confused about how my future boyfriend is pregos

Hey, if Arnold can do it anyone can!

On topic, this idea is ridiculous. The fact you just throw in the phrase college fund at the end does not make it not ridiculous.

[Bombadil]

Um there is a time limit, it's called birth. Ya need a name before the kid is born. Also I'm extremely confused about how my future boyfriend is pregos

I don't think you do, I think you have up to a month before naming a kid, at least round here you do.

[Thermodolia]

Um there is a time limit, it's called birth. Ya need a name before the kid is born. Also I'm extremely confused about how my future boyfriend is pregos

I don't think you do, I think you have up to a month before naming a kid, at least round here you do.

Here it's generally at birth or before.

[Xerographica]

Um there is a time limit, it's called birth. Ya need a name before the kid is born. Also I'm extremely confused about how my future boyfriend is pregos

How long would it take until no more pareto improvements could be made? In the scenario you're the significant other.

[Xerographica]

Um there is a time limit, it's called birth. Ya need a name before the kid is born. Also I'm extremely confused about how my future boyfriend is pregos

Hey, if Arnold can do it anyone can!

On topic, this idea is ridiculous. The fact you just throw in the phrase college fund at the end does not make it not ridiculous.

Would it be more or less ridiculous to use this method to choose a domain name? I think the phrase "college fund" was actually a nice touch. It's nice to raise money for a worthy cause.

[Xerographica]

You just pick a name and then give everyone enough money until they agree with you. Do you have any other threads?

How much money would that take? And, what are the chances that you have that much money? If you do have that much money, what are the chances that you'd be willing to spend it on a baby name? I do have another thread... Growling Stomach Proves You're Truly Hungry. If you read through that thread then you'll notice that I clearly won it. So now I'm going for double or nothing.

[Galloism]

If you read through that thread then you'll notice that I clearly won it.

I literally laughed out loud. Nana is looking at me oddly.


As far as the thread goes, I probably wouldn't play at all. Not my baby, who cares? If we're the ones having the baby, this does seem like a good way to fund the child's college education if I could get enough idiots to participate, but I would need to preserve the right to override the result. Otherwise, the kid might be stuck with 'Captain Douchenozzle' as a name.

Because the internet is itself.

[The Grim Reaper]

You just pick a name and then give everyone enough money until they agree with you. Do you have any other threads?

How much money would that take? And, what are the chances that you have that much money? If you do have that much money, what are the chances that you'd be willing to spend it on a baby name? I do have another thread... Growling Stomach Proves You're Truly Hungry. If you read through that thread then you'll notice that I clearly won it. So now I'm going for double or nothing.

If you must know, the reason I dropped that thread is because neither of those in favour of the proposition demonstrated the faintest idea how human evolution has actually worked to produce anthropological phenomena, beyond vague generalizations about how not enough people talk about evolution, nor was there even a cursory understanding demonstrated of the two sources that were provided. When the argument is about whether or not /both/ of your only sources fundamentally contradict your point, or are just irrelevant, you've lost the argument.

It is a bittersweet moment when I must concede, given that backdrop, that some of the words in the OP to this thread do, at least, make sense in context. Pareto efficiency, for instance, is a thing that exists, and is related to money. This is more than I can say for the other thread. It is so, so disappointing to me that I have to admit that this thread is, in comparison, at least grounded in a familiar reality, even if it is a reality that has been relitigated since time fucking immemorial.

Like the growling stomach, this thread is a dishonest signal that carries no information useful in a wider social context. It serves only to fulfill what I assume is an internal physiological need, and its existence makes me lose faith in an Intelligent Designer.

There is no condition under which this hypothetical gives me any understanding of pretty much anything besides a warped understanding of how consumer-indicated preferences are somehow understood as inherently meaningful and commensurate. The hypothetical itself, unsurprisingly, reveals some of the fundamental flaws in your system - nobody involved in this would, rightfully, have any part in actually naming a baby they have nothing to do with, nor any fucking reason to want to express a preference by spending money. Believe it or not, voting actually represents something cool and fun and interesting and meaningful - eight out of ten cats like this baby name, it'll probably do well. Spending introduces externalities to your hypothetical system that have nothing to do with naming a fucking baby. If Bill Gates dumps a grand on naming the baby Microsoft Edge is a Superior Internet Browser, the only thing you've proven is that that name offers the most financial benefit to Bill Gates - in no way does that justify this system as either functional or desirable.

The reason no-one is responding to your scenario is because it fundamentally does not make sense. You have ordered words in a way such that they can be understood linguistically, but they do not conjure up an experience from which anyone can derive any sort of additional understanding. Your tacked on discussion on an "optimal strategy" is an after-thought and irrelevant, because of all the fucking externalities (to quote yourself, "How much money would that take? And, what are the chances that you have that much money? If you do have that much money, what are the chances that you'd be willing to spend it on a baby name?"). The hypothetical fails at anything beyond introducing babies to the problem, and I fucking hate babies.

[Neanderthaland]

When you play the Game of Baby Names, you win or you die.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

When you play the Game of Baby Names, you win or you die.

I laughed at this. Sorry. XD

[Ethel mermania]

How much money would that take? And, what are the chances that you have that much money? If you do have that much money, what are the chances that you'd be willing to spend it on a baby name? I do have another thread... Growling Stomach Proves You're Truly Hungry. If you read through that thread then you'll notice that I clearly won it. So now I'm going for double or nothing.

If you must know, the reason I dropped that thread is because neither of those in favour of the proposition demonstrated the faintest idea how human evolution has actually worked to produce anthropological phenomena, beyond vague generalizations about how not enough people talk about evolution, nor was there even a cursory understanding demonstrated of the two sources that were provided. When the argument is about whether or not /both/ of your only sources fundamentally contradict your point, or are just irrelevant, you've lost the argument.

It is a bittersweet moment when I must concede, given that backdrop, that some of the words in the OP to this thread do, at least, make sense in context. Pareto efficiency, for instance, is a thing that exists, and is related to money. This is more than I can say for the other thread. It is so, so disappointing to me that I have to admit that this thread is, in comparison, at least grounded in a familiar reality, even if it is a reality that has been relitigated since time fucking immemorial.

Like the growling stomach, this thread is a dishonest signal that carries no information useful in a wider social context. It serves only to fulfill what I assume is an internal physiological need, and its existence makes me lose faith in an Intelligent Designer.

There is no condition under which this hypothetical gives me any understanding of pretty much anything besides a warped understanding of how consumer-indicated preferences are somehow understood as inherently meaningful and commensurate. The hypothetical itself, unsurprisingly, reveals some of the fundamental flaws in your system - nobody involved in this would, rightfully, have any part in actually naming a baby they have nothing to do with, nor any fucking reason to want to express a preference by spending money. Believe it or not, voting actually represents something cool and fun and interesting and meaningful - eight out of ten cats like this baby name, it'll probably do well. Spending introduces externalities to your hypothetical system that have nothing to do with naming a fucking baby. If Bill Gates dumps a grand on naming the baby Microsoft Edge is a Superior Internet Browser, the only thing you've proven is that that name offers the most financial benefit to Bill Gates - in no way does that justify this system as either functional or desirable.

The reason no-one is responding to your scenario is because it fundamentally does not make sense. You have ordered words in a way such that they can be understood linguistically, but they do not conjure up an experience from which anyone can derive any sort of additional understanding. Your tacked on discussion on an "optimal strategy" is an after-thought and irrelevant, because of all the fucking externalities (to quote yourself, "How much money would that take? And, what are the chances that you have that much money? If you do have that much money, what are the chances that you'd be willing to spend it on a baby name?"). The hypothetical fails at anything beyond introducing babies to the problem, and I fucking hate babies.

if disney offered me 2 million to name a kid mulan, i would

[Ethel mermania]

When you play the Game of Baby Names, you win or you die.

ok, ok i will name him cersi

[Xerographica]

If Bill Gates dumps a grand on naming the baby Microsoft Edge is a Superior Internet Browser, the only thing you've proven is that that name offers the most financial benefit to Bill Gates - in no way does that justify this system as either functional or desirable.

What's your assumption?

A. The rest of the participants (ie family/friends) aren't interested in outspending Gates.
B. The rest of the participants are interested in outspending Gates, but are too poor to do so.

[MERIZoC]

Did your parents do this and actually name you Xerographica?

[The Grim Reaper]

If Bill Gates dumps a grand on naming the baby Microsoft Edge is a Superior Internet Browser, the only thing you've proven is that that name offers the most financial benefit to Bill Gates - in no way does that justify this system as either functional or desirable.

What's your assumption?

A. The rest of the participants (ie family/friends) aren't interested in outspending Gates.
B. The rest of the participants are interested in outspending Gates, but are too poor to do so.

I like how you split that into mutually exclusive assumptions.

The entire fucking point of the post is that your hypotheticals don't function because there are too many externalities for your hypothetical to work without carefully dissecting every complaint into strawman arguments that you can just reframe as nonsensical isolated usecases. The fact that your system exists in the first place indicates that the parents care more about the college fund than the actual naming of the child; why should other participants give a shit? In that proposition by me, Bill Gates only makes the spend because he stands to gain financially. Because Bill Gates has so much to gain financially (i.e. publicity from having a kid named after a shitty internet browser), he can put down an obscene amount of money - this is not something that most people would be able to leverage unless they had the resources to compete with Gates anyway. Hence the fact that they cannot outspend Gates and the fact that they are not interested in the participation are, in this case, causally linked.

Simultaneously, that C. assumption I've just presented (the causal link) only holds true in the specific usecase where the baby's name is being leveraged for financial gain. If it's just a fucking name, then A will probably hold true. Except if you have a participancy base that has a high income disparity, then B can become true too, because maybe someone wants to drop a tenner on their name going another generation.


As a general critique:
Money is not an absolute value - it's relative. If I make $100,000 a year, it is trivial for me to spend $1,000 on something, compared to someone who makes $10,000 spending $100 on something. The latter is far, far, far more accurate as a signal of my preferences than the former. This is why trickle-down economics is considered useless - because high income earners don't need to spend as much. The richer someone is, the higher a proportion of new wealth will be used as savings instead of as consumption - in other words, a smaller proportion of their wealth is necessary to indicate all of the consumptive preferences that it is /possible for them to make/.

The reason is because up to something like $70,000, most of the costs of the average household are fixed costs or relatively fixed - mortgage/house maintenance, utilities, food, education, mobility. That is even before you start talking about proportionality instead of absolutes - your system is equivalent to arguing that the man making $100,000 has the /ability/ to express ten times as much preference as the person making $10,000. This is an argument that has distinct flaws beyond run-of-the-mill capitalism - in the capitalist system, not having the resources to acquire everything you want to is fundamentally untied from the fact that people can /want/ to. If you use the allocation of wealth as synonymous with honestly expressed preferences, then those two untied facts become synonymous, and you create the logical proposition that someone who earns more money has more personal preferences within their internal logic. In other words, if a consumer allocating wealth is synonymous with honest, absolutely comparable preference, then the allocation of wealth /to/ the consumer can be understood in terms of the absolutely comparable potential to express preference.

The fundamental point, though, is that your system offers no improvement over pretty much anything else.

This is why you wrap it up into hypotheticals - it means you don't have to show your hand and you can just try to force people into giving up and picking a face-down card you've gimmicked earlier, instead of coming out clean, showing us your sleeves, and outlining a) what your system is, and b) what the fuck it's supposed to do better than a normal system. This gives you the ability to talk yourself to climax without having to actually deal with meaningful criticism, because you get to explain the increasingly more arcane hypotheticals and shoehorn the system in while people are trying to figure out why the fuck you've recently become obsessed with child education, or baby names, or growling stomachs, or whatever.

[Xerographica]

Did your parents do this and actually name you Xerographica?

Heh. I stole my name from Tillandsia xerographica. How was the name of this species chosen? What about Begonia darthvaderiana or Dracula vampira?

Have you ever participated in the naming of a species?

[MERIZoC]

Did your parents do this and actually name you Xerographica?

Heh. I stole my name from Tillandsia xerographica. How was the name of this species chosen? What about Begonia darthvaderiana or Dracula vampira?

Have you ever participated in the naming of a species?

WHAT

[Neanderthaland]

Did your parents do this and actually name you Xerographica?

Heh. I stole my name from Tillandsia xerographica. How was the name of this species chosen? What about Begonia darthvaderiana or Dracula vampira?

Have you ever participated in the naming of a species?

Yes.

And if we had done it your way, it would have been Exxon Mobilosaurus. So I'm glad we didn't.

[Galloism]

Heh. I stole my name from Tillandsia xerographica. How was the name of this species chosen? What about Begonia darthvaderiana or Dracula vampira?

Have you ever participated in the naming of a species?

WHAT

Don't expect this thread or line of reasoning to make sense.

Ever.

[Galloism]

Heh. I stole my name from Tillandsia xerographica. How was the name of this species chosen? What about Begonia darthvaderiana or Dracula vampira?

Have you ever participated in the naming of a species?

Yes.

And if we had done it your way, it would have been Exxon Mobilosaurus. So I'm glad we didn't.

That's a GREAT name for a dinosaur. After all, how many dinosaurs became oil that Exxon is now selling to us?

Besides, haven't you ever wondered how much actual dinosaur is in a plastic dinosaur?

[Bombadil]

Heh. I stole my name from Tillandsia xerographica. How was the name of this species chosen? What about Begonia darthvaderiana or Dracula vampira?

Have you ever participated in the naming of a species?

Yes.

And if we had done it your way, it would have been Exxon Mobilosaurus. So I'm glad we didn't.

There’s some book called.. umm.. Nation- something or other, or Jennifer what’s its.. by some Australian author that relates to all this.. no surprise if you’ve not heard of it.