Game Theory For Baby Names

[Alvecia]

This actually tells me very little about how much you actually value each individual song. It gives me a vague notion of your general feelings on the matter, but because of the limitations of $10 I cannot know if these are actually how you feel about them or if it’s just the best you could do under the circumstances.
Would these values remain the same if you had $20? $50? $100? How nuanced is your valuation of the $0 songs? Do you like some more than others? You you like them all equally? Do you hate these songs, or did you just value them zero because they were the least liked, even though you really enjoy them?

I really like all the songs. Why in the world would I bother sharing songs that I don't like?

If I divided $20 or more dollars between the songs then the proportion would stay roughly the same. So you're welcome to do the exercise using $100 dollars... I'll just divide all your answers by 10.

So using money as a ranking is just arbitrary then. It’s no different in function than ranking.

My point was that you haven’t established a scale. If I were to look at your ranking I would assume you absolutely hate 4 of the songs, and greatly dislike another 4.

[Xerographica]

What do you mean by "social currency"?

I mean.. in choosing a Huawei over an iPhone I reject the concept of the iPhone as the best not for price and technology's sake but to show my peers that I don't care for the idea of 'brand as value'. I buy Hush Puppies not Church's, or I buy a Rolex not a Casio.. I buy with a value determined not by your pragma-socialist values - which are ephemeral at best - but by what provides me social inclusion among my peers.. or even social exclusion if I value that as more important than 'conforming to the norm dude..'

The central premise of what I'm saying, as expressed by your baby example, is that 'value' is not determined by a 'pragma-socialist' calculation of a predetermined outcome but by personal expression of how I want to be perceived benched against the constraints of who I am.

Boom-shaka-laka.

I am not a pragma-socialist. Some people care about name brands, other people do not. What's useful for one person is useless to another. If not, then markets wouldn't be necessary.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

I am not a pragma-socialist. S

Of course there isn't, it's something you made up.

[Bombadil]

I mean.. in choosing a Huawei over an iPhone I reject the concept of the iPhone as the best not for price and technology's sake but to show my peers that I don't care for the idea of 'brand as value'. I buy Hush Puppies not Church's, or I buy a Rolex not a Casio.. I buy with a value determined not by your pragma-socialist values - which are ephemeral at best - but by what provides me social inclusion among my peers.. or even social exclusion if I value that as more important than 'conforming to the norm dude..'

The central premise of what I'm saying, as expressed by your baby example, is that 'value' is not determined by a 'pragma-socialist' calculation of a predetermined outcome but by personal expression of how I want to be perceived benched against the constraints of who I am.

Boom-shaka-laka.

I am not a pragma-socialist. Some people care about name brands, other people do not. What's useful for one person is useless to another. If not, then markets wouldn't be necessary.

To define an outcome is to be a pragma-socialist - in defining the outcome you must be pragmatic about the means to achieve that outcome.. and that requires complete equality in choice.. or.. socialism..

Anyhoo.. you constantly ask us to poke holes in your philosophy, which has been amply done... you have yet to demonstrate a definitive proof of your belief with no falsifications.

I can prove faeries with your method.

EDIT: I kind of agree with Pretantia above, but hanged by you own petard thou shalt.. umm.. be.

[Xerographica]

I really like all the songs. Why in the world would I bother sharing songs that I don't like?

If I divided $20 or more dollars between the songs then the proportion would stay roughly the same. So you're welcome to do the exercise using $100 dollars... I'll just divide all your answers by 10.

So using money as a ranking is just arbitrary then. It’s no different in function than ranking.

My point was that you haven’t established a scale. If I were to look at your ranking I would assume you absolutely hate 4 of the songs, and greatly dislike another 4.

Imagine that you win a shopping spree at Home Depot. You can freely have whatever you fit into one shopping cart. What do you do? Obviously you can't fit everything into your shopping cart. So you have to prioritize.

The human makeup includes biological programs dealing with anxiety and flight that are older than the human species, and these comprise or engender at least the rudiments of the ritual pattern, correlating threat, alarm, pursuit, flight, and the trick of abandoning what can be spared. - Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions

[Xerographica]

I am not a pragma-socialist. S

Of course there isn't, it's something you made up.

Isn't every ideology made up?

[Bombadil]

So using money as a ranking is just arbitrary then. It’s no different in function than ranking.

My point was that you haven’t established a scale. If I were to look at your ranking I would assume you absolutely hate 4 of the songs, and greatly dislike another 4.

Imagine that you win a shopping spree at Home Depot. You can freely have whatever you fit into one shopping cart. What do you do? Obviously you can't fit everything into your shopping cart. So you have to prioritize.

The human makeup includes biological programs dealing with anxiety and flight that are older than the human species, and these comprise or engender at least the rudiments of the ritual pattern, correlating threat, alarm, pursuit, flight, and the trick of abandoning what can be spared. - Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions

'Imagine all the people..' imagine we correlated your posts with the word 'imagine'..

[Bombadil]

Cue extended unrelated post..

[Xerographica]

Imagine that you win a shopping spree at Home Depot. You can freely have whatever you fit into one shopping cart. What do you do? Obviously you can't fit everything into your shopping cart. So you have to prioritize.

'Imagine all the people..' imagine we correlated your posts with the word 'imagine'..

Heh. I guess I say "imagine" a lot?

[Bombadil]

'Imagine all the people..' imagine we correlated your posts with the word 'imagine'..

Heh. I guess I say "imagine" a lot?

Ahh..but you defeated my prediction of a a long unrelated post by you.. kudos.

[Camicon]

It tells me that you value Blonde Redhead - Tons Confession over Jamie xx - Gosh, which you value over Weekend Wolves - You, Hello Seahorse! - La Flotadera, Kid Simius - The Flute Song, and Rone - Down for the Cause, each of which you value over Jan Blomqvist - More, DATA - Don't Sing, Moderat - Running, and Bomb the Bass & Lali Puna - Recut.

But that's not how you buy music, so whatever point you're trying to make is already moot.

Also, your "divide ten dollars" scenario gives me less information than if you had simply rated each song on a 10 point scale, which would tell me how much you like each song individually in addition to how much you value each song as compared to every other song on that list, whereas your "divide ten dollars" scenario only tells me the latter.

In a market, how we divide our dollars among the products communicates how we want society's resources divided between them.

How I divided my $10 dollars among the 10 songs communicates how I want society's attention divided between them.

Don't think about using the $10 dollars to buy the songs. Think about using the $10 dollars to promote them. Think about using the $10 dollars to put the songs on more people's radar.

Except that's not what money is for, nor is it what money does.

Money is a medium to effect better, more efficient trade. It doesn't communicate where we want "society's attention", it simply allows us to trade without hauling around a cart full of produce or livestock.

The only thing a monetary transaction communicates is that Person A was willing to spend X dollars on Thing Y, in that particular place and moment.

(Again, your "divide ten dollars" scenario tells me less about what you think of those songs than if you simply rated them all on a ten point scale. Your ham-fisted attempts to shoehorn money into the conversation results in me knowing less about what you think of those songs, not more.)

[The Empire of Pretantia]

Of course there isn't, it's something you made up.

Isn't every ideology made up?

Every other ideology typically has more than one follower.

[Ifreann]

It's doubtful that there would only be one website in the baby naming market.

It's doubtful there would be more than zero websites offering this..."service" you describe.

You're the only person who thinks these websites should exist.
You haven't made such a website.
Ergo, no one is going to make one.

---

Language can tell us what people prefer and also how much they prefer it. The problem with this information about preference intensity is that it isn't very trustworthy. You can tell the cashier lady at the grocery store that you really really really really really need and want all the items in your shopping cart. But it's probably not going to work. In order to persuade her, you have to give her solid proof of your demand. You do this by sacrificing something that's valuable to you... your money. This is concrete evidence of your interest.

What if you simply take out a $100 dollar bill and burn it? It would definitely be a sacrifice. But it would just prove that you're crazy. And you wouldn't get the groceries.

In order to get the groceries you have to put your money into the hands of the cashier lady. This allows the store to prove its demand to all its suppliers.

No. That is absolutely not what is going on.
Have you spent 4 years developing your theories based on this fundamental misconception of trade that even my dog understands?

The shop doesn't give you anything based on how convincing your story or your sacrifice is.
They give you stuff in exchange for something they want more. A trade.

They want $2 more than they want their milk, so you can buy milk for $2.
They want their milk more than they want your $1, so you cant buy milk for $1.
Nothing about proving or interpreting sacrifice.

Someone tried to pay me for beer with a mobile phone once. That was odd.

---

I've been thinking.

What if instead of arguing the spouses bid to express how badly they want their way?
What if in football victory was not determined by who scored the most points but by spectators bidding on who they feel should win?

I remember hearing about some suggestion for a car racing tournament with only electric cars whereby spectators could vote online or with an app or something to show their support for a particular driver, and the drivers would get speed boosts based on how much support they were getting.

[Alvecia]

So using money as a ranking is just arbitrary then. It’s no different in function than ranking.

My point was that you haven’t established a scale. If I were to look at your ranking I would assume you absolutely hate 4 of the songs, and greatly dislike another 4.

Imagine that you win a shopping spree at Home Depot. You can freely have whatever you fit into one shopping cart. What do you do? Obviously you can't fit everything into your shopping cart. So you have to prioritize.

The human makeup includes biological programs dealing with anxiety and flight that are older than the human species, and these comprise or engender at least the rudiments of the ritual pattern, correlating threat, alarm, pursuit, flight, and the trick of abandoning what can be spared. - Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions

Using money is just going to run into issues in real world applications though. Any time you have to compare the valuations of more than two people, the richer person can communicate more efficiently and accurately. Sticking to a ranking system removes the disproportion and provides a control to measure from. In any real world application, using money over a ranking system is always only ever an equal or lesser method at measuring and commmunixating a persons valuation.

[Maqo]

True choice.. for truly true choice the value of money placed by all people must be equal. If I earn $1M then $100 means nothing compared to someone who earns $10K. My demand for Phyllis, as denoted by my donation of $1M means less to me than someone who's passionate about Kate but can't afford more than $1K.

Either a central resource (not the government.. governments distort as you noted earlier).. provides a free gift of a set amount of money for people to allocate to preferred baby names.. or everyone has an equal amount of money because, as Mago correctly observed earlier.. the allocation of my money is not solely for baby names, I must weight the import I give to food, to housing, to voting.. to baby names.

True choice.

Next.. what is the desired outcome of naming babies.. to equally allocate distribution? That seems rather a command economy.

Are you sure you're not a pragma-socialist.. because that is the end result of your concept.

Or maybe I just want to called my child Bob, because screw your command economy ranking system.

Why does wealth inequality matter for a baby name market but not for a furniture market?

Because you're asking people to do a radically different thing in the 'baby name market' than what happens in a real market.
In a real market, the question being asked is 'do you want to swap A for B', and the answer is yes or no. As I've shown, there is no notion of sacrifice or 'intensity of desire' or whatever new term you want that factors in to this.
In the situations where you are asking people to a) spend some of their money and b) divide that money between options, it is an entirely different question.

The desired outcome of all markets is for resources to be efficiently allocated/distributed/divided. The goal of the market economy is to optimally divide resources. Here are two things...

corn
poison oak

How would you divide $10 dollars between them? Your division would reflect how you want society's limited farmland to be divided between corn and poison oak. Add up everybody's divisions and the result is the optimal division. It's the division that creates the most benefit for the most people. It's the most socially useful division.

I honestly can't comprehend the mental gymnastics that get you to a point where you believe this.
Are you just the world's most dedicated low-impact troll? The KenM of our time? I'd like to believe you're sincere
You say that central planning is terrible, and that market based mechanisms are best. You quote this guy:

It is impossible for anyone, even if he be a statesman of genius, to weigh the whole community’s utility and sacrifice against each other. — Knut Wicksell, A New Principle of Just Taxation

Yet what you've created here is distributed central planning.
You're asking every single individual to act as if they were a central planner (which you claim is impossible, so they're going to be producing rubbish output) and then you're going to aggregate all of the rubbish and claim it produces a perfect result? How does that work?

[Evil Dictators Happyland]

1) It would certainly be an optimal strategy for making free money.
2) No, there wouldn't be. The only way I can think of would be to hack the site where all this is happening to either increase your total or decrease that of opposing teams, and that's counterfeiting or robbery (and probably a host of other crimes), respectively.

[Maqo]

As an aside, I don't like the term 'sacrifice' here. It's loaded language that implies giving something up completely, irrevocably, selflessly, without gaining anything immediate or personal in return. So I don't think the language itself is appropriate to a situation where you are actually GAINING value.

A sacrifice is always for something more valuable...

"Old-women's Grandson," ran the words of a Crow Indian's prayer to the Morning Star, "I give you this joint [of my finger], give me something good in exchange...I am poor, give me a good horse. I want to strike one of the enemy and I want to marry a good-natured woman. I want a tent of my own to live." "During the period of my visits to the Crow (1907-1916)," wrote Professor Lowie, to whom we owe the recording of this pitiful prayer, "I saw few old men with left hands intact." - Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology

Who's going to make a sacrifice for something less valuable?

Do you have a reply for the actual meat of my post, or are you just trying to deflect?
Also.. WTF is this quote supposed to mean? What is its relevance? How does it refute or dispute my point? It certainly doesn't mention 'sacrifice' anywhere in the passage, and as near as I can tell from reading between the lines its about a bunch of men cutting off their fingers for (surprise surprise) no gain. I can't comprehend how you think this reply makes sense, and even less idea how you think it supports your side rather than mine.

[Forsher]

What I don't understand is how it was Xero that ended up saying this to someone rather than the other way round. Xero, the same dude who contrives scenarios and then uses those same scenarios to judge the real world?

So you're saying that the correct answer should have been "we need a market to determine the use for a tree"?

Have you ever seen a nature documentary set in Africa? Did you notice that all the wildebeest just dive into the river and heaps of them get eaten by crocodiles. It's like that... the sacrifice of the wildebeest is sufficiently great that it determines the river is there for them to swim across.

[The United Colonies of Earth]

I shouldn't have posted here, but I assume there's a way to make the name of this hypothetical kid not an article of ridicule within the rules.

So you're saying that the correct answer should have been "we need a market to determine the use for a tree"?

Have you ever seen a nature documentary set in Africa? Did you notice that all the wildebeest just dive into the river and heaps of them get eaten by crocodiles. It's like that... the sacrifice of the wildebeest is sufficiently great that it determines the river is there for them to swim across.

That sounds like a circular...I'm gonna need more explanation.

[Forsher]

Wouldn't that whole thing actually be really bad at determining how much I value each song?
By limiting the amount I'm allowed to spend, you're forcing me to downplay exactly how much I may truely enjoy a song.
For example, I may value 2 songs at $8, but I'm forced to spend less, making it look like I actually value them less than I do. I'm disguising my true valuation due to your restrictions.

Heh. That's how life works... we have limited dollars and society has limited resources. We divide our dollars to help divide society's resources.

Just try it with $10 dollars. Then you can point out the disparities between your division and your preferences.

Disparities you promptly ignore and refuse to acknowledge because you're about to turn around and say:

Spending money reveals what's really important to people.

Sad!

By my reasoning, voting is a useless way to measure usefulness.

This response is neither true (you have, not once, offered any non-circular arguments for this proposition... and even the circular arguments had to be coaxed out of you) nor relevant (like, at all) to Bombadil's post.

Removing the limitations from your evaluations will also remove the usefulness. If you don't make trade-offs, if you don't make tough choices, if you don't make hard-decisions, then your rankings won't reflect what's truly useful to you. It's beneficial for everybody to know what's truly useful to you.

What did I say?

Completely oblivious to all the confounding information and unable to explain why "true usefulness" is defined solely in terms of "absolutely most critical thing that is bought" though Xero may be, he's at least clear on the point that contradicting his earlier posts is something he's okay with.

Sadder!

I really like all the songs. Why in the world would I bother sharing songs that I don't like?

If I divided $20 or more dollars between the songs then the proportion would stay roughly the same. So you're welcome to do the exercise using $100 dollars... I'll just divide all your answers by 10.

Here Xero is unable to keep control of his own contrived situation.

Observe as he fails to notice that what he's actually doing (according to his rules) when he allocated $0 to Monderat-Running is not promote music he really likes at all. What Xero is doing is implicitly supporting something he professes to not believe in.

Each link is to a page. Google counts the link as a vote for the page.

Do I have to divide my votes between these pages? No, I do not. But does society's attention have to be divided between these pages? Yes. It does.

Not that, as we have just seen, Xero will acknowledge how this affects his other arguments... everything is always treated in the partial equilibrium with Xero, never the general equilibrium.

Even better... adding money doesn't actually help us do anything here. If attention is the currency of the internet, why not just use attention rather than a proxy?

The way things already work means Youtube is never going to recommend, um, Friday to me, but it will recommend Friday to people who it actually likes. In essence, the demand for videos is disaggregated by Youtube... through modelling individuals it is able to have a "market" for every individual. So, bring on the private valuations, right? Well, maybe it matters more that I listen to Message in a Bottle more than Invisible Sun. I do like the latter more as a piece of music but, in general, I'm not in the mood for lyrics like this

Notice also that Youtube and Google work on the basis of individual results if you're using them properly.

Saddest! (Sadist!?)

[Xerographica]

A sacrifice is always for something more valuable...


Who's going to make a sacrifice for something less valuable?

Do you have a reply for the actual meat of my post, or are you just trying to deflect?
Also.. WTF is this quote supposed to mean? What is its relevance? How does it refute or dispute my point? It certainly doesn't mention 'sacrifice' anywhere in the passage, and as near as I can tell from reading between the lines its about a bunch of men cutting off their fingers for (surprise surprise) no gain. I can't comprehend how you think this reply makes sense, and even less idea how you think it supports your side rather than mine.

It was a sacrifice for the men to cut off parts of their fingers. They did so to prove their demand for the things that they prayed for. In modern times a guy might say, "I'd give my left nut for... "

Here's an economic "joke"...

Two economists walk past a Tesla showroom, a beautiful Tesla showroom, and one of them points to a shiny car in the window and says, I want that one. And the other economist says obviously not. - Robert Smith, Two Radio Guys Walk Into A Bar

Do you get the joke? If the one economist truly wanted the Tesla, he would have sacrificed his pinky finger. His sacrifice would have proved that his demand was real. Except, unlike some Gods, Tesla doesn't accept body parts as adequate evidence of demand. Tesla's proof of choice is money, lots of it.

Alvecia should have got the joke.

[Salandriagado]

Wouldn't that whole thing actually be really bad at determining how much I value each song?
By limiting the amount I'm allowed to spend, you're forcing me to downplay exactly how much I may truely enjoy a song.
For example, I may value 2 songs at $8, but I'm forced to spend less, making it look like I actually value them less than I do. I'm disguising my true valuation due to your restrictions.

Heh. That's how life works... we have limited dollars and society has limited resources. We divide our dollars to help divide society's resources.

Just try it with $10 dollars. Then you can point out the disparities between your division and your preferences.

I've already pointed out such disparities in your division.

[Xerographica]

You say that central planning is terrible, and that market based mechanisms are best. You quote this guy:

It is impossible for anyone, even if he be a statesman of genius, to weigh the whole community’s utility and sacrifice against each other. — Knut Wicksell, A New Principle of Just Taxation

Yet what you've created here is distributed central planning.
You're asking every single individual to act as if they were a central planner (which you claim is impossible, so they're going to be producing rubbish output) and then you're going to aggregate all of the rubbish and claim it produces a perfect result? How does that work?

"Distributed central planning"? You mean decentralized planning? Plans are necessary and good. There's one big glaring except... imposed plans.

Think about the pyramids. Some pharaohs had plans to build them. This wasn't inherently problematic. The pharaohs used taxes to build them. This wasn't inherently problematic either. But it would have been problematic if the pyramids truly didn't align with the plans of taxpayers. How would it have been possible to discern how closely the pyramids aligned with the plans of taxpayers? Easy. The taxpayers simply should have been given the opportunity to... *woah*

That was a really close call. I almost talked about my favorite topic! If I had done that then I would have been convicted of hijacking my own thread and this thread would have been locked. You're a lot better at disguising your diabolical plans than The Two Jerseys is.

In this thread I shared a plan... "Hey everybody, please divide $10 dollars between a list of 10 things that you really like!" Obviously I thought this was a good plan. I shared my own dollar division list and was really looking forward to seeing everybody else's lists. But did I have the wonderful opportunity to see everybody else's lists? Nope. Nobody else thought that my plan was good. Of course this is disappointing. But this is how decentralized planning works! You can try and persuade everybody that your plans are the best plans ever... but if you fail to persuade people... then your plans won't be realized.

A long time ago I was on a date. We were walking in the city and I saw a huge tree packed with birds. I asked the girl if she wanted to stand under the tree. Whoever got pooped on first would be the winner. She didn't think it sounded like a very good plan.

I'm used to my plans being rejected. Maybe my plans are crazy? Yeah... crazy cool.

The value of decentralized planning is that everybody's plans are subjected to so much scrutiny. This is the logical and very beneficial consequence of relying on persuasion. Persuasion provides more perspectives on the soundness of plans. This is a really good system for filtering out crazy plans. But it's not perfect.

Everybody thought Noah's plan to build a big boat was crazy. But was it? Nope. We only know this though because Noah was able to realize his plan solely with the help of his family. Everybody else falsely concluded that Noah's plan was crazy. Their verdict was a false positive. It seems like false positives must be pretty exceptional... but it's not like we can see all the awesome plans that would have been realized, but weren't, because too few people saw the point in going along with them. So it's kinda hard to say how many false positives there are.

Here's a key concept... larger markets are better than smaller markets at spotting good plans. Larger markets have more perspectives, experiences, circumstances, knowledge and brainpower than smaller markets. So there would be far fewer false positives if the largest market scrutinized everybody's plans. The technical issue is that there are so many plans. If the largest market carefully scrutinized each and every plan it would take way too long to go through all the plans. Therefore, it's necessary to prioritize plans. What's the best way to prioritize plans? Sacrifice.

Think about when I shared my plan for everyone to share their dollar division lists. All of you could clearly see that my plan was useful to me. But what you couldn't see is how useful it was to me. Sure, I could have said, "I'd give my left nut for all of you to go along with my plan." But it wouldn't have cost me anything to say this. So it wouldn't have functioned as credible evidence of my plan's considerable usefulness to me. It would have been far more credible to offer all of you money to participate in my plan. How much money would it have taken for all of you to participate?

The thing is, I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there who would be willing to participate in my plan for free. Unfortunately, my plan really isn't on their radar. So perhaps it's a better use of my money if I spend it to put my plan on more people's radar. This is a very interesting possibility.

[The Two Jerseys]

I can recommend some books.

But I'm not going to spend out-of-pocket to do the publishers' advertising departments' jobs for them with nothing in return.

You'd recommend a book... but you wouldn't spend a dollar to promote it?

I would not, because I would lose a dollar and gain nothing.

[Xerographica]

Heh. That's how life works... we have limited dollars and society has limited resources. We divide our dollars to help divide society's resources.

Just try it with $10 dollars. Then you can point out the disparities between your division and your preferences.

I've already pointed out such disparities in your division.

You can't point out the disparity between my division and my preferences. You know why? It's because you don't know my preferences better than I do. Nobody knows my preferences better than I do. This means that I'm the only one who can point out the disparity. Is there a disparity? No.

I do truly like all those songs... but I don't like all of them equally. They aren't all equally useful to me. This is clearly proved by the fact that I didn't equally divide my $10 dollars between the 10 songs.

Since I do really like all these songs, I want them to be on more people's radar. And now they are! I shared these 10 songs in this thread and now they are on the radar of everybody who saw my list. But what if I was going to actually spend money to put these songs on even more people's radar? Would I want to promote these 10 songs equally? Nope. The more useful a song is to me, the more radars that I'd want it to be on.