Pragmatarian Discussion Thread

[Alvecia]

Same rules still apply. I don't need to pay more than $23 to win, even if I valued it more.
I can lie and benefit more than telling the truth.

Be specific. Which is your true preferred system and which would be your false preferred system?

I could tell you the truth and say it's democratic socialism, or I could lie and tell you it's democratic socialism. Which would you prefer?

[Soldati Senza Confini]

I'm not gonna tell you. Not while you are capable of manipulating the shit out of your kangaroo poll.

Good man. You know the moment you open your mouth he'll try to change your monetary input from autocratic goat rule to that, just to try and make "pragmatarianism" win.

Indeed, and that is because he isn't interested in my input.

This is desperation in trying to get me to play myself by giving him an answer. It's a common gambling move "why don't you tell me what your cards are, I swear I am a good boy who will never play you like that".

I lose my ground in being honest, not in refusing to answer.

[Xerographica]

Be specific. Which is your true preferred system and which would be your false preferred system?

I could tell you the truth and say it's democratic socialism, or I could lie and tell you it's democratic socialism. Which would you prefer?

Well, it's hard to grasp, and address, your point when you don't use a specific and realistic example.

[Alvecia]

I could tell you the truth and say it's democratic socialism, or I could lie and tell you it's democratic socialism. Which would you prefer?

Well, it's hard to grasp, and address, your point when you don't use a specific and realistic example.

My point is that I can lie about my true valuation of a specific choice and benefit more than telling the truth about it. Why would I tell you the truth about it when I benefit more by lying?

[Soldati Senza Confini]

I could tell you the truth and say it's democratic socialism, or I could lie and tell you it's democratic socialism. Which would you prefer?

Well, it's hard to grasp, and address, your point when you don't use a specific and realistic example.

He used a very realistic notion tbh.

People who pool resources don't have to dump all their money into the pool, they just have to dump enough to marginally improve their outcomes.

Have you ever played Texas Hold'Em? It's a fun game, but it deals with this perfectly. When you make a bet on your cards, the winning strategy is not to dump all your money at once into the bidding pool. It's to marginally improve your payouts by raising the bets to a point the other player feels comfortable calling.

[Galloism]

By the way, I just got an email from Charlie the Legit Economist:

I am sorry it took me a while to get back to you. I was thinking of scenarios where we used donations to disparately "rank" things based on the amount of the donation, and could only come up with unusual corner events. As an aside, "donation voting" is a funny turn of phrase for this. I guess it's ok, but it doesn't really capture what's going on here.

Typically, we only use such "donation voting" systems in small things that don't matter overmuch, and even then, it's used mostly either for the amusement of the donator or a "value added" function for donating to a non-profit. I can think of a couple examples:

1) There was a libertarian party platform that involved donating for what their slogan was going to be
2) Many fair events where you donate to a cause and someone (usually a political official) gets dunked with water, splattered with paint, etc

You’ll notice neither one involves ranking anything really important. There was no “donation voting” to figure out what the libertarian party stance was going to be, or what policies they were going to adopt. There was no such “donation voting” for who their candidate was going to be. Also, it attracted very few supporters overall – only a few thousands across 300 million people in the country.

The second one shows something that’s often extremely true in economics – we want something back personally when we spend money. It’s more common for people to participate in the second one, because they get something back – laughter. It’s a form of viciousness that they want to see someone they dislike, a politician, to suffer, and they will pay for that.

Taking that into account, when it comes to “donation voting” of books, especially towards a for profit entity, I foresee a couple possible outcomes.

1) Basically no one participates, at least relative to the number of users.
2) There is participation, but that participation will have nothing to do with books.

The first one is self-explanatory. By adding a paywall and not getting anything in return, the participation rate will drop tremendously. Most anyone attempting to give “feedback” will hit a paywall to give it and just leave. This blocks most information from the system. This would make logical sense to you personally – why would you pay for something that gives you no personal return? Even if there is a widespread social return, you’re unlikely to trade personal money for it. You, like most people, will wait for someone else to do it.

For the second one, we can imagine some kind of personal return based on participation. I could see two groups of people – those trying to prove the system works by donating for something legitimate, and those trying to completely undermine it to prove the system is illegitimate. Game theory would suggest that both groups fixate on one book, as if they spread their donations it’s easier for the other side to win.

Depending on the relative popularity/unpopularity of the system, I would expect the top two spots would contain one legitimate book and one stupid book, no matter what. However, this is actually a conflagration – no one cares about the book overmuch, they care about the system (either for or against), and so any “data” you would get from such would have no relation to what the data is actually derived from.
To give you an example, imagine if a gang shot up a convenience store, killing a rival gang member that was inside. The fact that the convenience store was shot up is terrible, and you could try to conclude that that gang hated that convenience store. However, it was really about the person inside – the rival gangmember. Deciding it was about the store is an erroneous conclusion.

I suspect that a “donation voting” system, especially to a for profit enterprise, would be mostly marked by a complete lack of caring or outright maliciousness. It’s just human nature. The most unlikely scenario is for anything of value actually being uncovered – unless you consider confirming/impugning the system itself to be something of value.

I hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Charlie

This is interesting in the comparison to dunking the mayor. When you pay to have the mayor dunked, it's because you are being malicious, and from being malicious, you derive humor. Now, there's no economic benefit to the mayor being dunked. There's no economic benefit to his clothes getting splattered with paint. In fact, there's an economic destruction - clothes which were worth something now aren't. But people pay for it because they like seeing politicians get the shit end of the stick - it's a malicious thing.

Or, if you prefer to think about it that way, malicious comedy has value to the person inflicting it. Says a lot about our psychology really.

Which is incidentally ALSO a problem of Xero's system - a few wealthy people with a malicious streak can maliciously destroy value, either because they want to see their opponents suffer, or just for pure basic malicious humor. This is more difficult (although not impossible) in a voting system.

[Xerographica]

Well, it's hard to grasp, and address, your point when you don't use a specific and realistic example.

My point is that I can lie about my true valuation of a specific choice and benefit more than telling the truth about it. Why would I tell you the truth about it when I benefit more by lying?

I'm just not seeing it. Personally, my preferred political system is truly important to me. I would lose big time by pretending otherwise. If you wouldn't lose by pretending, then evidently your preferred political system isn't that important to you.

[Galloism]

My point is that I can lie about my true valuation of a specific choice and benefit more than telling the truth about it. Why would I tell you the truth about it when I benefit more by lying?

I'm just not seeing it. Personally, my preferred political system is truly important to me. I would lose big time by pretending otherwise. If you wouldn't lose by pretending, then evidently your preferred political system isn't that important to you.

$20 really isn't all that important. It's kind of pathetic really.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Well, it's hard to grasp, and address, your point when you don't use a specific and realistic example.

My point is that I can lie about my true valuation of a specific choice and benefit more than telling the truth about it. Why would I tell you the truth about it when I benefit more by lying?

Incidentally, this happens in casino-play, where bets are even more important than elections.

When you play any card game at the casinos and you want to bluff and you know everyone else doesn't have good cards (a lot of people are terrible at lying with their faces), you can decide to lie by going all-in and pretend you have such a good move that you are confident someone will lose a lot of money then.

Most people back off because it is a successful type of bluff. Did I truly value the outcome as an all-in bet? No, but I lied to get marginal results nevertheless.

[Alvecia]

My point is that I can lie about my true valuation of a specific choice and benefit more than telling the truth about it. Why would I tell you the truth about it when I benefit more by lying?

I'm just not seeing it. Personally, my preferred political system is truly important to me. I would lose big time by pretending otherwise. If you wouldn't lose by pretending, then evidently your preferred political system isn't that important to you.

How important it is to me is irrelevant to whether or not I'll win.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

My point is that I can lie about my true valuation of a specific choice and benefit more than telling the truth about it. Why would I tell you the truth about it when I benefit more by lying?

I'm just not seeing it. Personally, my preferred political system is truly important to me. I would lose big time by pretending otherwise. If you wouldn't lose by pretending, then evidently your preferred political system isn't that important to you.

And this is why you cannot be trusted to be objective towards any test, run now or in the future.

You have too much stakes put into this system of yours.

[Xerographica]

I'm just not seeing it. Personally, my preferred political system is truly important to me. I would lose big time by pretending otherwise. If you wouldn't lose by pretending, then evidently your preferred political system isn't that important to you.

How important it is to me is irrelevant to whether or not I'll win.

In this game you win by getting others to pay attention to something that is truly important to you.

[Galloism]

How important it is to me is irrelevant to whether or not I'll win.

In this game you win by getting others to pay attention to something that is truly important to you.

Rule by goats.

[Washington Resistance Army]

How important it is to me is irrelevant to whether or not I'll win.

In this game you win by getting others to pay attention to something that is truly important to you.

Like autocratic goats?

[Xerographica]

I'm just not seeing it. Personally, my preferred political system is truly important to me. I would lose big time by pretending otherwise. If you wouldn't lose by pretending, then evidently your preferred political system isn't that important to you.

And this is why you cannot be trusted to be objective towards any test, run now or in the future.

You have too much stakes put into this system of yours.

But even if somebody else had created this thread I still would have made the same exact DVs.

[Alvecia]

How important it is to me is irrelevant to whether or not I'll win.

In this game you win by getting others to pay attention to something that is truly important to you.

Not true, I win by beating everyone else

[Soldati Senza Confini]

How important it is to me is irrelevant to whether or not I'll win.

In this game you win by getting others to pay attention to something that is truly important to you.

Honestly, I just see it as I wasted over 20 dollars to try and prove you wrong. That's a fucking week of ramen I could have bought with those 20 dollars instead of playing your silly game.

I can get people to pay attention to something that is important to me without having to spend money on stupid systems.

[Xerographica]

In this game you win by getting others to pay attention to something that is truly important to you.

Like autocratic goats?

This sure isn't important to me, which is why I didn't spend my money on it. Why didn't you spend your money on it? Why haven't you spent your money on your preferred system?

[Soldati Senza Confini]

And this is why you cannot be trusted to be objective towards any test, run now or in the future.

You have too much stakes put into this system of yours.

But even if somebody else had created this thread I still would have made the same exact DVs.

Yes, and the fact that you made it and you are running the poll, and all the weasel tactics you have tried to pull on us means you are an unreliable person.

Why would I be honest with someone who I know will manipulate their system the very minute they see themselves on the losing end of their own poll they have created?

I could have replied my true valuation, you still would have manipulated it. I have nothing to gain by being honest with you. I am usually honest, but in this case, you have destroyed every single bit of good faith I had in discussing your system with you, and for you to know my true valuations, because there's no value in me doing so.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Like autocratic goats?

This sure isn't important to me, which is why I didn't spend my money on it. Why didn't you spend your money on it? Why haven't you spent your money on your preferred system?

Because the money I could spend on my preferred system in your stupid ass poll would be much better spent to print a manifesto or some shit to distribute.

[Xerographica]

In this game you win by getting others to pay attention to something that is truly important to you.

Not true, I win by beating everyone else

Except obviously you're not even playing the game. You haven't even BV'd for your preferred system.

[Galloism]

Like autocratic goats?

This sure isn't important to me, which is why I didn't spend my money on it. Why didn't you spend your money on it? Why haven't you spent your money on your preferred system?

Marginal utility. The only reason to actually bid on one of these things is maliciousness to derive humor, and the only reasonable choice in that regard is autocratic goats.

However, right now Soldati and I have provided sufficient humor for everyone (you're welcome, by the way), so he doesn't have to do anything but chuckle to himself that autocratic goats and apparently a more valuable system than yours.

[Xerographica]

This sure isn't important to me, which is why I didn't spend my money on it. Why didn't you spend your money on it? Why haven't you spent your money on your preferred system?

Because the money I could spend on my preferred system in your stupid ass poll would be much better spent to print a manifesto or some shit to distribute.

Are you familiar with the Bible story about Elijah versus the prophets of Baal? Elijah only won because he was willing to compete with the prophets of Baal.

[Alvecia]

Not true, I win by beating everyone else

Except obviously you're not even playing the game. You haven't even BV'd for your preferred system.

Except this game isn't about which is the best political system, and we all know it.
It's about which is the best form of decision making. BV or DV.

So in a way, I have revealed my true valuation by not contributing to the DV count.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Because the money I could spend on my preferred system in your stupid ass poll would be much better spent to print a manifesto or some shit to distribute.

Are you familiar with the Bible story about Elijah versus the prophets of Baal? Elijah only won because he was willing to compete with the prophets of Baal.

But he knew he could win because he had God on his side and God explicitly told him to do it.

Elijah, in fact, went into hiding like every other prophet of God, and it wasn't until God told him what to do and to do it now that he accepted to even go and confront them.