Mindscape 113 | Cailin O'Connor on Game Theory, Evolution, and the Origins of Unfairness
Vložit
- čas přidán 9. 07. 2024
- Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
Patreon: / seanmcarroll
Mindscape Podcast playlist: • Mindscape Podcast
You can’t always get what you want, as a wise person once said. But we do try, even when someone else wants the same thing. Our lives as people, and the evolution of other animals over time, are shaped by competition for scarce resources of various kinds. Game theory provides a natural framework for understanding strategies and behaviors in these competitive settings, and thus provides a lens with which to analyze evolution and human behavior, up to and including why racial or gender groups are consistently discriminated against in society. Cailin O’Connor is the author or two recent books on these issues: Games in the Philosophy of Biology and The Origins of Unfairness: Social Categories and Cultural Evolution.
Cailin O’Connor received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine. She is currently Associate Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science at UCI. Her works involves questions in the philosophy of biology and behavioral science, game theory, agent-based modeling, social epistemology, decision theory, rational choice, and the spread of misinformation.
#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture - Věda a technologie
Dear Prof. Carroll,
Two things happened this year: (bad) pandemic; (good) yous ~50 lectures - great ideas. I watched all of them, some - several times (QnAs). Good things are coming to the end...
I used to listen to you Mindscape podcasts every day - the best thing to fight I-101 traffic... Now, with the pandemic, it would be great if your podcasts will become videos! Please, consider this.
Your student forever!
Dr. O'Connor is a terrific communicator. Her language was precise when it needed to be, but colloquial enough to make the lesser among us comfortable too.
one thought struck me, since one group knows that the other group will always demand 2/3, if they demand more than 1/3, they get nothing, which is an uncomfortable situation for them, so they concede to the next best option for them. Ask for 1/3, it is better than nothing.
Here the information thing comes into play, I think. Yes the first group knows that the other group will demand 2/3, and if they ask more than 1/3, they get nothing. But it's true for the second group as well. If they stick to demanding more than 1/3, the other group insisting on 2/3 will also get nothing. If 1/3 is better than nothing, than the other group dropping from getting 2/3 to nothing, will be a more uncomfortable situation for them, at some point, they will have to give and come to the bargaining table.
The flaw in this model is that the person or group asking for 2/3 likely has a correlated complex of traits in addition to being greedy, such as stubbornness, resistance to learning, emotion-based decision making instead of quantitative logic, etc.
Greedy people who get away with more than their fair share, tend to use a lot of other unfair tactics to continue getting their way at the expense of others - even if it sometimes means getting less themselves if it means punishing the weak and less fortunate, just out of spite.
I think we also need to add some theory of mind and empathy into this analysis. You have to be able to imagine the equal suffering of the person who demands 2/3 and gets nothing for you to feel justified in your demanding more and also getting nothing. Then I agree.
But this becomes the issue in society. I'm not greedy, but I will gladly get nothing in exchange for seeing the greedy person also get nothing (feels goood--not gonna lie), however many other people who aren't greedy also struggle with empathy, so what goes on with the other person who demand 2/3 doesn't really enter their mind; they're just happy to get 1/3 instead of nothing.
"If they stick to demanding more than 1/3, the other group insisting on 2/3 will also get nothing." What you're describing here is a strike: accept 0 for a while until the other group realize that the likelihood of them actually getting 2/3 too low to be worth the risk. And sure, it works, but it's costly in the short run and requires coordination between group members.
@@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself O'Connor main point is that the unequal outcome doesn't require any difference between the groups at all. They can be just as greedy, stubborn, etc. All it takes is a small initial asymmetry, even just due to a random perturbation, and it will grow over time. Equality is an unstable equilibrium and inequality is a stable one, so in the long run we should expect to see inequality.
I really appreciate the back end of this conversation. There are so many people in the public sphere who want to wear a badge that says "I'm not racist", "I'm not sexist", and so on. But there is no such badge. It's not that your'e woke and I'm backward, it's that these are issues that we will always encounter. I tend to think that the people who are most interested in self-identifying as not racist, or not sexist, are actually the worst offenders.
Impossible to watch with so many ads. You dropped the ball, Sean. Minus one viewer.
Such an excellent dialogue.
Hello, will you be doing a Q&A on your last greatest ideas "Science" ?
Game theory is definitely on to something that is helping us achieve more things that help.
P.s. please make more "biggest ideas of the universe " videos.
24 was not enough.
My GF agrees . There's plenty more to be told.
I would be okay with a less-ambitious spin-off, like "Small Ideas in the Universe." It could be quick 10-20 minute discussions about one specific topic and its connections to others.
It could even be based on viewer-submitted questions.
I used to stir up my icream up so it was like a thickshake .. it started because mum always got Neapolitan ( damn vanilla and strawberry takin up all the chocolate real-estate) 😂 just me
@@toserveman9317 shnozberries taste like shnozberries 😎
@@toserveman9317 touche 😂🤘
Is "fair" ever given a definition here? Thrown around so much but feel like I'm left to assume it means equal outcomes for all players.. Thank god for all the diligent researchers that have discovered that life is not fair!
Is the rock paper scissors a game with complete information? I can think of it as players choose cards to open them simultaneously. So you have to choose your card not knowing what does opponent do. It's opposite to chess when players are doing their moves seeing board and the last choice of the other side. It feels like a simultaneous action should move a game towards an incomplete information category.
I’m certainly no expert, but I believe that incomplete information refers to not knowing the other actor’s preferences or payoffs. Like, chess is a complete information game because both players know all the rules and the consequences of each move. That also applies to rock paper scissors. If chess was incomplete, then you wouldn’t know the outcome of moving a piece to a given location until after you move it.
If she wants to study a game where people coordinate for shared pay offs she should study the online game (app) Among Us. It had become extremely popular with young people.
Do the thumbs down comment? I'm really curious to hear why or how this didn't meet their expectations. Title, channel, field of expertise... What could they possibly have expected more than this? I thought it was excellent lol I'm really curious.
There are people out there that hate cute puppies and sunsets. Basically, F those people - just ignore them.
@@AdamTait-hy2qh And F people who say F people. So you see the problem here?
There are some assumptions I think are very wrong here. Equality is not fairness and opportunity is not outcome for a start.
I do not think this is a scientific approach at all but an attempt to stretch a theory into a philosophical realm based on very biased assumptions. Also the prisoner's dilema is an attempt to illustrate a model, but here it looks like someone saying "Perhaps we will be a better as society if Schrödinger equations stop killing cats".
Enjoyable content non the less. Thank you.
Thanks
Game theory is great 😃
Ty
Sean Carroll and Cailin O’Connor: the Irish diaspora showing its scientific chops
Thank you for this interesting podcast!
Could you please invite the ex Nasa physicist Tom Campbell who has a brilliant book called "My Big Toe"(theory of everything) and who's preparing some really interesting experiments to prove that we live in a virtual reality....
I’ve been dying to ask a scholar a physics question about light. I’d be ecstatic if you’d do me the honor of taking the time to answer an interesting question that is likely to inspire minds.
People who donate on his patreon page get to ask. Ask Me Anything once a month.
First like then watch... Great video
Cailin O’Connor interview was very insightful and fun. I am happy with 1/3 of the pie.
Prison has altered the payout structure of the prisoners dilemma.
In real life...rats have a bad time in prison. It's better to be in jail not a rat than a rat.
Why are we dividing pies instead of making more pies?
Everyone gets whatever kind of pie they want.
Agree! The "many pies" theory of the universe floats my boat.
@@clemsonalum98 Who cares about diversity if everyone gets pie
Because normally it is the people who demand the bigger portion the ones who make more pies possible.
@@Ometecuhtli but it's more pies possible for fewer people. Sure, there are more resources made available, but then the proportion of who gets more and who gets less becomes even less equitable over time.
You can start with a situation where 1 person ("A") gets 2 pies, and 2 others ("B" and "C") get one pie each. Great, everyone gets at least one pie. But it's not fair: A has twice as much as B or C - okay, let's make 3 more pies.
A, being more greedy and having the extra resources to satisfy that greed will take 2 more pies, and B and C will have to split the 3rd.
A will say, "Look, B and C now have more pie than they had before." But now, instead of A having twice as many as either of the others, it's an 8 to 3 disparity.
Without an additional, external rule to enforce better fairness, this inequality grows in severity until the guillotines show up.
@@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself Let's give everyone a piece of pie free every day and if you want more than 1 slice you either have to make it or buy it.
Pie gives you diabetes anyway. Its probably better if you only had your 1 slice.
Probably a bad example for explaining ubi... But whatever.
You find the best guests, Sean
Sooooooooo does she play World of Warcraft?
why do they call it "prisoner's dilemma" ? Those guys are not convicted yet...
The prisoners dilemma is which rat to shank first
Sean it's looks like you didn't pay all your student loan yet, what's up with this mucho ads & advertising, Wow, man ,
That was really distracting yes. Should've been in the beginning or at the end.
nice podcast! I had 3 thoughts:
- I would have enjoyed more discussion about repeat interactions. Much of the discussion was about an outcome in a single interaction, which excludes more complex situations like “playing the long game,” or winning by having the other party consistently eating 2/3rds of the pie and dying 30 years early from diabetes or something. Incidentally, each party eating 1/3rd could also totally be a winning outcome.
- the distinction between equity and equality was not deeply explored in the outcomes. Words like “fairness” would come up, but apparently more in the equity sense, and not the equality sense.
- the existence of social markers was given too much weight in my own opinion. If group A typically gets their resources in an extremely work and risk-intensive manner, and group B gets their resources from low effort, low investment low risk endeavors then the existence of identity markers doesn’t deserve blame for inequality. I feel like there should be an effort/risk/investment coefficient where betaone x 1/3rd of pie = betatwo x 2/3rds of pie and there be no unfairness.
pizzacrusher yeah, it’s clear what you are getting at: minorities are poor because they are lazy so there’s no real unfairness there.
So always take 2/3 of the ice cream and throw it away. Now your a hero
I'll bet she has a more detailed analysis in her book. Might have more to say about your hypothesis around extremely work
Maybe you should buy her book to find out and stop being so lazy while expecting something for nothing?
lel
@@AdamTait-hy2qh Tjanks for the reminder!
Scientific American magazine endorsed Joe Biden
Game Theory won’t explain why certain groups of people refuse to integrate in a civilised society.
While there will always exist irrational discrimination while social conventions are being updated to their new environments, any evolutionarily uncompetitive or inefficient local equilibrium with respect to intergroup behaviour will necessarily die out by natural selection (in a world where multiple populations are competing for survival).
There are reasons to believe absolute gender equality is not evolutionarily stable:
- Technological advancement is the prime driver of gender equality; not requiring specific divisions of labour dependent on physiological characteristics. Yet all technology relies on functional infrastructure, and there is no guarantee this will exist indefinitely in the future (eg global disaster).
- Females have evolved to desire high status males, so males need to compete in the workplace to reproduce (unnecessary for female reproduction).
- Infants (and children to an extent) haven't evolved to be nurtured by males, and males cannot naturally be pregnant, so there may always be efficiency risks with respect to maximum time/attention available for employable labour.
- A population that sacrificed efficiency (cultural fitness) for equity would be replaced by its more evolutionarily competitive neighbours. Likewise, any population that attempted to sacrifice its evolved tendency towards ingroup preference (kin detection) would necessarily be replaced by one that did not.
It makes little evolutionary sense to view the male and female sex as being in competition with each other in a game theoretic sense. While they have both evolved multiple reproductive strategies (matched genetic quality with long term sharing of resources/fertility, short term trade of germ quality without male resource commitment, etc), some of which will take advantage of vulnerable opposite sex members (assault, conquest, cuckoldry, etc), all subsistent civilisations have universally converged on the institutionalisation of one of them (marriage). Those that did not find this memetic equilibrium have died out by natural selection. Native fertility rates suggest we may currently be in that process.
Sean, I get it; you like to analyze things as a spherical cow and when you say "white men should...." you're not trying to be so horrible. But the reality is that I am not a sphere, or a cow. I have very little power, wealth, assets or influence. Many people from other groups have a lot more power than I do and for the most part, society pushes me from place to place I recognize that I get a few superficial benefits from my demographic--but none of them make it so I don't have to work my ass off every day just to get by. Tell me again what power I'm suppose to be giving up? Again, I know you are talking about the average white male, but when you aren't careful here you just push the downtrodden into the arms of the demagogues.
Maybe your sensitivity to this issue should indicate how little exposure you’ve had to it and therefore shouldn’t be so presumptuous of a renowned scholar’s take on it. If you had greater understanding of it, you wouldn’t feel so personally vilified by it. Set your ego down and you’ll see that it’s a bullshit set of shackles you’re choosing to wear.
@@addammadd Yep, because of my race/gender, the only possible reason I could complain is ego. Thank you for proving my point. We have no idea what other people have been through--we can't know. What we can do is stop being racist and sexist.