[ExI] we aren't the world

spike spike at rainier66.com
Wed Feb 27 04:55:52 UTC 2013


 

 

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike
.

 

>.The game goes like this:  a test subject is given 100 bucks.  She must
offer some of it to a second player, any amount she chooses.  If the second
player accepts, they second player gets the amount offered and the first
gets whatever is left.  If the second player refuses, then both players get
nothing.I thought of a cool experiment: we get some number of players, each
kick in 100 bucks.  Then each player gets to be the first player once and
the second player once.  Every pair of players gets to negotiate anonymously
online, so an annoyed loser will never come to your office and whoop your
ass.COOL!  Spike

 

 

 

OK cool, here's my game.  You arrange an Ultimatum match in the following
way: anyone who wants to play buys two tickets, a first player and a second
player, a hundred bucks for the pair.  No one introduces herself or reveals
any names, so the players are unknown.  Half the tickets are sold in one
location and half in the other.  Now when we get about 10 players in each
location, we have collected 2000 bucks and we are ready to play.

 

A player comes into location A at some random time, and chooses a position,
1 or 2.  If there is someone available at the other location with the
opposite position ticket, they can play, neither player knowing who the
other person is.  It might be your boss!  But she doesn't know who you are,
so the anonymity frees up the negotiation process, and allows them to shout
obscenities at each other in all caps if they want.  

 

The interesting part of this game is that if you play nice, you will
probably at least break even: you offer 50 bucks as the player 1, take 40 as
the player 2, and good chance at least 2 of the negotiations will break
down, perhaps more, so you get your other 10 bucks from the 200 in the pot
divided 20 ways.  The players negotiate with anonymity, but everyone gets a
hard copy of the transcript without identities after the fact, as a study
guide for negotiations.

 

Is there a way we could experiment with this somehow?  Some of you
realtime-chat hipsters, how could we set up a chat session to play this from
home and somehow echo this off a remote site to negotiate realtime and
insure anonymity?  A lot of us have known each other for a long time: it
would be fun to play for smaller stakes, say 10 bucks for the ticket pair,
and see if we can figure out who wrote what.  We could try to spoof the
group, acting like each other, using a known person's characteristic quirky
sayings.  For instance, if someone offers Anders 4 bucks, he might write "4
bucks, you greedy bastard, I aughta come to the next extro-schmooze and give
you a whoopin!  }8-[ No deal, we both go hungry! " trying to fool us into
thinking I wrote that.

 

That would be a totally hilarious kick!

 

{8^D

 

As an experiment, how could we set up a play money version?  As a second
experiment, how could we set up a version where the identities of the
players are revealed after all the "money" is transferred?  Would the
anonymous version differ from the ID open after the match version?  We could
recruit roommates and office colleagues who are unknown to us,  in order to
further confuse the issue.  Cool!

 

spike

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