The bot doesn’t run the money transfer. It runs the auction (collects bids from everybody, displays bids when all have been collected), and runs a random number generator.
We have also used the same bot to play a Schelling Point Game, where someone names a category (eg “a book”) instead of a thing to auction, and we all make a guess (e.g “Strategy of Conflict” or “The Bible”) instead of a bid. You get a point if your guess is the same as someone else’s.
The chance of paying 10x also seems like it constrains the bids to less than a tenth of where people start to lose risk neutrality- in order to bid $100, you need to be willing to pay up to $1000!
Alternatively it trains you to be more risk neutral.
I’m assuming that the individuals have divided their funds into “risk neutral” and “risk averse” in a discrete way, rather than with a continuous utility function. This makes sense when there’s a clear discretionary / non-discretionary split; I can easily adjust my entertainment budget this month to compensate for losing $100, but I might not be able to easily adjust my rent budget to compensate for losing $1000.
If people don’t have any funds they consider risk-neutral, then I think that doing some sort of gambling to develop the psychological skill of risk neutrality is important, but I doubt this is the optimal way to do that training.
Once you have a bot to run it, can’t you drop the 10% chance of 10x bit and just transfer money every time?
Or just have one piece of paper, and write the transactions there.
The bot doesn’t run the money transfer. It runs the auction (collects bids from everybody, displays bids when all have been collected), and runs a random number generator.
We have also used the same bot to play a Schelling Point Game, where someone names a category (eg “a book”) instead of a thing to auction, and we all make a guess (e.g “Strategy of Conflict” or “The Bible”) instead of a bid. You get a point if your guess is the same as someone else’s.
The bot could keep track of who owes what, and then you could settle monthly or something. Easier than adding money transfer.
Agreed, we just haven’t gotten to that yet. The auctioneer chatroom bot is pretty new.
I’d love to hear more about the bot. How does it work? Where is it run? Can others access it too?
I don’t speak Computer, but this is the bot: http://aaronparecki.com/articles/2011/02/12/1/loqi-the-friendly-irc-bot
We use him in a company hipchat room, and I don’t know if he has been altered/reprogrammed in any way to run auctions.
Specifically, here’s the little add-on for Loqi that conducts auctions: https://github.com/aaronpk/zenircbot-bid
The chance of paying 10x also seems like it constrains the bids to less than a tenth of where people start to lose risk neutrality- in order to bid $100, you need to be willing to pay up to $1000!
Alternatively it trains you to be more risk neutral.
I’m assuming that the individuals have divided their funds into “risk neutral” and “risk averse” in a discrete way, rather than with a continuous utility function. This makes sense when there’s a clear discretionary / non-discretionary split; I can easily adjust my entertainment budget this month to compensate for losing $100, but I might not be able to easily adjust my rent budget to compensate for losing $1000.
If people don’t have any funds they consider risk-neutral, then I think that doing some sort of gambling to develop the psychological skill of risk neutrality is important, but I doubt this is the optimal way to do that training.