It occurs to me that there may be a critical difference between voicing sympathy for a weak faction, vs. actually joining it and sharing its misfortunes.
That is to say, a near-optimal strategy in Zug vs. Urk, assuming one is currently unaffiliated and not required to join either side, is to do as much as possible to support Urk without angering Zug and incurring penalties. As a latecomer you’d get little benefit from joining Zug anyways, but in the chance of a surprise upset, when Urk comes to power you will be more likely to benefit than uninvolved parties or active Zug supporters.
If everybody in the tribe has this adaptation, then it will no longer be useful because everybody will be supporting the underdog. The optimal strategy, then, is not to support the underdog per se but instead to support the cause that less people support, factoring in the rough probabilities that both Zug and Urk have to win. How would this yield a systematic bias toward favoring the underdog? It would only occur if in the modern world we still suspect that the majority will favor the team more likely to win.
Well, this depends on what level the average player is playing at; but at every level there is going to be more noise, and thus less evolutionary pressure. My friend told me that his teacher had told his class that, in practice, most people play on the second or third levels. (I have nothing to back that up with, I know nothing about stock trading)
It occurs to me that there may be a critical difference between voicing sympathy for a weak faction, vs. actually joining it and sharing its misfortunes.
That is to say, a near-optimal strategy in Zug vs. Urk, assuming one is currently unaffiliated and not required to join either side, is to do as much as possible to support Urk without angering Zug and incurring penalties. As a latecomer you’d get little benefit from joining Zug anyways, but in the chance of a surprise upset, when Urk comes to power you will be more likely to benefit than uninvolved parties or active Zug supporters.
If everybody in the tribe has this adaptation, then it will no longer be useful because everybody will be supporting the underdog. The optimal strategy, then, is not to support the underdog per se but instead to support the cause that less people support, factoring in the rough probabilities that both Zug and Urk have to win. How would this yield a systematic bias toward favoring the underdog? It would only occur if in the modern world we still suspect that the majority will favor the team more likely to win.
Well, this depends on what level the average player is playing at; but at every level there is going to be more noise, and thus less evolutionary pressure. My friend told me that his teacher had told his class that, in practice, most people play on the second or third levels. (I have nothing to back that up with, I know nothing about stock trading)