In my ideal world, everyone would forget that “zero sum”, “positive sum”, and “negative sum” were terms which applied to game theory at all, but otherwise keep using them as they are.
“Negative sum” makes sense (at least, some sense) as a statement to make about interactions, as opposed to games. We can classify an interaction as positive or negative based on a comparison to a world where it didn’t happen.
I think they mean that ad tech (or perhaps a more consensus example is nukes) is a prisoner’s dilemma, which is nonzero sum as opposed to positive/negative/constant/zero sum.
attention is zero-sum: there’s a fix supply (well, as a simplification)
As the post notes, zero-sum in resources is not the same as zero-sum in satisfaction. Even if I can only spend a fixed attention budget, how I spend it determine global satisfaction, not just the distribution of satisfaction among players.
yep! I didn’t meant to imply otherwise. but I should have specified, or maybe just phrase differently; ex.: there’s a fixed supply of attention (as a first approximation)
Things like ad tech are often called zero-sum, when the speaker actually is trying to say that they are negative sum.
Unlike “zero-sum game”, a meaningful concept that the post carefully analyzes and extends, “negative-sum game” seems to have no meaning at all.
Yeahhh. Maybe I should have emphasized this more.
In my ideal world, everyone would forget that “zero sum”, “positive sum”, and “negative sum” were terms which applied to game theory at all, but otherwise keep using them as they are.
“Negative sum” makes sense (at least, some sense) as a statement to make about interactions, as opposed to games. We can classify an interaction as positive or negative based on a comparison to a world where it didn’t happen.
levels of simulacra, a term can refer either to realized utility or beliefs about utility.
I think they mean that ad tech (or perhaps a more consensus example is nukes) is a prisoner’s dilemma, which is nonzero sum as opposed to positive/negative/constant/zero sum.
attention is zero-sum: there’s a fix supply (well, as a simplification)
As the post notes, zero-sum in resources is not the same as zero-sum in satisfaction. Even if I can only spend a fixed attention budget, how I spend it determine global satisfaction, not just the distribution of satisfaction among players.
yep! I didn’t meant to imply otherwise. but I should have specified, or maybe just phrase differently; ex.: there’s a fixed supply of attention (as a first approximation)