The colloquial usage of zero / negative / positive sum games as people apply it to daily life seems like it captures something pretty useful to me. Roughly, they’re statements about whether we’re neutral / worse off / better off as a result of playing the game. Playing a positive sum game makes the world better, a negative sum game makes it worse.
This conception is Utilitarian, but I think for enough people this is close enough to correct that even if they don’t consider themselves Utilitarians it’s still a good model for thinking about interactions?
Right, I totally agree. The problem is just that this usage sounds like game theory, but it’s not. I want to emphasize that these are zero/positive/negative sum interactions (as opposed to “games”).
Interactions are part of a larger context (allowing us to judge whether the interaction was net positive/negative). Games, as understood by game theory, are self-contained: a game includes everything you need to know about its context.
Another problem is that the game-theoretic concept “zero sum” applies to all the ways a game could turn out. If there’s the possibility of mutual benefit, then the game isn’t “zero sum”.
But the colloquial usage is more naturally applied to specific interactions and their particular outcomes. An interaction was negative sum if everyone was worse off for it. The fact that there was a possibility of mutual benefit doesn’t have to spoil the classification.
This conception is Utilitarian, but I think for enough people this is close enough to correct that even if they don’t consider themselves Utilitarians it’s still a good model for thinking about interactions?
Not necessarily… we could define it in different ways. “Negative sum” might be defined as everyone being strictly worse off, rather than a utilitarian overall-things-are-worse-off-in-the-bargain.
That’s the thing: we need to give the colloquial definition some formal framework, to be able to say anything specific about it. It currently lacks one, and game theory is being spuriously used despite not supporting the intuitive concept being conveyed.
You can recover (something close to) Jeff’s explanation of the colloquial usage from the game theory version by positing that all games have a “do nothing” action such that if all players take “do nothing” then they all get zero utility. (More)
The colloquial usage of zero / negative / positive sum games as people apply it to daily life seems like it captures something pretty useful to me. Roughly, they’re statements about whether we’re neutral / worse off / better off as a result of playing the game. Playing a positive sum game makes the world better, a negative sum game makes it worse.
This conception is Utilitarian, but I think for enough people this is close enough to correct that even if they don’t consider themselves Utilitarians it’s still a good model for thinking about interactions?
Right, I totally agree. The problem is just that this usage sounds like game theory, but it’s not. I want to emphasize that these are zero/positive/negative sum interactions (as opposed to “games”).
Interactions are part of a larger context (allowing us to judge whether the interaction was net positive/negative). Games, as understood by game theory, are self-contained: a game includes everything you need to know about its context.
Another problem is that the game-theoretic concept “zero sum” applies to all the ways a game could turn out. If there’s the possibility of mutual benefit, then the game isn’t “zero sum”.
But the colloquial usage is more naturally applied to specific interactions and their particular outcomes. An interaction was negative sum if everyone was worse off for it. The fact that there was a possibility of mutual benefit doesn’t have to spoil the classification.
Not necessarily… we could define it in different ways. “Negative sum” might be defined as everyone being strictly worse off, rather than a utilitarian overall-things-are-worse-off-in-the-bargain.
That’s the thing: we need to give the colloquial definition some formal framework, to be able to say anything specific about it. It currently lacks one, and game theory is being spuriously used despite not supporting the intuitive concept being conveyed.
You can recover (something close to) Jeff’s explanation of the colloquial usage from the game theory version by positing that all games have a “do nothing” action such that if all players take “do nothing” then they all get zero utility. (More)