I think the problem might be confusing connotation and denotation. ‘Rational self-interest’ is a term because most rationality isn’t self-interested, and most self-interest isn’t rational. But when words congeal into a phrase like that, sometimes they can seem to be interchangeable. And it doesn’t help that aynrand romanticism psychodarwinism hollywood.
Yep, the Ayn Rand type of literature is what originally brought this to my mind. I also read a book about economic sociology which told about the prisoner’s dilemma and it said the most “rational” choice is to always betray your partner (if you only play once) and Nash was surprised when people didn’t behave this way
That’s a roughly high-school-level misunderstanding of what the Prisoner’s Dilemma means, though I suppose it makes sense to be surprised that humans care about each other if you’d never met a human, and it did make sense to be confused by why humans care about each other until we recognized that (uncertainly) iterated dilemmas and kin selection were involved. I believe a great many people on LessWrong also reject the economic consensus on this issue, however; they think that two rational agents can cooperate in something like a classical PD, provided only that they have information about one another’s (super)rationality. See True Prisoner’s Dilemma and Decision Theory FAQ.
In the real world, most human interactions are not Prisoner’s Dilemmas, because in most cases people prefer something that sounds like ‘(Cooperate, Cooperate)’ to ‘(Cooperate, Defect)’. whereas in the PD the latter must have a higher payoff.
“It (game theory) assumes actors are more rational than they often are in reality. Even Nash faced this problem when some economists found that real subjects responded differently from Nash’s prediction: they followed rules of fairness, not cold, personal calculation (Nassar 1998: 199)”
Yeah, I remember reading that some slightly generous version of tit-for-tat is the most useful tactic in prisoner’s dilemma at least if you’re playing several rounds.
I think the problem might be confusing connotation and denotation. ‘Rational self-interest’ is a term because most rationality isn’t self-interested, and most self-interest isn’t rational. But when words congeal into a phrase like that, sometimes they can seem to be interchangeable. And it doesn’t help that aynrand romanticism psychodarwinism hollywood.
Yep, the Ayn Rand type of literature is what originally brought this to my mind. I also read a book about economic sociology which told about the prisoner’s dilemma and it said the most “rational” choice is to always betray your partner (if you only play once) and Nash was surprised when people didn’t behave this way
That’s a roughly high-school-level misunderstanding of what the Prisoner’s Dilemma means, though I suppose it makes sense to be surprised that humans care about each other if you’d never met a human, and it did make sense to be confused by why humans care about each other until we recognized that (uncertainly) iterated dilemmas and kin selection were involved. I believe a great many people on LessWrong also reject the economic consensus on this issue, however; they think that two rational agents can cooperate in something like a classical PD, provided only that they have information about one another’s (super)rationality. See True Prisoner’s Dilemma and Decision Theory FAQ.
In the real world, most human interactions are not Prisoner’s Dilemmas, because in most cases people prefer something that sounds like ‘(Cooperate, Cooperate)’ to ‘(Cooperate, Defect)’. whereas in the PD the latter must have a higher payoff.
This is what was said:
“It (game theory) assumes actors are more rational than they often are in reality. Even Nash faced this problem when some economists found that real subjects responded differently from Nash’s prediction: they followed rules of fairness, not cold, personal calculation (Nassar 1998: 199)”
Yeah, I remember reading that some slightly generous version of tit-for-tat is the most useful tactic in prisoner’s dilemma at least if you’re playing several rounds.