trying to coordinate with 1/10/100/1000+ people [...] not everyone on LW is actually trying to coordinate with anyone, which is fine.
I wonder if it might be worth writing a separate post explaining why the problems you want to solve with 10/100/1000+ people have the structure of a coordination problem (where it’s important not just that we make good choices, but that we make the same choice), and how much coordination you think is needed?
In World A, everyone has to choose Stag, or the people who chose Stag fail to accomplish anything. The payoff is discontinuous in the number of people choosing Stag: if you can’t solve the coordination problem, you’re stuck with rabbits.
In World B, the stag hunters get a payoff n1.1 stags, where n is the number of people choosing Stag. The payoff is continuous in n: it would be nice if the group was better-coordinated, but it’s usually not worth sacrificing on other goals in order to make the group better-coordinated. We mostly want everyone to be trying their hardest to get the theory of hunting right, rather than making sure that everyone is using the same (possibly less-correct) theory.
I think I mostly perceive myself as living in World B, and tend to be suspicious of people who seem to assume we live in World A without adequately arguing for it (when “Can’t do that, it’s a coordination problem” would be an awfully convenient excuse for choices made for other reasons).
Stag/Rabbit is a simplification (hopefully obvious but worth stating explicitly to avoid accidental motte/bailey-ing). A slightly higher-resolution-simplification:
When it comes to “what norms do we want”, it’s not that you either get all-or-nothing, but if different groups are pushing different norms in the same space, there’s deadweight loss as some people get annoyed at other people for violating their preferred norms, and/or confused about what they’re actually supposed to be doing.
[modeling this out properly and explicitly would take me at least 30 minutes and possibly much longer. Makes more sense to do later on as a post]
Oh, I see; the slightly-higher-resolution version makes a lot more sense to me. When working out the game theory, I would caution that different groups pushing different norms is more like an asymmetric “Battle of the Sexes” problem, which is importantly different from the symmetric Stag Hunt. In Stag Hunt, everyone wants the same thing, and the problem is just about risk-dominance vs. payoff-dominance. In Battle of the Sexes, the problem is about how people who want different things manage to live with each other.
Nod. Yeah that may be a better formulation. I may update the Staghunt post to note this.
“Notice that you’re not actually playing the game you think you’re playing” is maybe a better general rule. (i.e. in the Staghunt article, I was addressing people who think that they’re in a prisoner’s dilemma, but actually they’re in something more like a staghunt. But, yeah, at least some of the time they’re actually in a Battle of the Sexes, or… well, actually in real life it’s always actually some complicated nuanced thing)”
The core takeaway from the Staghunt article that still seems good to me is “if you feel like other people are defecting on your preferred strategy, actually check to see if you can coordinate on your preferred strategy. If it turns out people aren’t just making a basic mistake, you may need to actually convince people your strategy is good (or, learn from them why your strategy is not in fact straightforwardly good.”
I think this (probably?) remains a good strategy in most payoff-variants.
(Upvoted.)
I wonder if it might be worth writing a separate post explaining why the problems you want to solve with 10/100/1000+ people have the structure of a coordination problem (where it’s important not just that we make good choices, but that we make the same choice), and how much coordination you think is needed?
In World A, everyone has to choose Stag, or the people who chose Stag fail to accomplish anything. The payoff is discontinuous in the number of people choosing Stag: if you can’t solve the coordination problem, you’re stuck with rabbits.
In World B, the stag hunters get a payoff n1.1 stags, where n is the number of people choosing Stag. The payoff is continuous in n: it would be nice if the group was better-coordinated, but it’s usually not worth sacrificing on other goals in order to make the group better-coordinated. We mostly want everyone to be trying their hardest to get the theory of hunting right, rather than making sure that everyone is using the same (possibly less-correct) theory.
I think I mostly perceive myself as living in World B, and tend to be suspicious of people who seem to assume we live in World A without adequately arguing for it (when “Can’t do that, it’s a coordination problem” would be an awfully convenient excuse for choices made for other reasons).
Thanks.
Stag/Rabbit is a simplification (hopefully obvious but worth stating explicitly to avoid accidental motte/bailey-ing). A slightly higher-resolution-simplification:
When it comes to “what norms do we want”, it’s not that you either get all-or-nothing, but if different groups are pushing different norms in the same space, there’s deadweight loss as some people get annoyed at other people for violating their preferred norms, and/or confused about what they’re actually supposed to be doing.
[modeling this out properly and explicitly would take me at least 30 minutes and possibly much longer. Makes more sense to do later on as a post]
Oh, I see; the slightly-higher-resolution version makes a lot more sense to me. When working out the game theory, I would caution that different groups pushing different norms is more like an asymmetric “Battle of the Sexes” problem, which is importantly different from the symmetric Stag Hunt. In Stag Hunt, everyone wants the same thing, and the problem is just about risk-dominance vs. payoff-dominance. In Battle of the Sexes, the problem is about how people who want different things manage to live with each other.
Nod. Yeah that may be a better formulation. I may update the Staghunt post to note this.
“Notice that you’re not actually playing the game you think you’re playing” is maybe a better general rule. (i.e. in the Staghunt article, I was addressing people who think that they’re in a prisoner’s dilemma, but actually they’re in something more like a staghunt. But, yeah, at least some of the time they’re actually in a Battle of the Sexes, or… well, actually in real life it’s always actually some complicated nuanced thing)”
The core takeaway from the Staghunt article that still seems good to me is “if you feel like other people are defecting on your preferred strategy, actually check to see if you can coordinate on your preferred strategy. If it turns out people aren’t just making a basic mistake, you may need to actually convince people your strategy is good (or, learn from them why your strategy is not in fact straightforwardly good.”
I think this (probably?) remains a good strategy in most payoff-variants.