It* requires less effort because ‘cooperation’ reduces effort, while ‘competition’ increases it**.
In general, one would define cooperation in games as strategies that lead to better overall gains, and ignore effort involved in thinking up the strategy. In this case, there was an easy cooperative strategy, but it’s not in general true, for example, in the Darwin Game designing a cooperative strategy was more complicated than a simple 3-bot defect strategy. 3-bot didn’t do well but possibly could have if there were a lot of non-punishing simulators submitted (there weren’t).
Also, even in this particular case, you could have had better results if you had taken the effort to get more to follow the same strategy. The rules did not explicitly forbid coordination, even by non-Lesswrongers, so you could have recruited a horde of acquaintances to spam 1-bids. (that might have been against the spirit of the rules, but you could have asked abstractapplic about it first I, I guess).
In general, one would define cooperation in games as strategies that lead to better overall gains, and ignore effort involved in thinking up the strategy.
You should change your username to ‘one’ then.*
Imagine a game where the ‘optimal strategy’ is more difficult to calculate than the optimal strategy in chess. Or, suppose you’re playing a chess game. You know how to calculate the optimal strategy. Unfortunately, it will take 10 years to calculate on your supercomputer, and you can’t take 10 years to make the first move. To neglect time as a resource is to neglect that ‘the optimal strategy’ must be executed after it is formulated, not before.
The rules did not explicitly forbid coordination, even by non-Lesswrongers, so you could have recruited a horde of acquaintances to spam 1-bids. (that might have been against the spirit of the rules, but you could have asked abstractapplic about it first I, I guess).
Do you want to make a bet concerning abstractapplic’s response to this question?
In general, one would define cooperation in games as strategies that lead to better overall gains, and ignore effort involved in thinking up the strategy. In this case, there was an easy cooperative strategy, but it’s not in general true, for example, in the Darwin Game designing a cooperative strategy was more complicated than a simple 3-bot defect strategy. 3-bot didn’t do well but possibly could have if there were a lot of non-punishing simulators submitted (there weren’t).
Also, even in this particular case, you could have had better results if you had taken the effort to get more to follow the same strategy. The rules did not explicitly forbid coordination, even by non-Lesswrongers, so you could have recruited a horde of acquaintances to spam 1-bids. (that might have been against the spirit of the rules, but you could have asked abstractapplic about it first I, I guess).
You should change your username to ‘one’ then.*
Imagine a game where the ‘optimal strategy’ is more difficult to calculate than the optimal strategy in chess. Or, suppose you’re playing a chess game. You know how to calculate the optimal strategy. Unfortunately, it will take 10 years to calculate on your supercomputer, and you can’t take 10 years to make the first move. To neglect time as a resource is to neglect that ‘the optimal strategy’ must be executed after it is formulated, not before.
Do you want to make a bet concerning abstractapplic’s response to this question?
*I expect
Neo hasn’t been taken yet.