Why would you choose steal here, if you actually believed he had precommitted to it? There’s a decent enough chance he would honor his word. I doubt you would gain much, if anything, from appearing spiteful on TV.
Why would you choose steal here, if you actually believed he had precommitted to it? There’s a decent enough chance he would honor his word. I doubt you would gain much, if anything, from appearing spiteful on TV.
I’d gain all of the money for a start. You are not going to have much luck convincing me that ‘steal’ is irrational here given that it has better overall strategic properties (than this guys ploy) and happens to be the winning move in this case.
I doubt you would gain much, if anything, from appearing spiteful on TV.
Choosing ‘steal’ vs ‘steal’ doesn’t seem particularly spiteful to me.
I think he’s saying that your statement “I’d gain all of the money for a start” only works if you knew that Nick was going to “split”.
Prior to the actual decisions it of course merely one possibility of several—but is enough for there to be a clear reason apart from ‘spite’ to make the move. The significance of the other-shares outcome actually occurring is in as much as it denies any “stealing is spiteful” advocates the inevitable fallback of claiming that the ‘steal could win’ options is unrealistic and that the word of the ultimatum guy should be accepted at face value. ie. It is a rejection of the premise of the preceding comment.
You seem to be working on the assumption that you knew or strongly suspected that he would actually choose “split” despite apparently pre-committing to “steal”. If you believed him to any significant extent it is clearly better to choose split and hope he keeps his word (unless for some reason you think this makes you look bad enough that you’d rather willingly give up an expected large fraction of 6000 pounds instead).
Presumably Nick wouldn’t have tried to split with you, because he’d learned about your personality earlier in the game or was able to gauge your responses as he discussed his certain intent to steal. Nick’s ploy was especially good because it put Ibrahim in an unexpected situation where it’s a lot harder to appear genuine while simultaneously thinking through optimal strategy, thus giving Nick unusually reliable information about whether he could expect Ibrahim to actually try to split or not.
ETA: Retracted because I’m not sure this is relevant to User:wedrifid’s point.
Presumably Nick wouldn’t have tried to split with you, because he’d learned about your personality earlier in the game or was able to gauge your responses as he discussed his certain intent to steal. Nick’s ploy was especially good because it put Ibrahim in an unexpected situation where it’s a lot hard to appear genuine while simultaneously thinking through optimal strategy, thus giving Nick unusually reliable information about whether he could expect Ibrahim to actually try to split or not.
I’m not sufficiently impressed with Nick’s decision making that’d I’d be willing to assume he would be able to distinguish my response from Ibrahim’s to any remarkable degree. It’s possible that he could, in which case he gets points for incidentally being good at reading people but loses points because he still gets no money.
The best that can be said for the gambit is that it made good television.
Wow. That guy is a loony! I’d have walked away with a lot of money in that game (in the other guy’s shoes).
Why would you choose steal here, if you actually believed he had precommitted to it? There’s a decent enough chance he would honor his word. I doubt you would gain much, if anything, from appearing spiteful on TV.
I’d gain all of the money for a start. You are not going to have much luck convincing me that ‘steal’ is irrational here given that it has better overall strategic properties (than this guys ploy) and happens to be the winning move in this case.
Choosing ‘steal’ vs ‘steal’ doesn’t seem particularly spiteful to me.
Welcome to the land of Hindsight Bias. Enjoy your stay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight
What on earth are you trying to say? There is no instance of hindsight bias here.
I think he’s saying that your statement “I’d gain all of the money for a start” only works if you knew that Nick was going to “split”.
You know that in hindsight, but you wouldn’t have known it at the time.
Prior to the actual decisions it of course merely one possibility of several—but is enough for there to be a clear reason apart from ‘spite’ to make the move. The significance of the other-shares outcome actually occurring is in as much as it denies any “stealing is spiteful” advocates the inevitable fallback of claiming that the ‘steal could win’ options is unrealistic and that the word of the ultimatum guy should be accepted at face value. ie. It is a rejection of the premise of the preceding comment.
You seem to be working on the assumption that you knew or strongly suspected that he would actually choose “split” despite apparently pre-committing to “steal”. If you believed him to any significant extent it is clearly better to choose split and hope he keeps his word (unless for some reason you think this makes you look bad enough that you’d rather willingly give up an expected large fraction of 6000 pounds instead).
Presumably Nick wouldn’t have tried to split with you, because he’d learned about your personality earlier in the game or was able to gauge your responses as he discussed his certain intent to steal. Nick’s ploy was especially good because it put Ibrahim in an unexpected situation where it’s a lot harder to appear genuine while simultaneously thinking through optimal strategy, thus giving Nick unusually reliable information about whether he could expect Ibrahim to actually try to split or not.
ETA: Retracted because I’m not sure this is relevant to User:wedrifid’s point.
I’m not sufficiently impressed with Nick’s decision making that’d I’d be willing to assume he would be able to distinguish my response from Ibrahim’s to any remarkable degree. It’s possible that he could, in which case he gets points for incidentally being good at reading people but loses points because he still gets no money.
The best that can be said for the gambit is that it made good television.