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).
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).