This is a fair criticism of the game theory aspects—I concede it seems wrong. Do you also believe this mistake undermines the main point of the post—that positional results are important to happiness which makes it that not everyone can be happy?
I think that, after correcting the game theoretic aspects, the post provided very little argument for that conclusion. That’s not to say that the rarity of true zero-sum games makes the conclusion implausible, it’s just that it requires a different/additional argument.
Reflecting on your comment six months later, I think even though the criticism is valid, it completely misses the main point of the post. It wasn’t written to discuss the differences in strategic choices between playing zero and non-zero-sum games, but the ingrained conflict of interests between different players in life and the fact that winning in zero-sum/negative-sum games is just as crucial for happiness and survival as the nicer-to-talk-about cooperation in positive-sum games, and that it’s insincere to claim otherwise.
This is a fair criticism of the game theory aspects—I concede it seems wrong. Do you also believe this mistake undermines the main point of the post—that positional results are important to happiness which makes it that not everyone can be happy?
I think that, after correcting the game theoretic aspects, the post provided very little argument for that conclusion. That’s not to say that the rarity of true zero-sum games makes the conclusion implausible, it’s just that it requires a different/additional argument.
Reflecting on your comment six months later, I think even though the criticism is valid, it completely misses the main point of the post. It wasn’t written to discuss the differences in strategic choices between playing zero and non-zero-sum games, but the ingrained conflict of interests between different players in life and the fact that winning in zero-sum/negative-sum games is just as crucial for happiness and survival as the nicer-to-talk-about cooperation in positive-sum games, and that it’s insincere to claim otherwise.