It’s perhaps worth noting that if you add in some chance of failure (e.g. even if everyone goes stag, there’s a 5% chance of ending up −5, so Elliott might be risk-averse enough to decline even if they knew everyone else was going for sure), or some unevenness in allocation (e.g. maybe you can keep rabbits to yourself, or the stag-hunt-proposer gets more of the spoils), this further strengthens the suggested takeaways. People often aren’t defecting/being insufficiently public spirited/heroic/cooperative if they aren’t ‘going to hunt stags with you’, but are sceptical of the upside and/or more sensitive to the downsides.
One option (as you say) is to try and persuade them the value prop is better than they think. Another worth highlighting is whether there are mutually beneficial deals one can offer them to join in. If we adapt Duncan’s stag hunt to have a 5% chance of failure even if everyone goes, there’s some efficient risk-balancing option A-E can take (e.g. A-C pool together to offer some insurance to D-E if they go on a failed hunt with them).
[Minor: one of the downsides of ‘choosing rabbit/stag’ talk is it implies the people not ‘joining in’ agree with the proposer that they are turning down a (better-EV) ‘stag’ option.]
Agree—talking things out, making everything as common knowledge as possible, and people who strongly value the harder path and who have resources committing some to fence off the worst cases of failure, seem to be necessary prerequisites to staghunting.
It’s perhaps worth noting that if you add in some chance of failure (e.g. even if everyone goes stag, there’s a 5% chance of ending up −5, so Elliott might be risk-averse enough to decline even if they knew everyone else was going for sure), or some unevenness in allocation (e.g. maybe you can keep rabbits to yourself, or the stag-hunt-proposer gets more of the spoils), this further strengthens the suggested takeaways. People often aren’t defecting/being insufficiently public spirited/heroic/cooperative if they aren’t ‘going to hunt stags with you’, but are sceptical of the upside and/or more sensitive to the downsides.
One option (as you say) is to try and persuade them the value prop is better than they think. Another worth highlighting is whether there are mutually beneficial deals one can offer them to join in. If we adapt Duncan’s stag hunt to have a 5% chance of failure even if everyone goes, there’s some efficient risk-balancing option A-E can take (e.g. A-C pool together to offer some insurance to D-E if they go on a failed hunt with them).
[Minor: one of the downsides of ‘choosing rabbit/stag’ talk is it implies the people not ‘joining in’ agree with the proposer that they are turning down a (better-EV) ‘stag’ option.]
Agree—talking things out, making everything as common knowledge as possible, and people who strongly value the harder path and who have resources committing some to fence off the worst cases of failure, seem to be necessary prerequisites to staghunting.