by mrjones » Thu Oct 01, 2015 12:57 pm
Guest wrote:mrjones wrote:mrjones wrote:Before accepting the Wikipedia article as a source, at least look at the
talk page. The top post there in particular.
The claim in the comic was that 'rational choices can lead to irrational behavior' ... Rationality can be defined precisely, and when the rules of the game are defined precisely you can work out how a rational being would act (as is done in the article).
If you take that view, then the claim becomes a contradiction in terms (like "four sided triangle",) rather then merely false, since in context of Game Theory, "behavior" and (series of) "choices" are synonyms. Your defeat of strawman arguments, while valiant, brings no new insight.
It's clear from context, that we can only assume one player to be rational (even that is a bit of a stretch, given their depicted actions, but let's take it at face value) while the rest are the flawed human animal we know and love. And that it leads to a string of decisions that, in hindsight, appear irrational.[/quote]
Yes, like I said the claim is self-contradictory. But, no, the escalation of bids is not not rational in any scenario.
Imagine you are a rational player faced with a player whom you cannot assume to be rational. The 'correct strategy' (assuming a rational opponent) would be to bid 60 cents, at which point the auction would end. However, you don't know that your opponent is rational, so are you being rational in bidding 60 cents? Probably not. In any case, if you do bid, and your opponent raises, clearly it is now foolish (irrational) to keep escalating. You have no reason to believe that your opponent won't keep raising. After the bids have escalated far enough, claiming that continued escalation is rational (This claim IS MADE in the comic and on the Wikipedia page [but not by Shubik or O'Neill]. This is not a strawman argument) is completely ridiculous.
[quote="Guest"][quote="mrjones"][quote="mrjones"]Before accepting the Wikipedia article as a source, at least look at the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dollar_auction]talk page[/url]. The top post there in particular.[/quote]
The claim in the comic was that 'rational choices can lead to irrational behavior' ... Rationality can be defined precisely, and when the rules of the game are defined precisely you can work out how a rational being would act (as is done in the article). [/quote][/quote]
If you take that view, then the claim becomes a contradiction in terms (like "four sided triangle",) rather then merely false, since in context of Game Theory, "behavior" and (series of) "choices" are synonyms. Your defeat of strawman arguments, while valiant, brings no new insight.
It's clear from context, that we can only assume one player to be rational (even that is a bit of a stretch, given their depicted actions, but let's take it at face value) while the rest are the flawed human animal we know and love. And that it leads to a string of decisions that, in hindsight, appear irrational.[/quote]
Yes, like I said the claim is self-contradictory. But, no, the escalation of bids is not not rational in any scenario.
Imagine you are a rational player faced with a player whom you cannot assume to be rational. The 'correct strategy' (assuming a rational opponent) would be to bid 60 cents, at which point the auction would end. However, you don't know that your opponent is rational, so are you being rational in bidding 60 cents? Probably not. In any case, if you do bid, and your opponent raises, clearly it is now foolish (irrational) to keep escalating. You have no reason to believe that your opponent won't keep raising. After the bids have escalated far enough, claiming that continued escalation is rational (This claim IS MADE in the comic and on the Wikipedia page [but not by Shubik or O'Neill]. This is not a strawman argument) is completely ridiculous.