Replying to Avatar RedTailHawk

The website presentation you shared with me yesterday is a good model for understanding why scripts don't often get flipped.

As I thought about that presentation further, it dawned upon me that awareness of the bandwagon logical fallacy is potentially key as a consideration in those social network graphs. The person who is not swayed by the crowd would be an interesting anomaly to include in that presentation dynamic. Knowledge of that particular logical fallacy almost becomes a sort of inoculation against contagions of the false kind.
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55809c7c... 5mo ago 💬 1

Common Knowledge:

A particular fact F is said to be 'common knowledge' between the players if each player knows F, each player knows that the other know F, each player knows that every other player knows that each player knows F, and so on.

Let's play a game:

Imagine a game where without showing your neighbour your strategy, put yourself in other peoples' shoes, and enter in a whole number between 1 and 100. We will calculate the average number, and the winner is the one who guesses the number two-thirds times the average number. The winner will earn 3000 SATs.

What would be the perfect answer?

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55809c7c... 5mo ago

In order to make a decision as a rational player, it isn't enough to just be a rational player. You also need to know if others are playing rational and/or are rational players.

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RedTailHawk 5mo ago

Since the winner is receiving sats, everyone will pick 69, because 420 is excluded from the range and funny internet number haha, making 46 the perfect answer.

Joking aside, ranging from 1-100 makes your average basically at 50.5 so 2/3 of that would be 33.666666.

But of course, what if X% of participants think that way? Then the average would be dropped somewhat creating a new average and therefore a new 2/3 target.

From there, it becomes a weighted formula in which one must estimate how many layers of math a person will do and attempt to synthesize another person's logic for estimating how other people think which reminds me of that Newton quote regarding the predictability of "the madness of men".

I'll go with 32 estimating that 80% of people will estimate a 50% average and go with 33 as their guess and the other 20% will just throw a dart somewhere south of 50, averaging 25.