Long Game

Well you know, I think there’s a kind of model you could argue that people are deprived of things so they revolt. But it’s much deeper than that.

I think it’s a mistake to look at what happened in London simply in terms of “well there were social cuts and so that’s why there was a rising.” That rising couldn’t have occurred if the elites themselves hadn’t appeared to be so corrupted, so compromised, and even one could say, so incompetent. That was the real issue that we faced there and I think if you simply say that if you do social cuts then people will riot, that’s not empirically true.

You really have to distinguish between the constant comings and goings of the system and the silliness of Rupert Murdoch, who in the end turns out to be a very silly man in many ways.

First, that they clearly can’t do it. And secondly that they profit from it anyway.

And the fact that they don’t seem to regard themselves as particularly having failed. I mean, this is what creates a crisis I think.

I’ll put it this way: this is a crisis in virtue — in the virtue of the political leadership, in the virtue of the financial leaders. There’s expected to be a certain degree of self-restraint and moral probity. You can’t substitute regulations for that, and you can’t worry about whether or not they’re going to be enforced in the future. The heart of the matter is that the integrity, the intelligence, the morality of these elites, have now been called into question.

these internal issues have begun to affect Ukraine’s foreign relations

Any estrangement from the West would have a direct bearing on Ukraine’s relationship with Russia.

Ukraine had been using its growing relationship with the European Union as a bargaining chip with Russia in these negotiations, but given that the future health of this relationship is in question, Kiev could be deprived of much of its leverage with Russia.

Yanukovich is trying to avoid agreeing to a new natural gas deal on Moscow’s terms, which the Kremlin has said is conditional upon a merger of Russian energy giant Gazprom with Ukrainian energy firm Naftogaz.

In retrospect, I think the best thing that could have been added would have been a discussion up front about how not to be confused about words. Some combo of the material in Disputing Definitions and Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory. After that, something to undermine reliance on introspection and intuition more generally, perhaps in the context of presenting basic cognitive biases.

There are a lot of ways to make ToK good, and some of them don't look like LessWrong.

I appreciate pquincy’s thoughtful comments. With regard to the reference to divorce, it’s also worth noting that – regardless of whether or not there are children involved – almost all divorce cases (along with almost all other civil cases) are resolved through a bargained solution (i.e., a settlement) rather than a trial. But in the vast majority of cases the bargained solution is not achieved until the parties arrive at a critical deadline such as the eve of trial. This is because, prior to the deadline and as suggested by Brams, “each player has an incentive to dissemble” in pursuit of a better outcome for itself. Since each player intuitively understands this, neither views the other player’s assertions about their “bottom line” to be credible, and neither can convince the other of the genuineness of its own position prior to the deadline.

Pquincy ‘s suggestion that this problem should eventually become less acute in a repeated game appears to be correct. But in the game of politics, it seems that (as in litigation), a player can be expected to pretend – in the pursuit of self-interest and for as long as it can – that it is less interested in arriving at a bargained solution than it is in pursuing some sort of abstract principle (such as what it would characterize as “justice” or “the public good”).

In contrast to some of the other people that have posted comments in response to this article, I don’t think the outcome that was ultimately arrived at in the debt ceiling negotiations can be fairly attributed to Obama’s having played the game poorly. Rather, I think the outcome was attributable to the fact that it was obvious from the outset that Obama’s objective (regardless of whether one wishes to characterize that objective as “preserving the health and safety of our most vulnerable citizens" or “holding on for a few more years to the remnants of a bloated welfare state”) would unquestionably be placed further out of reach if he were to walk away from whatever deal the other side was ultimately willing to grant as of the deadline. He could not credibly pretend otherwise.

Although this article muddles a few basic concepts, it serves to illustrate that game theory offers a relatively straightforward explanation for much of the conflict that exists in the world, certainly a much better explanation than is routinely put forth by partisans and commentators. Brams is spot-on. And it's a cop-out to claim that game theory assumes that people are hyper-rational, or that it does not apply when someone is seeking an unreasonable goal. Even if your adversary's goal is, at least in your view, unreasonable or irrational, game theory allows you to understand how you and your adversary can be expected to behave in the pursuit of your respective objectives.

In Washington, no politician is bound to reach a compromise to solve any long-term problem. Everyone, however, is playing a game called “election,” and the only possible goal in that game is to win the next one.

Anyone who promises to fix or change Washington is merely attempting to impose a cooperative game on a town that, by design, can’t play one.

A game theorist would say that the President is trying to play a cooperative game in a town that can’t play along with him. The trouble for the White House is that the Republicans aren’t playing a game called “fix the budget deficit.” They’re necessarily playing one called “defeat Barack Obama.” A reasonable offer seldom works in a divorce; there’s no reason to expect it would in Congress.

People act crazy, but they’re at their craziest when they want something. All you can do in response is to make your most honest estimate of what the crazies actually want, and respond as if they are methodically pursuing it.

The third strong hint was noticed, among others, by Pareto when, in his mammoth work investigating the relation between conduct and belief, Trattato di sociologia generale, he noticed that most moral philosophies were devoid of specific ethical content.

When we apply these insights to the Objectivist ethics, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Rand's moral system, like the moral systems of so many other philosophers, consists almost entirely of the rationalization of moral ideals that existed well before any set of abstractions was built around them.

Lacking a "technology" means that no Objectivist, including Rand herself, actually follows the Objectivist morality.

Other than a few vague hints, Rand and her disciples never bothered to explain how to distinguish those contexts in which such virtues as honesty, productivity, integrity, and rationality were absolutes from those contexts in which these fine virtues no longer applied.

If Rand's ethics were intended (as Rand insisted) to provide a manual for survival, how come the manual doesn't come with any instructions?

Game developers and players have critiqued gamification on the grounds that it gets games wrong, mistaking incidental properties like points and levels for primary features like interactions with behavioral complexity. That may be true, but truth doesn't matter for bullshitters. Indeed, the very point of gamification is to make the sale as easy as possible.

Exploitationware captures gamifiers' real intentions: a grifter's game, pursued to capitalize on a cultural moment, through services about which they have questionable expertise, to bring about results meant to last only long enough to pad their bank accounts before the next bullshit trend comes along.

As you can see, Roosevelt generally enjoyed broad public support despite having no success at persuading Americans to share his Keynesian view.

Obama took office at the cusp of a massive worldwide financial crisis that was bound to inflict severe damage on himself and his party. That he faced such difficult circumstances does not absolve him of blame for any failures. It sets the bar lower, but the bar still exists. How should we judge Obama against it?

He blames Obama for the insufficiently large stimulus without even mentioning the role of Senate moderate Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass it, in weakening the stimulus.

A foreign reader unfamiliar with our political system would come away from Westen's op-ed believing Obama writes laws by fiat.

In fact, the budget agreement does not include any entitlement cuts. It consists of cuts to domestic discretionary (i.e., non-entitlement spending.)

Likewise, he implies that Obama supported the undermining of the coverage expansion in his health care reform by cutting Medicaid

This is also totally false. The budget agreement contains no cuts to Medicaid or to state budgets. The automatic cuts that would go in effect should Congress fail to agree on a second round of deficit reduction exempt Medicaid.

Westen is apparently unaware, to take one example, that Obama repeatedly and passionately argued for universal coverage.

"He stumbled up to the urinal and started mumbling on about the depressed housing sector or something," said Kampman, who claimed Bernanke had to use both hands on the wall to steady himself. "Then after a while he just sort of stopped and I couldn't tell if he was laughing or crying."

"This is what it's all about," said Bernanke, who reportedly danced alone in the middle of the dark tavern. "Fucking love this song."

"The flows are not dark because of being wet," McEwen said. "They are dark for some other reason."

As of July, more than 40 percent of surface cargo bound for Afghanistan was transported along these routes. U.S. military officials have said they hope to increase this share to as much as 75 percent by the end of the year.

before Washington can expand its use of the NDN, the United States and Russia must address several outstanding issues.

What Russia really wants is an agreement on ballistic missile defense in Europe

it is likely that Washington and Moscow have already reached an agreement on most of these issues

There is not a single use of instancing in the entire game

Unlike PS, you can capture any territory at any time, but you do get “significant bonuses” to capturing a territory adjacent to your own.

SOE is really pushing the idea of wanting to make PlanetSide 2 into a full “sandbox” game in the future

Expect to see a lot of influence from top modern shooters

The developers mentioned several times that they want to allow players to design their own structures in the future.