Whittle Time (Rachel Lucas)

Whittle Time

Bill Whittle has a fantastic new essay up, You Are Not Alone. I love the whole game theory angle, always found that stuff fascinating. And I LOVE the idea of Ejectia; I think he might really have something great there. Go read.

Posted on May 22, 2007 10:40 PM | Permalink

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Comments (6)

Sparrow

We played a version of Prisoner's Dilemma in business school, and it resulted in two guys who liked each other pretty well almost coming to blows because of the outcome of the game. Because of course, one of them tried to screw the other immediately. And the one who had been screwed was infuriated, because he could not understand how the other guy could have betrayed him like that.

Successive rounds ended up repeating them screwing each other, no matter what the promises of cooperation were, and the guy who was initially screwed got angrier and angrier. It was fascinating to watch. And Bill's observations about the game and its application to societal structures is spot-on.

Posted by Sparrow | May 23, 2007 12:42 AM

Posted on May 23, 2007 00:42

Dana

It is a great piece of work, Bill is really hitting his stride. Herding cats is so very apt, as Ejectia is forming in front of our eyes, online.

Much of what Bill is writing about had a resonance in the Scout movement. I started as a cub and many of the virtues necessary to a succesful civilization were promoted. Honesty, duty, loyalty, respect and so many more.

Posted by Dana | May 23, 2007 9:19 PM

Posted on May 23, 2007 21:19

Brian H

Sparrow;
Your story is interesting in that obviously neither of the two hit on the tit-for-tat strategy. Maybe, as "friends", they presumed they could go for the optimum strategy directly, but the reward sched temptations kept pulling in the shorter-sighted of the two. Or SLT.

Posted by Brian H | May 24, 2007 11:52 AM

Posted on May 24, 2007 11:52

Brian H

Sparrow;
obviously neither "friend" hit on the tit-for-tat strategy. Interesting.

Posted by Brian H | May 24, 2007 12:01 PM

Posted on May 24, 2007 12:01

Brian H

Sparrow;
Interesting that the friends never hit on tit-for-tat. Maybe being friends made them too ambitious?

Posted by Brian H | May 24, 2007 12:23 PM

Posted on May 24, 2007 12:23

Brian H

Sorry for the multiple posts. CoComment was interfering with my system.