Zeke

@RokoMijic For me, this kind of game theory question is never more than a curiosity -- because it needs very silly assumptions to make it interesting. Everyone's decision has to be simultaneous with no communication before or during. Nothing in real life is much like that.

Time for some math on the blender game. The Blender Game is an excellent probe that reveals as very particular way that the minds of WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) people are broken. Perhaps THE way that they are broken. What is the rational solution to the blender game? Well, basic game theory for self-interested players gives a clear answer. You never get into the blender. This is because the move of not getting into the blender strictly dominates getting in: whatever happens, you will always be better off or the same if you stay out of the blender. The end. In game theory a Nash Equilibrium is very simple - it is a state where there's no unilateral move anyone could make to improve their own situation. In the (selfish) Blender game there are many Nash Equilibria because lots of states have the property that it's way above 50% in the blender, so it doesn't matter what any one individual does. So all of those are Nash Equilibria, as well as the state where everyone is outside the blender ("all red" in Tim Urban's red/blue framing). But all the states that have <50% in the blender are not Nash Equilibria because anyone one of the people in the blender could now save their own life by exiting. But the Nash Equilibrium where everyone is outside is in some sense better. It is more stable. In game theory we can formalize this as a type of equilibrium called Trembling Hand Perfect Equilibrium (THPE). In THPE we imagine that people will make their moves in the game and then with some small probability they will accidentally press the wrong button because their "hand is trembling". There is only one THPE for the blender game with selfish players, which is when everyone presses red. It's easy to see why: imagine there's 50% people exactly in the blender. Out of 1000, 500, for example. Then if you imagine that each one of those 500 people who are deliberately putting themselves into the blender has a small chance of accidentally not going into the blender. Now if you are one of these people, you reason that even if you don't make the mistake yourself, someone else might. And then you are going to die, which is bad, so you can improve your situation by actually exiting. The same is true for 501 people, 502, etc. None of the "in the blender" states are actually Trembling Hand Perfect Equilibria. But, the "everyone out of the blender" state is a Trembling Hand equilibrium, because even though some people might accidentally go into it with some small probability, you are definitely not going to improve your own chances by joining them to almost certainly be blended. Okay, but what about if you are a mixture of selfish and altruistic. Say you assign utility +1 to yourself for surviving, and +1/N for each other person who survives. We can analyze this new game: there are now other "stable" (THPE) equilibria? Yes. If everyone is a bit altruistic, then "all in the blender" also becomes a Trembling Hand Perfect Equilibrium. The reason for this is that for someone who is at least a little bit altruistic, it is okay for them to suffer a small chance of being blended in exchange for a larger chance of saving the larger group. "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few - or the one". Note that in these games both the size of the set you are saving and the probability of saving them is larger, because in order for getting out of the blender to actually save yourself, you need one more other person to also get out, which is ε times less likely. So any nonzero amount of altruism is enough to make these blue equilibria THPE. This seems to vindicate the "Blue" position. As long as everyone is at least a little bit altruistic, "All in the Blender" is actually a Trembling Hand Perfect Equilibrium, so it is at least equally valid to "All out of the Blender", and some might argue superior since under trembling hand conditions it can prevent anyone from getting blended, most of the time (there are absurdly unlikely cases where many people simultaneously slip up). But there is a problem. The "All in the Blender"/"All Blue" equilibrium is only Trembling Hand Perfect if the number of altruists is at least at or above the 50% threshold. If there are 49% altruists and 51% are egoists, then the egoists will rationally abandon the altruists in the blender because both the altruists', and egoists' hands are trembling, so the blender is still dangerous, even if only slightly. But in reality you never really know how many people are slightly altruistic, versus just self interested and rational. In practice a fair number of these games end up with red winning. In these games if you use a mixed population with more than half the people being purely self-interested or even sadistic, the "All in the Blender"/"All blue" equilibrium is no longer Trembling Hand Perfect. To see why, think about a mixed population where there are 3 selfish players and 2 altruists. Imagine them all provisionally choosing to go into the blender, and then reconsidering their options in light of the fact that someone(or several!) might slip. All the selfish people realize that if any three (or all four!) of the other four slip, they will be in the blender either with one other person or on their own, and they will then die. Therefore, all three selfish players will not enter the blender. But then, the altruists also get blended with high probability, so actually they don't want to get in either. Now imagine that all the altruists are sort of "running the same algorithm", like functional decision theory. If they assign any nonzero probability to the case that they are outnumbered by selfish people, they should all choose to get out of the blender/all play red. This is because in cases where self-interested players outnumber altruists, playing red strictly dominates even for the altruists, and in cases where altruists outnumber the self-interested you can do either and it makes no difference to first order. High commitment cooperation only makes sense when you are absolutely sure that the altruists outnumber the merely self-interested who larp as altruists. So to pick blue, it is not enough to merely be an altruist. Rational altruists wouldn't pick blue. You must also walk around with the background assumption that everyone else in the entire world is also an altruist. What is the flaw of the WEIRD mind that this thought experiment exposes? It's that WEIRD people do game theory by tentatively assuming that every group they ever interact with is composed of altruists/cooperators, and then maybe adjusting given specific information on bad individuals. It's "Assume everyone is a cooperator by default, and then adjust if needed" decision theory. WEIRD Decision Theory. WDT. This sounds stupid, but it is a neat hack that solves lots of things. It prevents WEIRD people from letting rational mutual doubt ruin their lives by defecting just on the chance that the other person might want to defect. It is also probably about the simplest way to solve that, other than "always cooperate". So to WEIRD people, "All blue" comes out as the obviously correct answer, even though it is not actually the right answer in the math. They don't like it even when they know the math! The blender game is weirdly, unnaturally balanced to expose this flaw. Usually there is some active benefit to coordination, so the "always assume other people will cooperate if you do" hack does tend to line up with the math, because the small chance of people not cooperating is usually cancelled out by big benefits of cooperation. But in the blender game, there is no benefit to cooperating. The uncoordinated equilibrium is just better. WEIRD people don't like it when uncoordinated equilibria are just better. This is why they are always trying to cancel capitalism. And this is why they keep getting into the blender. □

@GenePark That's because what makes a show entertaining is diverse personalities. If you don't have that, the other kind of diversity does nothing to make up for it.

I’ve learned to take people’s TV recommendations to heart. I thought succession looked like some boring rich white people show and it turned out to be the most interesting rich white people I’ve ever seen since tom and daisy Buchanan

I should finally watch mad men huh

@The__Goomba @nio4537 Sure, but you know what else could serve as an extra button? An extra button. There was no need for something the size of a windshield.

@nio4537 I actually like it since it gives an extra button for quick map access and stuff.

I like it but I’ve had more of these break than any other controller.

@bendreyfuss Yeah, us too. Binocular vision doesn't really help with this one. I generally prefer subs to dubs, but the viewing experience does lose something when you have to flick your eyes down every few seconds.

I don’t know what it is like to have two eyes but as someone with one eye, it is less than ideal to rely on subtitles. I can read them, but it means I miss most of the screen.

@johnondrasik I always wondered -- did you have to get permission from DC, or is this sort of thing considered fair use? There seem to be a lot of Superman songs around, using trademarked terms and everything.

Superman turns 25 today! So grateful to all of you who have supported me and my music for a quarter century! You make it easy to be me. ❤️🦸‍♂️🇺🇸🎹

@postoctobrist To say nothing of sliced bread. For the ducks.

if there’s one single feature he has, besides an insistence on France’s grandeur, it’s absolute contempt for all of his subordinates. at one point he says of Massu (insurrectionist general in postwar Algeria) ‘he’s a good general but it’s not like he invented hot water’

de Gaulle was so fucking funny

@TJ_DarkRage @BillboardChris "Mama" is usually the first thing a baby can say. That's the whole reason it means mother in so many languages.

@BillboardChris Does this child actually know the word “mama,” and if so, how? Did the baby live with mother for a time? That issue aside, if we are going to tell homosexual couples that they cannot have children, then perhaps we should start screening heterosexual couples for fitness also.

These men laugh as the baby cries and says “ma ma ma.” They think it’s funny because “there is no mama.” This baby was designed to never have a mother so that two men could satisfy their selfish desires. It’s impossible for a normal person to watch this without instinctual disgust.

@elimcgowan I think they've caught this now, but you'll get a kick out of it: Grok decided to write up this exchange as a Trending story, but completely mixed you and Johnson up.

Forbidding adult children from morally neutral life decisions like this is both unbiblical and unwise.

See, this is why we need AI. It steps up and makes the kind of mistakes we humans just won't make.

Matt Walsh asked: “What is a man?”

@wil_da_beast630 That man is clearly played by Joel McHale.

RetVrn

@peerlesspower LOL, didn't anyone working on that cover notice what a poor choice of words "land" was?

Namor's wedding day is marred by the scheming Llyra, who will destroy both husband and wife to gain her revenge. 1971 story by Roy Thomas and Ross Andru; cover art by Sal Buscema. #submariner #marvel #comicbooks #comics #marvelcomics Read more: peerlesspower.blogspot.com/2018/07/tides-…

@Nerfnow They should've known we could never run that far.

As a gamer,I am ready to be blamed for downfall of Marathon too.

@Rothmus And if you think THEY were something, have I got an Imperial Japan for you!

@IMAO_ So ignore it. What's stopping you?

This one is extra engagement slop because not only will it get people reply it’s a turtle, but also pointing out that a chicken is a bird. But for Twitter to get better, it all just needs to be ignored.

Hey, @nikitabier, this just appeared on my timeline. Do you think you can filter out mindless engagement slop like this? Feels like you’d need some intelligence like Grok to filter this sort of thing.

@SpritersRes @molegato Why not include this site on the linkroll? If you're gonna HAVE this account, it's just silly to make us look for it manually. (The link could still say Twitter, not X. Nobody's stopping you.)

@molegato We have genuinely never linked to any socials on the site as permanent links. Our new design will direct people to them now, which was perhaps a silent change, but one that may see some growth! It has been extremely valuable insight!

Thank you all for your comments, feedback & support since the reveal. We rarely engaged with social platforms & only recently began, so the audience humanisation has been extremely humbling. Our follower counts jumped a lot in just 2 days and it's freaking me out a bit!

@PotatoMon2026 @cyrusjohnson @ImMeme0 You're not supposed to need fighting ability as a journalist.

@cyrusjohnson @ImMeme0 She's like every far right instigator. No fighting ability.

After being detained and released, the leftist psycho is claiming Savanah started it and is asking for footage that will only prove Savanah was peacefully doing her job when she was harassed and attacked. Not only is this unhinged leftist violent, she is also delusional.

@noboru_takase @beardwax2 It's okay, rest of Japan. We know this guy's not with you.

@beardwax2 ありがたいですよね。 従軍慰安婦や強制連行はなかった真実が世界に広まる。そして実際にあったライダイハンが世界に広まる。素晴らしい。

X 번역기능 소름끼친다. 업데이트 한방에 전세계사람들의 소통의 벽을 없애버렸음. 이런사건이 인류역사에 있었나?

@nosoup4knowles @JeremyDBoreing @iwanttotalk_now It'll be WORTH the world exploding to see that.

@JeremyDBoreing @iwanttotalk_now Have Lindsay & Walsh on for a debate and the world will explode

Is this AI generated? I thought I had heard this guy talk before, but maybe not. I know it only makes Joel's day if I respond, but gotta get them clicks, so here goes: • Obviously Josh Hammer, who hates me and has been publicly critical of me for years, did not hand me a script. We do see the Israel issue quite similarly though. • I haven't worked for the DHFC in over a decade and haven't spoken to anyone there, that I can recall anyway, since bumping into Mike Finch at a funeral a few months ago. It was a Jewish Funeral, though, so go to town! • They certainly didn't write my script. • I said what on November 21, 2023? Please provide citation. • What simple factual claim do I refuse to engage? Please provide citation. • I have never said defending Israel is "the defining moral test of western civilization." Please provide citation. • I never said "America First means we have to put Israel atop our national priorities." Please provide citation. • I did not ignore Israeli money spent under FARA. I clearly said they have spent $188M the last decade, making them the tenth largest foreign lobby behind countries like Communist China and, strangely, the Marshal Islands. • "That's an awful lot of coincidences" is a funny thing to say when you have not established any relevant coincidences. • I have never worked for "the Israeli Lobby Network." Please provide citation. • "...by every available measure..." is hyperbolic and dishonest. What measures are available? All you offer here is assertion, misrepresentation, and paraphrase. In fact, you do not even avail yourself of direct quotes, much less textual analysis. Those would have made your video far more compelling. • "...word for word..." Please provide citation. • "...move by move..." Please provide citation. • I have not spent "Fifteen years inside pro-Israel institutions." I spent one year at DHFC, and then built a media company that did a billion dollars of revenue in ten years. Don't get me wrong, it was broadly pro-Israel. It was broadly pro-Israel because my partners and I are broadly pro-Israel. It did not "shape" me. I shaped it. • I can certainly "articulate a personal and independent view on Israel that is my own." It goes like this: Taxes are too high, bread is too good, military and intelligence are bad ass, has no inherent right to close the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is America's best ally in the region and maybe in the world, is an essential part of the West, is filled with good people and bad people, hard to find a good cheeseburger. • The Jeremy's Razor bit is pretty funny.

@HansFiene Don't worry. It's very unlikely that you ever gave birth to triplets.

I have had this fear lingering in the back of my mind for many years and this does not help