Eric wrote: > > Since the amount of > > money in the "economy" here was fixed, paying 2 to 25 cents > to reduce > > another person's wealth by one dollar sounds like a pretty good > > investment decision to me, > in > > effect raising one's own wealth by between 75 and 98 cents. Is this > right? >
Gustavo replied: > > There's something wrong with your math. > > Let the state of the game be defined by ((Absolute wealth of > Player1, Absolute wealth of Player2), (Relative wealth of > Player1, Relative wealth of Player2 )) > > So at t0, the state of the game is (($50, $50), (50%, 50%)) > > After the predatory move, this state of the game is about > (($49.98, $49.00), (50.49%, 49.51%)). > > So, yes, if the goal is to maximize relative wealth, the > predator is being rational, especially if the total wealth of > the game is small. Gustavo, I'm not sure I understand how my math was wrong, but it's likely since I am mathematically impaired. However, I think our points are the same: In a game with a fixed amount of money to go around, any decrease in someone else's amount is de facto an increase in your amount. The experiment sets up a mercantilist world, where "impoverish your neighbor" is equivalent to "make yourself richer." That as a matter of history the mercantilists proposed policies aimed at maximizing their share of a fixed amount of "wealth" resembling the "irrational" actions of the subjects of this experiments is evidence of the consistency with which the mercantilists worked out the implications of the assumption that the amount of wealth in the world was fixed in advance. Does this accurately describe the experiment in question, and explain why the subjects' seemingly irrational actions were really rational? Plus, on this view, we don't have to come up with some alternate theory to explain why people are both irrational and cruel. Eric McDaniel Graduate Student, University of Tulsa
