On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 02:37:25PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: > On 1/19/2014 2:14 PM, Russell Standish wrote: > >Absolutely. As I said to Liz, being irrational is sometimes the best > >way to get ahead. > > So if you define rational as always making the best move to get > ahead you are trapped in a contradiction - which comes from starting > with a poor definition of "rational" (no doubt adapted from > economists). >
No - it is always making the optimal move according to its utility. There may well be irrational strategies with better payoff in the longer term - eg in iterated games. cf discussion of the tit-for-tat strategy in the iterated prisoners dilemma, whereas the rational move is to always defect. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
