On 20 Jan 2014, at 10:50, LizR wrote:
On 20 January 2014 22:39, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>
wrote:
The point about acting randomly is that clearly you are not optimising
your utility. You a choosing something other than the optimum action,
so are behaving irrationally by definition. Yet, it could be a
beneficial strategy to do so, for all the reasons raised (fooling your
opponents, making a timely decision, and so on).
Sorry to be dense, but I still don't see this. When I say "acting
randomly", I assume we don't mean just doing anything, deciding to
go swimming in the arctic or declaring yourself to be Napoleon, I
assume we mean picking one of a number of options that appear to
have equal utility.
Let's say we're playing scissors-paper-rock. The best strategy - the
one that gives you the best chance of winning at least half the time
- is to choose randomly. Anyone who doesn't choose randomly is open
to having their moves predicted, and losing more often than they
otherwise would. So in this case acting randomly is rational...
isn't it?
OK. But now acting randomly is not that simple, and studies have shown
that the humans are very bad at that. A machine can easily distinguish
a human from a good pseudorandom generator. Humans have a tendency to
homogenize adding an order implicitly. Most humans get wrong when
shown ten pictures of random and non random pictures.
When presented with true randomness, humans extract order which are
not there.
Most people are amazed of the presence of long sequence of 1 and 0,
and 10, ... in the binary development of PI
(11.001001000011111101101010100010001000010110100011...).
Can we act randomly? Well, we might do that when panicking. Or we can
use some random generator, or the rest of coffee in a cup, or the
shape of the clouds, ...
Bruno
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