game theory
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A tour of “Newcomb’s Paradox,” in which philosophers who ought to know better argue about the best way to behave in a nonsensical, world-hopping dilemma.
Sometimes, only an irrational choice can help us make the world as good as it could possibly be.
anonymity, anonymous, anonymous action, Blood Test, brains, Charles Baxter, choice, consciousness, Daniel Dennett, emotion, emotions, ensemble behavior of matter, free will, game theory, Hamlet, irrational behavior, irrational choices, irrationality, magical thinking, neural firing, neurons, neuroscience, Newcomb’s Paradox, philosophy, physics, prediction, predictive neuroscience, prisoners’ dilemma, prophecy, quantum computers, quantum mechanics, rational behavior, rational choices, rationality, revenge, Robert Frank, Robert Sapolsky, Roko’s basilisk, Sabine Hossenfelder, science, social opprobrium, storytelling, superposition, The Lion King, The Prisoners’ Dilemma, trust, uncertainty, uncertainty principle
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Why are some worms such lazy lovers, and why on Earth should we care?
For an experienced partner, worms pull out all the stops. Okay. Gross, maybe, but okay. And yet, knowing this helps lead us to a feminist reappraisal of other animals’ behaviors … including humans.
Alberto Velando, animal behavior, animal behaviors, animal desire, animal studies, biology, care, caretaking, caretaking and sexuality, cooperative equilibrium, coral, earthworm, earthworm erotica, earthworm sex, evolution, evolutionary biology, evolutionary game theory, fish, game theory, game theory in evolutionary biology, Grove & Cowley, male care of babies, male care of offspring, Marah J Hardt, mating habits of worms, nature, parenting, paternal care, red worm, science, semicooperative equilibrium, Sex in the Sea, sex life of earthworms, sex life of worms, sperm competition, stickleback predator inspection, sticklebacks, sticklebacks stealing eggs, Velando Eiroa & Dominguez, Velando et al, weird science, worm, worm mating, worm sex
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By learning to fight, we can make a more peaceful world.
By building confidence, we become better able to choose nonviolence, since we’ll be that much more likely to feel safe.
Abdelfattah Kilito, aggression in animals, ahimsa, baboons, Babylonian mythology, Bible, biology, black belt test, black best essay, broadcast song, caretaking, Daddy Wake Up, death gods, Determined, divine aggression, dominance, dominance hierarchy, Dr. Strangelove, elephant seals, game theory, Gilgamesh, God, history, incarceration, jail poetry, John von Neumann, Joshua Rathkamp, Karate, kihap, Kilito, Korean mythology, linguistics, martial arts, mythology, nonviolence, observational biology, Origin Myth of the House God, peace, Popol Vuh, psychology, Ramayana, religion, Robert Sapolsky, Single Father, soft song, sparrow territory, sparrows, Taekwondo, tamarins, teaching in jail, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Tongue of Adam, Tower of Babel, Travis Combs, Vishnu, Whorf hypothesis, Xibalban, Yahweh, YHWH
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On Jenn Shapland’s ‘The Meaning of Life’ and boundary conditions.
As we live, we must fine a way to greet the world with delight & joy.
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On government intrusion and addiction.
To beat the opiate epidemic, we need strong communities. But prosecutors’ reliance on police informants destroys communities.
AA, addiction, Akhil Reed Amar, ants on the melon, Bill of Rights, constitution, Cor Urbis, creative writing, Daniel Dennett, death before dishonor, economics, emotion, evolution of emotion, exclusionary rule, FBI, Fourth Amendment, freedom of religion, game theory, Homo economicus, human evolution, jailhouse tattoos, Jeremy Waldron, mandatory minimums, mass incarceration, mosque, NA, opiate epidemic, poetry, poetry in jail, police, police informants, policing, prison, prisoners’ dilemma, privacy, protection, rats, recovery, repeated prisoners’ dilemma, rights, search, signaling, snooping, teaching writing in jail, tip, Virginia Adair, War on Drugs
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On unilateral reproduction.
We’ve identified some of the genes that allow Cape bees to reproduce without males … if human men don’t help more with the chores, will they be ditched too?
a world without men, birds and the bees, Cape bee, Frankenstein, game theory, golems, investment in children, Jane Ellen Harrison, just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s good, Mary Shelley, mythology, parenting, parthenogenesis, reproduction, Wendy Doniger, Women Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts
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On chimpanzees and Nash equilibria.
This is a pretty cool study, I think. Amongst other things, the authors compared the performance of pairs of chimpanzees in a zero-sum game to the performance of human pairs. And they noticed that pairs of chimpanzees typically perform much closer to the Nash equilibria than do human pairs. I do wish the authors had…
Frank Brown Cloud 