If I agree with everything you ever have or ever will say in your entire life can we get back to discussing the topic of the OP?
If you agree to address the numerous issues addressed to you by multiple posters, including myself, all directly related to and most of them quoting your OP, then we can get back to the OP.
If you insist on refusing to address criticisms of you OP then no, I don’t see much chance of it.
I’ll start with your posts because it seems to mean the most to you.
*It is true that there is nothing irrational about feeling pleasure.
*It is true that seeking to acquire a lump of shiny metal is irrational.
*It is true that anything humans do for any reason is irrational.
*It is true that we are all going to die and eventually the universe is going to cease to exist.
*It is true that all our works truly are vanity.
*It is true that all any individual can do is decide what their personal goal is and work towards that.
*It is true that taking a penny can both make sense and not make sense.
*It is true that all goals are irrational.
*It is true that all standards of rationality, justice, and morality are arbitrary.
*It is true that it is irrational for humans to seek to maximize wealth.
*It is true that the people who played the ultimatum game had no basis for doing what they did.
*It is true that the ultimatum game demonstrates people are capable of cheating.
*It is true that anything is greater than nothing.
*It is true that the people who played the ultimatum game were cheating.
*It is true that nobody has ever changed their views about the ultimatum game or any economic theories related to it.
*It is true that game theory is a field of study with many facets.
*It is true that all theories acknowledge that humans feel emotions, pleasure, and pain.
*It is true that economic theories are correct.
*It is true that Hollywood makes money but only for itself.
*It is true that no economic theory has ever predicted that Hollywood does not exist.
*It is true that economic theories do not take emotions into account.
*It is true that economic theories do take emotions into account.
*It is true that pleasure, social status, justice and many other subjective factors have a rational monetary value.
*It is true that money does not have a rational monetary value.
*It is true that the Homo Economicus economic theory denies this reality and is irrational.
*It is true that other economic theories are rational.
*It is true that Newtonian physics is simple and limited but has its uses.
*It is true that the ultimatum game is well designed, that people play it rationally, and that economic theories accurately predicted how it would be played.
*It is true that a lump of metal and a good laugh have equal value.
*It is true that the people who played the ultimatum game were cheating and the results are meaningless.
*It is true that researchers designed the ultimatum game so it wouldn’t work and ignored the results they observed.
*It is true that money sometimes has value and sometimes does not have value.
*It is true that rational people do not value money. Or maybe it’s only coins. Paper currency may have a rational value.
*It is true that all decisions are based on emotions.
*It is true that games have no relationship to real life.
*It is true that it is rational to screw people over and this has a monetary value.
*Something is true about prostitutes and cocaine and roommates and borrowing cars and gas money and garage sales and roleplaying books and money. I’ll admit I’m not clear on this one.
*It is true that all of the above is directly related to the OP.
Wow, this is going to be a lot to absorb.
The Homo Economicus model is not really a “standard” model in economics. It’s used by economists as a “strawman” that is continually knocked down by experiments just like this in the process of finding out how people interact economically in the real world. Few, if any, economists believe Homo Economicus exists in real economies.
Have you ever read the novel 1984 by George Orwell? Do you remember how the government in that novel used words to mean the exact opposite of what they actually meant: “peace” meant war, “truth” meant lies, and so forth.
Many economists use the word “rational” to mean irrational and vice versa. Same idea.
In reality it is irrational to be purely self-interested and always try to make as much money for yourself as possible. It is also irrational to try assigning a numerical value to the good feelings you get from doing good things for other people and balance this numerical value against the value of money for yourself.
Yet there are economists who will defend either of these approaches as “rational”. War is peace. Truth is lies.
I don’t dislike all economics, but I do see that some economics consists of people trying to explain to us why we should happily accept criminal behavior, human rights abuse, and environmental destruction because those things are supposedly rational. They are not rational and we should not accept them.
Here’s a thread that I started a few years ago addressing the topic:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=383219&highlight=irrationality
No. Not in the slightest.
And stop polluting this discussion with your ideological well-poisoning by using Liberal and Realist as opposites.
Perhaps you should look up “rule” while you’re in there. Though admittedly, your grasp of terminology is sort of off-topic; I guess if you want to use foolish-sounding wrong terms for things its only your own argument’s credibility that suffers.
Putting aside the bizzare ‘cheating’ thing, your assertion is that the test is wildly divergent in its conditions from the real world. I agree. I’ve (repeatedly) pointed out two aspects of the test where it differs from reality, the attempt to remove considerations of reciprocity, and the attempt to frame the test in terms of a measurable benefit - money. The first condition (that the test stands alone) is an obvious gotcha, which in practical purposes only proves that an awareness of prior trials does have an effect on rational decision making. (Which may actually be the point.) The latter condition of representing benefits as money is a farily standard conceit in economic thought experiments - it’s clear and measurable. The point obviously isn’t that people only care about money; economists are well aware of Hollywood and haircuts and the like, thank you.
A spock-rational person wouldn’t want to get the maximum amount of money? That’s daft. Both on the face of it, and all the moreso because this is a game.
I’d be interested in hearing the conditions of the test too, because I doubt they got to keep the money! To me it sounds like a game - a thought experiment put into practice. Most likely if test subjects were paid, they walked out with a standard amount, is my suspicion.
Have you ever played monopoly? Did you get to keep the monopoly money? Did you take it out and buy food and houses with it? No? Then why did you try to get the monopoly money then? Oh right - because getting the most monopoly money is the goal of the game. (Which makes everyone who doesn’t win a cheater?)
If people are playing the game with goals other than making money - goals other than to win, then they very likely won’t win. This is certainly what’s happening in the test in question with the person refusing the penny; we don’t know what their goal is, whether it’s to deliberately shaft the unfair person out of the larger amount of money, or because they just don’t like unfair deals, or because they have a pathological fear of ‘hunks of metal’ (though one wonders why they signed up for the test in this case) - though we do at least know that they weren’t putting the greatest importance on the official victory condition of the game.
With the person who offers a 50/50 split, though, we don’t even know that, because a person can be trying to maximize their money and still offer a fair deal, due to an awareness of peoples’ tendency to refuse unfair deals. So the test tells us only limited things about the people taking the test, and only under certain conditions:
Offerer:
If they offer only a penny or a similarly low amount, we can be aware that they are overlooking the very real possiblity that the chooser might turn down unfair deals, which is rational but inattentive/stupid. If they offer an even or near-even split, we can conclude little about them, because they could be doing it to rationally maximize their chances of keeping their portion, or alternatively to cater to feelings of honor and farness that the game is not designed to test and which (in the context of the game) are not recognized as ‘rational’.
Chooser:
If they are offered a fair deal you learn nothing about them, obviously. If they are offered a bad deal, if they accept it we learn that they understood and were prioritizing the test victory conditions, and if they turn it down we learn that they had other higher priorities of some kind.
Hi Guys!
Based on the actual IM conversation below:
What was my goal?
What was my strategy?
Did I achieve my goal?
Was I rational?
(If you are not a geek I apologize. If you are, you’re welcome)
[18:26] edma: hey sean, you there?
[18:26] edma: would you rather hear about something good with a low probability of happening?
[18:27] edma: or not know about it to avoid disappointment down the road?
[18:27] sean: hey, haha Wrestling wise or life wise?
[18:27] edma: life wise
[18:28] sean: ok I’d like to hear it, figure why not right…
[18:29] edma: ok, i might have some spare sox tickets for fridays game.
[18:29] edma: i might have anywhere between 0 and 3 tickets
[18:29] edma: would you be interested in case of the low probability outcome of >0 tickets?
[18:30] edma: they cost me nothing, so as long as i recoup that cost…
[18:30] sean: Normally yes but I’m working all night here Friday night 
Nothing is my favorite price too!
[18:30] edma: ok, well then nothing ventured, nothing lost
[18:31] sean: yeah, so that is harmless to me. haha Thanks, cause normally I’d be all over that!
[18:31] sean: This just reminded me taht if the Celtics don’t win tonight, I have a ticket to the game Friday, which means I can’t work.
[18:32] edma: or go to a twins game either
[18:32] sean: that too.
[18:33] edma: well, let me know if circumstances change, but as i said, low probability
[18:33] edma: too many fair weather fans wanting something just because its free
[18:33] sean: ok, will do.
[18:34] sean: I can’t argue with liking free but even fair weather fans need to step up and commit early.
[18:34] sean: it’s not like tickets are easy to get these days
[18:34] edma: not all my call
[18:35] sean: ahhh
[18:35] edma: and actually last i heard, friday will have fair weather
[18:36] edma: you realize that once asking the initial question, almost everyone would want to know what i was talking about
[18:36] edma: pretty much guaranteeing their answer
[18:37] sean: haha yeah. Mysterious questions always do that.
[18:38] edma: can i show this conversation to others who do not know you at all, and only know me online?
[18:39] edma: they are statistical game-theory geek types
[18:39] edma: want to show them how the real world works
[18:42] sean: lol sure
[18:42] sean: anything to help spread knowledge of how the world works
[18:43] sean: 
[18:43] edma: that is exactly the proper spirit
[18:43] edma: i;ll take calls from seth at Office of the State Chief Information Officer until 7:00
[18:44] sean: ok
[18:44] edma: tx
See now this is why thought experiments and tests based on them 1) are simple, and 2) have clearly defined conditions and goals, which 3) are laid out clearly. If out of the blue I showed you one guy telling another guy he’d give him four of ten dollars and getting a yes back, you wouldn’t be able to guess the goal either.
Good points! Wrong answer. Seems obvious to me.
Are you saying that the goal of your own IM conversation is obvious to you (which I certainly hope would be the case), or that every time you see a person dividing money and asking another person if the division is equitable, that it must be an economic/sociological experiment?
Yes, it certainly would be obvious to me. And I don’t think you could establish a goal by looking at a single instance of play. I would not say that seeing a person dividing money would be an experiment either. And I should have given you at least partial credit for being correct , I didn’t read your response carefully enough, but you did validate what I found out.
I won’t be mysterious anymore. Here are the answers:
What was my goal? - To demonstrate that real world situations can seem too complex to have outcomes predicted by ‘game theory’, in addition to finding out if Sean would be interested in the tickets without disappointing him if they did not become available (they didn’t), yet allow him to make plans before the availability was known, and to get Sean not to call me after 7:00.
What was my strategy? - To demonstrate that people can be manipulated to make a particular decision by introducing a new factor into the game (the desire to know what a potential gain would be), letting him know that I did manipulate him so that he wouldn’t think he was foolish for not realizing he was manipulated later on, and to have him think that honoring my request about the call might benefit him in the future.
Did I achieve my goal? - Not the primary goal. I was wrong, as were you. Each step of the process could be determined by theory established by simple experiments, and the result of each step followed predictably, and the combinatorial effect was predictable as well and could be demonstrated through experimentation. I did achieve the secondary goals, I found out that Sean wanted the tickets (but he could not take them if they became available), and he didn’t feel foolish, but enlightened, and he did not call after 7:00 (because Seth didn’t call, not because of my strategy).
Was I rational? - Yes, No, I don’t know. That’s the trouble with the term ‘rational’. It could be defined for simple money based experiments as ‘accumulating the most money’. But experiments involving human behavior won’t be that simple, as other posts have discussed. But I was not rational in forming the experiment. I pre-supposed the outcome, and didn’t fully analyze my experiment and supposition before conducting it, and if I had, I would see that I had actually constructed an experiment which proved the supposition false. Oh well, make suppositions and experiments in haste, repent at leisure.
Some clarification:
I use ‘game theory’ as a generic term. I’m not trying to classify the field of study that would apply to each part of the experiment.
I say ‘predictable’ to mean what I predicted, based on logic ands knowledge of human nature. My predictions were based on empirical knowledge, but I think that some simple experiments would demonstrate the same results.
Things I learned:
- I don’t think such experiments need to be simple. Experiments can be based on combinations of sub-experiments with predictable results.
- I should remember the things I’ve found proved true through real life experience, human behavior is highly predictable, like people can be manipulated with circumstances. And an experiment can prove or disprove that.
- Based on my initial understanding of the experiment, the point was to see if people would be ‘rational’. The term ‘rational’ is misapplied in the experiment, as posed by the OP (or as understood by me incorrectly). And the results not being ‘rational’ are the result of the subjects pursuing their arbitrary concept of ‘rational’. People aren’t likely to achieve a goal that they don’t know about. If you tell the subjects that the goal is only to gain the most money, and induce them to achieve that goal, I think the results would change. If the intent was to find out what people would do if they defined their own goal, the results could have been predicted by existing knowledge of human behavior, and proved out that way. Either way, my experiment, and the OP’s are demonstrating the same thing in the end.
- This stuff is very interesting. I want to learn more about this.
You’re misreading me and/or giving me too much credit - I didn’t use your example to arrive at the conclusion that real world situations can seem too complex to have outcomes predicted by ‘game theory’. I looked and immediately concluded that one cannot look at one transcript of a ‘test’ and reliably deduce what the underlying intent of the test was, especially since anything that the tester says in such a test is a deliberate manipulation of the subject (including admitting that fact). Were I to have tried to figure out your goal I would have have inevitably overthought it. So I didn’t even try. (So I wasn’t ‘wrong’, except in the sense that I refused to answer or speculate.)
It’s all well and good to be conducting psychological experimentation on your friends, but when you present the purpose of the test as a puzzle, you are not inviting us to join you in your analysis - you’ve withheld the information we need to do so.
That said, you have since given us the necessary information, and now I’d like to disagree with your conclusions. The fact that your friend was predictable to you is pretty meaningless - you know the guy. Also, in reading the transcript it’s not clear that he understood the question, which is a problem, since you (apparently) weren’t trying to test his reading comprehension too.
To draw conclusions about the term ‘rational’ from this one mini-experiment trial seems a little dodgy, though it is clear that the definition of that term is significant to understanding the results in the OP. As noted, the people who refused the bad deals in the OP may not have understood the experiment; or may have partially misunderstood it; it seems quite possible to me that they percieved themselves as being in adversarial competition with the person dividing the money. So, while they would ‘lose’ by refusing the penny, the other guy would lose more, making the chooser ‘win’ (relatively speaking) by refusing the bad deal. This is a rational way to percieve things, since they knew the person dividing was a person playing the ‘game’ too, presumably with the same goals. (It suddenly occurs to me that it would be interesting to see if the results were different if a computer was dividing the money at random and offering the smaller half. I bet in that case the person would always take the money, -though I could be wrong, which is why I’d be interested in hearing about such a test.)
I will maintain that under all circumstances the divider is being rational (unless he’s like flipping a coin) - his decision is based on his estimation of how the chooser will react to his division, and it would be irrational to assume that the chooser will be Spock.
OK, I didn;t mean to be so mysterious, and ran out of time so I could follow up. I was pointing out that your first comments did bear on what I learned. I didn’t mean to say that it prove much of anything in the beginning, and I surprised myself by what it proved to me. I’m going to learn more about this subject now. I had thought (but apparently never very hard) that this stuff had no real application, but now I have rethink all that. I have an inkling that it could be much more useful than it seems, and if not, the why may be just as useful.
Oh, and take the credit anyway, a W is a W.