I might be being whooshed here, but in case I’m not:
“Sniping” on eBay refers to buying your item at the end of an auction with a bid only seconds before the auction closes. It’s a controversial practice, and one that wouldn’t matter if everyone bid logically.
Since you are allowed to enter a max bid and eBay will automatically raise your bid incrementally up until your max there really shouldn’t be any need to snipe.
However there are lots of bidders who will enter a max bid and then when they get out-bid will go back and enter a higher max bid. This isn’t rational, and lots of people who think everyone acts rationally don’t understand why sniping makes sense.
However, because people aren’t always rational in their actions sniping does make sense.
Try2B Comprehensive reminded me of this with his post. He does this rational analysis of things and it all makes sense. But the problem is that most people aren’t always thoughtful and rational so they won’t react the same way as him.
How is this “sniping” not rational? You get the item you want, right? And if you get it through a last-second bid-raise, then you probably get it for less than if you had made the same bid sooner, leaving time for someone else to outbid you so that you have to raise your own bid again if you really want the thing.
If every bidder were rational, sniping would be pointless. The way bidding on eBay works, you enter the maximum you are willing to pay. The system then automatically bids for you, topping every subsequent bid by a certain increment until your maximum is exceeded. The catch is that everyone hates to get outbid, so when that happens they go back and enter a *higher *maximum. That’s what starts bidding wars. And bidding only at the last second–sniping–is the best way to beat a bidding war. But if everyone were rational and simply chose the absolute maximum they were willing to pay in the first place, and stuck to it, there would be no bidding wars and it wouldn’t matter when you placed your bid.
That’s right. It’s called proxy bidding. If you bid $50, I can bid $100 and ebay will only bid $55 on my behalf, and will continue to bump my bid $5 over your bid until you get up to $100. So If the current bid is $75, you have no way of knowing how many proxy bids are waiting to top your last second bid.
Pretty much true. Of course the same or worse could probably be said for just about any sizable ethnic/religious/political majority in any country in the world.
Oh, what a load of sanctimonious, smug, over-designed, crap. What he says could just as easily be “Black Privilege”, and “Asian Privilege”, and “Hispanic Privilege”. It is really “Anything-but-Middle-Eastern Privilege.”
You do know the previous bid. You just don’t know if that bidder has authorized further automatic bidding to a higher price.
I still think sniping is mostly irrational. It can save you a small amount of money (at some cost in your time), but only at the risk of not getting something you want at a slightly higher price you were happy to pay. Pretty poor trade-off to me.
I agree with much of this, but I’m a bit dubious about the U.S. bombing countries solely because a terrorist came from that country. The attack on Libya, for instance, was because we believed the Libyan government was complicit, and the invasion of Afghanistan was, at least in large part, because the Afghan government was shielding Al Qaeda terrorists.
The U.S. didn’t bomb Saudi Arabia, for instance, even though most of the WTC attackers were Saudi.
Sounds more like, “if every bidder were honest, sniping would be pointless.” But an on-line auction is kind of like a game of poker innit? Nobody really expects all the bidders to be squares, but rather to do whatever they can to maximize their own interests. I wonder if the Amish are allowed on ebay…
Anyway,
Well I’m really glad to come across that way, and I hope pointing out rational things can get irrational people to knock it off once in awhile. But I am not always so rational. In fact, this bombing has been bringing out the very darkest part of me, ideas I am ashamed to share even with myself (nothing to do with blowing things up, mind). I started to worry that I might introduce some cruel idea into the world that could be acted on later, making the world a worse place as a result of my venting. So I’ve tried to pretty much stop talking about the attacks at all, other than my most Spock-like ideas. I got a encouragement for my rationality from some wisdom elsewhere in this thread:
I think I understood this in my own terms already, but once it was there in pixels it was harder to ignore. There’s no telling what I may come up with if I go on a ranting rampage, and again, these attacks have inspired some of the sickest ideas I’ve ever imagined. But I think I have done an ok job not mentioning them to anyone at all and limiting myself to what sense there is to be made, so yay me.
How is this “sniping” not rational? You get the item you want, right? And if you get it through a last-second bid-raise, then you probably get it for less than if you had made the same bid sooner, leaving time for someone else to outbid you so that you have to raise your own bid again if you really want the thing.
But I think I have done an ok job not mentioning them to anyone at all and limiting myself to what sense there is to be made, so yay me.