We didn’t because people didn’t understand that resources are finite, and they believed they’d be able to get the same things they allowed others to get before them.
And in fact they were correct in that belief.
Life contains competitions, yes, but life itself is not a competition. Cooperation is a key part of life. The concept of society doesn’t work without people working together for their own mutual benefit.
I’d actually be very concerned about you if I thought you lived your life only looking out for yourself. But I think you are just focusing on the competitions and not noticing the cooperation.
But even if you were a hardcore Ayn Rand Objectivist, I still wouldn’t see why you’d think a tie was a bad thing. As long as your winnings aren’t affected, I don’t really see why you’d care what happens to the other guy.
No, I’m no Randian, just believe in competitiveness.
That’s exactly why you should be reading up on game theory instead of just believing in a “I’ll get mine, fuck everyone else” method - as depending on what situation you’re in, that might well fuck you over instead.
Perhaps persons here would find this interesting. Ken Jennings on Jeopardy champion Arthur Chu and Daily Double hunting.
Depends on what your objective in life is.
Me, I recognize that I don’t get to keep my winnings when I die.
I don’t have much money to begin with, however, for a time, I was unemployed after the economic downturn of 2008/2009. Some folks don’t have friends or family to turn to, and it was a struggle. I managed to borrow some money from a very generous person which I couldn’t repay right away, being unemployed, and used it to relocate and fix my vehicle and re-up my insurance. I spent my last dime doing this, and got a job in another city. When possible, I repaid the loan in full, but this isn’t the end of the story.
Cut to a few years later, and my roommate loses his job. He’s got no friends and no family. I allow him to stay rent-free for a while, which I honestly cannot afford. Hit my bank account pretty hard, and I was forced to ask him to vacate the bedroom so I could rent it out to a paying roommate.
But we’re still not done. I offered this person my inflatable mattress and allowed him to sleep, at night, in the living room.
Months later, this person now has a job and will soon move out and get his own apartment. I may never see the money I invested into this person. However, this is one less person in our society that is homeless, hungry, and forced to beg or turn to crime. When I die, it won’t *matter *that I lost money on the deal. He may yet pay me back or pay the good deed forward.
If your goal in life is simply to gain as much wealth as possible, you can do that. If you have other goals, you’ll find life is much more a cooperative game than a zero sum game.
I tell you one thing, I may have a place to stay if life ever fucks me over again.
So much for zero sum.
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I like Arthur Chu. I find him affable.
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I thought the tie thing was a math error on his part. Oops. Sorry I mocked him when that aired.
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The point of life is not competition, it’s enlightenment. Everyone’s a winner.
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Running up the categories is not a great strategy, but I think people go for the easy money and the easy answers first. Which is human. What I don’t understand is why people run up a category they suck in.
If you’re feeling bored, go to Television Without Pity and, if you can, search for posters’ opinions of David Madden (the contestant who had a long streak after Ken Jennings). He employed a similar strategy, and was absolutely torn apart there. One reason for a lot of it was that they felt he was ruining their enjoyment of the game, as if that mattered one iota. To the producers, maybe, but certainly not to David.
I can relate, to an extent. I don’t like football games involving defensive-minded, ball-control teams. That bores the hell out of me.
But I understand perfectly why coaches may choose to go that way- they figure their job is to win games, not to make ME happy.
Similarly, a Jeopardy! contestant is trying to win games and money. It’s not his concern if viewers don’t like the way he plays.
Of course, the prodcuers ARE concerned about keeping viewers happy, and they MAY change rules if they sense that viewers are tuning out or changing channels.
Now, even though I appreciate CHu’s approach, and have absolutely no objection to it, I don’t think I could ever play for a tie, even IF that’s a sound strategy.
I can honestly say that I LIKED all 11 of the other contestants I met that day in December of 2012. I really did. They were all smart, funny, nice people that I’d be happy to have as friends.
But I STILL wanted to kick their butts, and vice versa!
Look, we trivia buffs tend to be as competitive as anyone. Winning money would have been GREAT, but what we all wanted was to win! This was our chance to show off on national TV!
It didn’t work out that way for me. But I’'m almost certain that if anyone had suggested to me, George and Jody that we should coordinate our bets to ensure we all won and we all got to come back, well, I’m pretty sure all of us would have thought, “Screw that! I’ve been wanting to get on this show for years, and I want to WIN!”
In the context of Jeopardy!'s rules, tying for first place IS a win. You get the highest amount of money for that round, and you get to come back the next ‘day’ to play again.
Last night, during the College Tournament, the eventual winner used that betting strategy. Going into Final Jeopardy!, he had exactly twice the amount of the second place contestant. He could have bet $1, hoping he would get it right and win by that amount, or could have stayed pat with a $0 bet and still go into the semi-final round (because he had the highest score for that day of play).
But consider if the girl in 2nd place bet it all and got it right (she had the right answer but didn’t bet enough), and he had gotten the question wrong, he would have lost by $1. Why take the chance?
That’s a bit of a different issue. Obviously, if your total is equal to or greater than double the second place contestant, you never want to bet an amount that would cause you to lose if you were wrong. That’s not game theory, that’s just logic.
Well, it is game theory, just a particularly straightforward case of it. Game theory, like all math, is all just logic (albeit sometimes logic that’s hard to follow).
And I wouldn’t say “never”. You might bet more than that amount, if you’re sufficiently confident in your ability in that category.
Jeopardy! tapes 5 shows at a time, twice a week. That means that there are ten people waiting in the wings, who traveled to California on their own dime. Every time a game ends in a tie, one of them gets sent home without ever having had a chance to compete.
Good karma doesn’t pay the bills.
So what is your point?
Actually, in that case, at least TWO people would go home without competing!
See, they always have a spare player or two (usually from the Los Angeles area). After all, what if I’d gotten cold feet and hadn’t shown up? Or what if a contestant got appendicitis the night before the taping? Or what if, during the morning orientation, it turned out that one of the contestants was married to a woman who worked at a subdivision of Sony?
There’s always a chance someone invited to play might not be able to, so they have at least one substitute player available. That substitute knows that, most likely, he won’t get to play- but as I understand it, he’s guaranteed to get called again for the next available taping.
They usually make the sub a local person, so he won’t have to waste time and money flying into town or booking a hotel (it’s bad enough the guy has to waste most of his day).
And if for some reason two of the contestants for a taping know each other, they can’t be on the same episode. Ken Jennings talks about that happening twice during his mega-run, with a couple of guys he was friends with from his College Bowl days in his book “Brainiac”. Their appearances on the show were delayed until after Anna Zerg deposed him.
Rules are rules. If you don’t break them, then you’re not doing anything wrong. Get on Jeopardy!, play the best you can, and try to win.