Shaft or Share?

[lawtonfogle]

The correct answer is to shaft... this is obvious from the table brought up earlier in the thread.

If you are playing this game, your only hope is that your opponent is bad at mathematics (or not just studied game theory) and makes the mistake of sharing.


The exception to this rule is if you know your opponent (real life friend) in which case it might be a good idea to share... though there are reasons against that as well.

Unless of course you didn't want the company keeping their money.

 

[cantata]

In the shaft or share game, unless you physically know your opponent, it is never the right choice to share.

Is that knowing in the biblical sense?

 

[yasic]

Oh, in case there is confusion about this, game theory is much more advanced than simply equilibrium points. If you apply only first year game theory to pris's, then yes everyone loses.

Game theory is what I am looking to specialize in. This summer is spent by me mainly for research for alternatives to nash bargaining.

 

[yasic]

Unless of course you didn't want the company keeping their money.

We are going off the idea that you want the cash and do not care about others.

If you have other motives such as giving cash to your opponent or making sure the company does not get cash, it no longer follows the 100/0 0/0 table and you should instead calculate the new table using the numbers you have. Then you can use game theory to come up with the best mixed strategy to use... and use it.

 

[yasic]

Is that knowing in the biblical sense?

Heh, biblical sense will work here

 

[stan1980]

Obviously you should shaft every day of the week, and twice on Sunday. Glad to see most of you agree. Yesterday, when this discussion was going on, I even drew out an identical table to the one that DeathMagnus typed on page 1. The response from a couple of them was that you can't use maths to solve this problem, as you should be listening to whether you think you are going to be shafted or not, then make a decision accordingly. Things got heated, when I jokingly suggested that they hand in their notice now for gross stupidity, as we don't need morons working here. These people have been to university as well, I really do despair sometimes!

I like Keith's response, threaten violence if they don't share

The problem is, it shouldn't take Einstein for most people to work out that the best strategy is to shaft, meaning most the time the contestants will walk home empty handed. So I'd tell them "Look, I'm shafting you whether you like it or not. If you shaft we both go home with nothing. If you share, I'll give you half the prize after the show is finished".