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Oct. 15th, 2004
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Something Funky in the Vents?
Oct. 15th, 2004 08:06 amThe class which meets next door to my advanced geometry class is sometimes rather noisy, so we usually close the door to our classroom.
Last night, during my lecture, I noticed several students with puzzled expressions (nothing new there...), frowning and glancing around. It took a moment longer before I caught it too: the faint but unmistakable odor of skunk. Now, we're in an inner room in the basement, and there's no direct connection to the outside. The chemistry and biology labs are in a different building. I have no idea where the smell was coming from. (My sense of smell is somewhat screwed up; I sometimes smell things that aren't there. But I've got corroboration on this one.) One of the students opened the door; the next-door class was, of course, noisy, but from what I could hear they were being similarly afflicted.
The smell slowly dissipated after that, but I don't think I had the full attention of all of the students for the rest of the class...
Meanwhile, package #2 arrived yesterday. Contents: Julia Spencer-Fleming's A Fountain Filled with Blood, Laurell K. Hamilton's Narcissus in Chains, Hendrik Hertzberg's Politics: Observations & Arguments, 1966-2004, and a Carole King CD. The CD is a "Greatest Hits" album, so, of course, there's some overlap with Tapestry - four out of fourteen songs - but it also includes "Jazzman", "Nightingale", and "Only Love Is Real", each of which I like a lot. The other two packages, from Amazon UK, contain Heyer's Sprig Muslin and Pratchett's two latest works. (As I said elsewhere, I blew my monthly entertainment budget last weekend.)
Last night, during my lecture, I noticed several students with puzzled expressions (nothing new there...), frowning and glancing around. It took a moment longer before I caught it too: the faint but unmistakable odor of skunk. Now, we're in an inner room in the basement, and there's no direct connection to the outside. The chemistry and biology labs are in a different building. I have no idea where the smell was coming from. (My sense of smell is somewhat screwed up; I sometimes smell things that aren't there. But I've got corroboration on this one.) One of the students opened the door; the next-door class was, of course, noisy, but from what I could hear they were being similarly afflicted.
The smell slowly dissipated after that, but I don't think I had the full attention of all of the students for the rest of the class...
Meanwhile, package #2 arrived yesterday. Contents: Julia Spencer-Fleming's A Fountain Filled with Blood, Laurell K. Hamilton's Narcissus in Chains, Hendrik Hertzberg's Politics: Observations & Arguments, 1966-2004, and a Carole King CD. The CD is a "Greatest Hits" album, so, of course, there's some overlap with Tapestry - four out of fourteen songs - but it also includes "Jazzman", "Nightingale", and "Only Love Is Real", each of which I like a lot. The other two packages, from Amazon UK, contain Heyer's Sprig Muslin and Pratchett's two latest works. (As I said elsewhere, I blew my monthly entertainment budget last weekend.)
Prisoner's Dilemma
Oct. 15th, 2004 08:17 pmNow this is interesting; there's some further discussion here.
The discovery that Tit-for-Tat is a very successful strategy at Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma was a comforting one. Even though other strategies can defeat it under certain circumstances, it is somehow satisfying to know that an essentially benevolent (though not spineless) way of dealing with the world can win over more complex, more aggressive, and less forgiving strategies. That is what makes the success of the strategy described in the articles above so disturbing. In qualitative terms, it suggests that a highly stratified and xenophobic society can provide its leaders with better results than the egalitarian society promoted by Tit-for-Tat.
Of course, Axelrod-style tournaments are vast simplifications of social interaction, but there's a fair amount of evidence that they contain a kernel of truth. One of the commenters on the second article pooh-poohs the significance of the new strategies, saying that their inventors have merely worked out a way of "gaming the system". I do not find this comforting, since gaming the system is common enough real-world behavior.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the next tournament - especially whether someone can come up with a nemesis for these strategies.
The discovery that Tit-for-Tat is a very successful strategy at Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma was a comforting one. Even though other strategies can defeat it under certain circumstances, it is somehow satisfying to know that an essentially benevolent (though not spineless) way of dealing with the world can win over more complex, more aggressive, and less forgiving strategies. That is what makes the success of the strategy described in the articles above so disturbing. In qualitative terms, it suggests that a highly stratified and xenophobic society can provide its leaders with better results than the egalitarian society promoted by Tit-for-Tat.
Of course, Axelrod-style tournaments are vast simplifications of social interaction, but there's a fair amount of evidence that they contain a kernel of truth. One of the commenters on the second article pooh-poohs the significance of the new strategies, saying that their inventors have merely worked out a way of "gaming the system". I do not find this comforting, since gaming the system is common enough real-world behavior.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the next tournament - especially whether someone can come up with a nemesis for these strategies.
