Talk:Zero-sum
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The economics of a purely hunter/gatherer society have zero-sum properties because the supply of goods such as food is fixed by what nature has to offer. If one person suceeds in obtaining food, there is less food to go around for everyone else, so that one person's benefit implies a cost to others.
- (I disagree. This assumes that the hunter/gatherers gather all of nature's resources. In truth they're in competition with other animals and even bacteria, and can collect more or better food via greater effort. --Belltower)
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- I agree with Belltower. Furthermore, hunter-gatherer societies don't have refrigerators and usually don't have other methods of saving perishable food, notably meat. If a hunter kills an animal that is too large for him to eat before it goes bad, it makes sense for him to share the meat with other members of his band. He will lose nothing, they will gain food, and he will gain their gratitude and increased social status. (All of this would be true if the hunter were a she, but I want to avoid tiresome grammatical constructions.) Therefore at least in some circumstances the economics is clearly non-zero sum. -- Old Nick 14:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Economics is a Zero-sum game, what happens is this: one group of more expensive workers is displaced for larger group of cheaper workers in markets that do not operate the same. Yet the cost of living of the displaced workers home market is enormous because of differences in market structures and regulations, the religious capitalist boot licking academics trying to hide it are peddling lies. Why do you think there are wars? because there is only a finite amount of land and precious resources, such as oil, to go around. America didn't invade IRAQ to liberate the IRAQI's and bring democracy, thats for damn sure.
- The reason the money supply is controlled is to keep consumption of finite resources in check and keep inflation from spiraling out of control. Next you need money to make money, and frequently only the richest people have the money to start businesses, so the rich get to dictate the terms of wages to the worker because the worker is not perpetually resource independent like a rich person is, rich people are insulated against downturns, most regular people are not, one wrong down in an investment or sudden economic downturn in an industry they work and they are up shit creek. Startup costs for most businesses are enormous -- also known as barrier to entry. Power re-inforces itself in a capitalist system, the people at the top stay at the top. I'd like to know how many rich people went bankrupt compared to the rest of the population, and you'll have your answer.
I also disagree, if hunter-gatherers cooperate as a hunting pack they have more food per person than if they would hunt individually. I also think that this article should not be under 'Zero-sum' but under 'Zero-sum game' as the word is hardly used in any other context. You can then start the article with the more logical "A zero-sum game is a game where ..." -- JanHidders
The comment about mating being zero sum is also not strictly accurate since many species allow multiple fathers. -- TedDunning
- Genetically you can have only one father! (although now medicine has made two mothers possible.)
- Yes, but it is possible for a single female to be bearing the offspring of more than one male at a single time. It's even happened with humans! Also, mating doesn't always lead to pregnancy, so multiple partners can increase the reproduction rate in the aggregate. --Belltower
- The optimal strategy for non-zero-sum games is Tit for Tat.
This is completely and utterly false even for repeated prisoner's dillema! True, for some repeated games this is a very good strategy, assuming many other players are ready to cooperate. But even in this game, almost any "bad boy" strategy will kick tit for tat.
- er, that's not actually right, unless you have managed to falsify Robert Axelrod's findings (in which case, congratulations - a Nobel prize coming your way, and probably a sainthood, as not only have you rewritten game theory, you've also managed to falsify evolution, so the Pope will be pleased). In iterated prisoners' dilemmas, "bad boy" strategies invariably do worse than "good boy" strategies - see Richard Dawkins, Robert Axelrod, Daniel Dennett, Carl Sagan et al, ad nauseam, for a thorough analysis. Tit for tat is the archetypal good boy strategy. If the defectors won, we'd still be amoebas in a primordial soup.
- In any case the tit-for-tat remark, as currently rendered, didn't make any sense in the context so I have deleted it. ElectricRay 23:42, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
- I read recently (unfortunately I don't remember where) that a slightly better strategy than TIT FOR TAT has been found. I believe it's TIT FOR TAT with random cheats - or was it random niceness? If I run across it again, I'll post it here. -- Old Nick 14:24, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
The section about complexity is problematic because it does define the term complexity. My feeling is that said complexity just means that the interdependencies between activities and parties are so many that the human faculty cannot deal with them. So in an effort to analyze one situation it becomes hard to isolate it from the rest of the universe because of "complexity". That does not mean that the situation in question is non-zero-sum. The quote by Bill Clinton does not help a lot. When two economic interests strike what they call a win-win deal, it usually means that they have found a way of joining forces in the competition against others.
Also, the argument about non-zero-sum due to complexity, only serves the upper economic strata. They need a way to explain that their exuberant lifestyles does not imply a cost to the rest of us. First, they will tell you "It's not a zero sum game" and then they will explain the "trickle-down effect". Meanwhile Hennes & Mauritz supplier Goldfame pays 5 cents a t-shirt to their workers in Cambodia while your pension funds may be lost in an artificial bankruptcy.
- Disagree here - this is pretty clearly non-zero sum, even as you describe it. The comparative advantage to H&M is obvious (as I'm sure you'd agree). The comparative advantage to the Cambodian worker (assuming he's being rational and not being compelled to contribute his labour) is that that 5c per shirt is a better return for his time than he'd get elsewhere (ie he's get 3c for the same time spend in the paddy field). ElectricRay 23:42, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Non-zero-sum economics? Come up with something solid, or suffer deletion! Geir Gundersen 12:35, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
- agreed here - I have rewritten - briefly - and removed all the rubbish about farmers, futures, tit for tat etc, all of which looked highly original and pretty clearly wrong. ElectricRay 23:42, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Poker is not a zero-sum game. You have to take in mind that the house takes a cut. This means the aggregate of what the players walk away with is less than they brought. I made mention of this in the article.
The section "Complexity and non-zero-sum" - Should this be "Society and non-zero-sum ???". The section currently explains more on complexity in society
Request for general clarification. From the article (and my rudimentary understanding of game theory), it appears that the zero-sum or non-zero-sum status of a game depends on the scope of the discussion. For example, if the universe is closed, all games are ultimately zero-sum because nothing is ever created or destroyed - it's just moved to somewhere else or changed to a different form (energy to matter, e.g.). But clearly games considered on smaller scales can be non-zero-sum; see the example on hunter-gatherer societies I posted above (and which I got from Robert Wright's The Moral Animal).
Also take a poker game in which everyone at the table plays to the end, no new players arrive, and everyone plays with the money they brought. There's no house take. For the players as a group, this is a zero-sum game; no money is created or destroyed. But for each player, it is likely to be a non-zero-sum game - odds are each player will either win money or lose money, whether a small amount or large amount. (I am just assuming that it is statistically improbable that any given player will walk away with exactly the same amount of money she brought. That might be wrong, but the point stands for some or most of the players, if not every one of them.)
- My understanding is that a zero-sum-game refers to more than one individual, therefore it wouldn't make sense to say that an individual's position is zero-sum in poker. Rather, one would say that poker is either zero-zum (if the house takes no cuts, etc) or non-zero-sum (if there are cuts, etc) Bakerstmd 22:31, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
Even assuming I'm right, I don't know whether this is an insight or a quibble and I would be happy to learn which.
I also wonder whether anyone has used the terms "positive-sum game" and "negative-sum game" for subsets of non-zero-sum game, the former being a win-win game (everyone wins, no one loses) and the latter being a lose-lose game (everyone loses). -- Old Nick 14:21, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
The sentence "Optimal strategies may be chosen for two-player zero-sum games by using minimax strategies" is bad English ("strategies may be chosen by using strategies") and it is also a tautology: An "optimal strategy" for a two-player zero-sum game is defined to be a minimax strategy. It may or may not be "optimal" against particular opponents. I am changing the sentence to "Nash equilibria of two-player zero-sum games are exactly pairs of minimax strategies" Bromille 12:18, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I think that the phrase: "it is impossible for both players to win"(line 3) should be removed. This statement is true, but it is not very accurate becouse there is draw in Chess and Go (unlike other games). It can confuse readers who are not familiar with these games.
[edit] Economics and zero-sum
This section could use some example. Free trade comes to mind. Mabybe some historical references, and some mention of non-zero sum as the justification for things like NAFTA and the WTO Bakerstmd 22:26, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] poker confusing
The bit about poker maybe being zero-sum, maybe not, seems more confusing that helpful. I suppose it's true, but does it help? Cretog8 (talk) 03:15, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] conflict game
"generally, any game where all strategies are Pareto optimal is called a conflict game" OK, it has a citation, but conflict game doesn't seem like a standard term to me. Cretog8 (talk) 03:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
