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Comment by swehner | Hacker News Reader

I didn't think “I cut, you choose” is that fair.

Since often it's difficult to cut fairly, so the other person gets to pick a bigger piece always.

Interestingly, I've used this technique for a long time with young kids at parties etc. that I have only just met. It is usually a great indicator of their personality traits, i.e. who has a compassionate, generous nature, or who is inherently greedy/selfish.

...or who is smart enough to realize there is a social metagame outside the obvious game of cake optimization.

The REALLY smart ones may have done a cost-benefit analysis and decided that the payoff from the metagame - an increment in your opinion of them - is not worth as much utility as the incrementally bigger cake.

Alternately the greedy ones have concluded your opinion of them is worth less than the extra cake :).

Add a step 0: flip coin for who cuts

That's the point. It provides an incentive to cut as evenly as possible.

Unless you know there will be a punishment for doing so later.

An alternative method with kids, is to have the youngest going under the table and say who is to receive the next slice of cake. Used that every year for the epiphany (Kings cake).

If you know the preferences of the other person, its often an advantage for a non-regular cake because you can offer them a small amount of stuff they value more highly than you

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