How Game Theory Solved a Religious Mystery | Hacker News Reader

How Game Theory Solved a Religious Mystery

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78 pointsChaitanyaSai51 comments

Fascinating.

The talmudic-inspired process would reduce to our modern proportional instincts if debt can be subdivided and resold.

Consider the case of the 100,200,300 creditors against the debtor with only 100 left. If being owed the larger amount is a disadvantage, the 200 and 300 can each sell their amounts in excess of 100 in 100-unit chunks to third parties.

Then, there are 6 creditors each disputing the 100, and all of them get an equal 16.6-. Assuming the original 200 and 300 sold their excesses at only a small discount to that expected return, they get nearly their proportional shares of the original 100.

The restaurant "divvying up the bill" example is a classic managerial accounting issue. What the classic solution (separate checks) fails to take into account is the fact that it can sometimes create quite a bit of hassle for a single server, esp. when people can't make up their minds! :)

Yes, I spent many undergrad years in the restaurant business: serving (waitressing), hosting, running the register . . .

Thats why the server gets tipped. (Generally, the polite thing is to tip more if they do more work for you.)

But you seem to be forgetting that it's not just the server who is doing the work. . . it's an entire staff of people, not all of whom are accounted for in the "cost" of a restaurant meal. Usually the server makes less than the federally-mandated minimum wage (which I know I did: $2.25 per hour in Utah) and then is she expected (by co-workers) to tip them from her tips only, and by the end of the night it's a whole lot of work for whole lot of practically nothing. Pennies, really. This is why I almost never go out to eat . . . even to this day.

I guess the point is, the longer a group of people sits, trying to figure out "how to split the bill," the poorer people like myself get (got). Wait staff make $ on turnover, not intellectual patrons with financial stinginess.

That being said, I agree that nobody likes to "hurry" through a meal. I can totally understand this, having numerous years of waitressing experience and even having had a few generous customers. There is something to be said for a good dining experience. This is something I always sought for as a server.

However, I think it would be an economically-beneficial requirement for all VCs to have paid their dues with 3-5 years of "on the floor" restaurant experience.

Or maybe if VCs could figure out a way for student loan expenses could get erased with proven work time.

/irony.

This is indeed an interesting application of game theory, but I should point out that this "Talmudic" rule of division is one of several rules proposed for the same problem, and the rabbis of the Talmud ended up rejecting this particular rule.

I don't understand it. In the case where the guy leaves 200, the first 100 is contested by everyone, so an equal split should be 33.3. The second 100 is contested by the bigger two creditors, so that should be split 50-50, leaving totals of 33.3, 83.3, and 83.3.

Clearly I'm missing something.

You have to consider pairs of creditors, i.e. for any pair chosen, the amount they are awarded must satisfy the principle of equal divison.

From the article:

The same condition needs to be met: the assets are divided up such that the amount received by any two people reflects the principle of equal division of the contested sum. Furthermore, the division is a unique solution.

He also gives the algorithm at the end of the article.

Yeah, I got that, but why when you can do it without pairing? This method would get exponentially more complex as the number of creditors increases, especially for a people who still had nothing but an abacus to work with.

He just explains the pairwise equal division of the contested sum as a social custom.

In some ways it makes sense if you want to maintain the best pairwise relationships in a small community.

If you did it without pairing, the person who is owed the least might resent the people who received more.

I guess it does sort of force a minimum on repayment. Those sorts of things tend to create much resentment. I'd be curious to see if this would be a better solution than the one we currently use.

I have seen the argument that this system is more fair to small creditors. Under the current bankruptcy, if I extend $1000 of credit to a financially shaky company, and then some bank extends a million-dollar credit line, and then the company becomes insolvent, we all have to line up for our X cents on the dollar; the bank's easy credit effectively reduces the amount I can recover. Under the system the OP described, small creditors are far more likely to get repaid in full or mostly in full, regardless of how much the debtor also owes to large creditors.

But I'm not sure how this system could be extended to a world where, for example, a company takes out loans from Bank A and Bank B, both of which are actually subsidiaries of a bank holding company that owns 75% of A and 30% of B. Talmudic law doesn't recognize corporate personhood, so the Talmudic discussion doesn't have to consider that problem.

The main difference between this scheme and propotional division becomes apparent if the heirs discover another 100 hidden in a cupboard after the initial distribution has been decided on. Should they start a new round or should they distribute it as if they had known about it from the start? With a porportional distribution scheme, the outcome is the same, with the talmudic scheme, the outcomes might differ and you have to decide which one is more consistent or just. So both schemes give a consistent allocation of assets in simple cases, but proportional distribution is far easier to generalize to consistent allocations in complex situations.

Fair division, the win-win solution, etc, also have some roots in the Nash equilibrium (a beautiful mind). Also known as adjusted winner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjusted_Winner_procedure

Fair division is really an algorithm based in game theory on fair distribution. There's actually a bit of software based on it... a couple examples:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1352161 http://www.fairoutcomes.com/

and a patent: http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5983205/description.html

I first read about it because of conflict resolution:http://www.amazon.ca/Fair-Division-Cake-Cutting-Dispute-Reso...

There's also some interesting analogies in OS, multi agent systems, and Database conflict resolution. But that's probably for another thread.

I don't see the game theory part? Interesting to learn about the "equal division of the contested sum" convention, but that alone is not game theory, or is it? From game theory I would expect to see some explanation of why that convention is a good solution for the problem? Merely listing alternative game outcomes in a table is not game theory.

The real lesson here is to always make a large claim OR conversely, always lend large sums. Either way, with this sort of "all-in" mentality that the tradition apparently espouses, is it any wonder that (aside from Hindus), Jews are one of the oldest continually existing cultural groups?

For those interested in game theory (like me) and have yet to actually understand it (like me), the Teaching Company has a lecture series on it. I've heard it's good.

Is this the lecture series?

http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=1426

This doesn't surprise me.

There is much much more wisdom (read: concentrated intelligence) in real religion (like Judaism or Christianity) than any modern/post-modern mind is willing to agree...

This isn't wisdom. It's just a weird (and in my opinion unfair) method of dividing contested assets.

Regardless, it's annoying that you're trying to turn a mildly interesting solution to an old puzzle into a statement about how close-minded atheists are.

So you mean that I mean that atheists are close-minded?

What does 'atheist' really mean? It's the negation of God, OK?

Many of the best scientists out there initially were atheists, and have been convinced by science itself of the existence of some kind of 'God'.

So please don't try to convince me, try to back-convert them to atheism!

(I'm simply too curious to listen to some convincing argument against my poor expositions... is there really no really convinced atheist out there willing to contrast my poor opinion? If it is really this way: poor poor poor atheism...)

While I am not an atheist the logical argument is simple.

If a god or gods wanted people to warship them then they could demonstrate their existence and define a single world religion. The wide range of religions around the world suggest that the god or gods don't care about warship. So either their is no god or there are gods but it its impossible to tell anything about them which means acting like there is no god is the most rational choice.

Do you know the definition of (christian) faith?

Faith informs us: God himself talked to us (see the Bible), and even visited us (see Jesus Christ). But you need faith for that, and faith is not something that we can produce or create, it's something we only can accept or deny.

So, it's not that it's impossible (as you say) to tell anything about God. It would even be enough to observe Nature.

As I said in another comment, many of the best scientists converted to some kind of deism, because they saw the great Intelligence inside Nature, and they could not find any other explanation than the existence of a Supreme Intelligence.

2 examples? Albert Einstein; Antony Flew.

Einstein did not convert to any kind of deism as a result of seeing the great Intelligence inside Nature and concluding that there must be a Supreme Intelligence. More specifically, (1) he did not believe in a Supreme Intelligence (he explicitly disclaimed belief in a personal God, and likened his view to that of Spinoza who more or less used "God" as a synonym for "Nature"), and (2) there was no "conversion".

Antony Flew is not one of "the best scientists" for the simple reason that he was never a scientist at all. He is a philosopher. Also, there is much reason (entirely independent of his conversion to deism) to believe that his mental faculties are in pretty bad shape. Which is fair enough for someone in his eighties, of course, but the argument "this must make sense if an eminent philosopher is convinced by it" -- which is a pretty hopeless argument in any case, considering some of the things eminent philosophers have been convinced by -- really doesn't work at all when the eminent philosopher no longer has the sharp mind that made him an eminent philosopher in the first place.

Einstein explicitly stated to believe in God (but not in the christian or hebrew one), and he explicitly derived this from the supreme intelligence which he found in natural laws.

And philosophy is science, but it's no natural science. And Flews book "There is a God" seems written in a really intelligent way, no signs of "brain damage".

Many many good scientists convert from atheism to some kind of deism. Yes, they convert, because it's a radical change of the very base of our thinking.

Einstein explicitly stated to believe in God

Source? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Religious_views

In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment." Einstein also stated: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth." [...] Einstein clarified his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.

You cite from 1929? There are many many citations, and often contradictory ones.

He certainly changed his opinion during his lifetime.

My source is a book (here in Europe, from 2008, not english). If you google a bit, you can find any kind of contradictory stuff, so internet and truth are not always friends (and we all know this).

>> Source?

> My source is a book

What is the name? Who is the author?

Do you know Italian? If yes, it's a book I'd recommend to everybody:

Author: Antonio Socci (a really good and meticulous italian journalist)

Name: "Indagine su Gesù"

It's a plain scientific research about the life of Jesus (with many many citations from every direction, including many atheists).

The book sells very well these days...

Author: Antonio Socci

Name: "Indagine su Gesù"

Thank you.

Do you know Italian?

No. I know Google Translate. http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpaparat...

Socci continues in this introductory chapter showing the positions of the greatest contemporary scientists, from Einstein to Hawking, by scholars of the Big Bang to those of DNA: all agree that the most reasonable answer to the mystery and the great dell'infinitamente 'infinitely small, as well as in front of the surprise at the amazing complexity of even the most minute living organism, is to admit a Creator. In short, something we call God But if science and reason - more and more, contrary to what one wants to believe - leads to the recognition of the existence of a God, the more dense is the enigma if we try to go down ' existence the essence.

Could you please provide the evidence (quotes, etc.) that Socci cites?

OK, in the first chapter of the book (page 19), there is this paragraph (I'm not good in translating to English, but I'll try):

"Einstein said that the natural laws are revealing such a superior reason, that all of human thinking and ordering are only an insignificant reflection, compared to them."

The next paragraph explains that Flew has been influenced decisively by the opinion of Einstein. It informs that many people said Einstein to be atheist or spinozistic pantheist. Then it cites Einstein again:

"I'm no atheist, and I don't think that I could define myself as pantheist. We are in the situation of a child which enters a huge library, full of books written in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written these books, but doesn't know how. And it doesn't know the languages the books are written in. The child suspects being a mysterious order in the disposition of the books, but doesn't know which. This seems to me the human position, even of the most intelligent ones, in front of God..."

(there follow some other sentences, but this should already be enough).

Happy now? The book is full of citations and annotations (they are counted, and the last one has the number 529). The author collected the material for the book in several years, and he's a really meticulous writer, I know him quite well.

in the first chapter of the book (page 19), there is this paragraph [...] "Einstein said that the natural laws are revealing such a superior reason, that all of human thinking and ordering are only an insignificant reflection, compared to them."

Thank you. I included the actual Einstein quote, which is taken from his book The World as I See It, in my other reply: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=462856

Here it is, again:

But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.

The quoted text appears in Einstein's book immediately after the paragraph in which Einstein states that belief in God is naive and childish. Einstein's book is online at Google Books. This link leads directly to the page with the quote: http://books.google.com/books?id=JFXWosy8ywYC&pg=PA38...

Then it cites Einstein again:

Thank you. Here is the actual quote: http://www.google.com/search?q=einstein+child+library+books+...

http://www.deism.com/einstein.htm

(The following is from Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer, Princeton University Press)

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."

Here is the Google Books page for Einstein and Religion By Max Jammer: http://books.google.com/books?id=TnCc1f1C25IC&pg=PA48...

The previous page of Jammer's book states:

Unrestricted determinism, Einstein argued, does not admit a "God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and whose purposes are modeled after our own."

Like Spinoza, Einstein denied the existence of a personal God, modeled after the ideal of a superman, as we would say today.*

On the next page, Jammer extends the above Einstein quote:

"[...] Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, and not two separate things."

Jammer attributes the Einstein quote to:

G. S. Viereck, Glimpses of the Great (Macauley, New York, 1930), quoted by D. Brian, Einstein - a Life, p. 186.

This webpage advises: http://kirtimukha.com/Krishnaswamy/Einstein/on_atheism.htm

You might want to take this quotation with a grain of salt. According to Brian, the Americanized German Viereck became known as a "big-name hunter" after "capturing" Kaiser Wilhelm II; Premier Georges Clemenceau of France; Henry Ford; Sigmund Freud, the inventor of psychoanalysis; and the playwright George Bernard Shaw. Because of his desire to interview the great and because of his inordinate egotism, Freud accused him of having a "superman complex." Upton Sinclear referred to him as "a pompous liar and hypocrite," and George Bernard Shaw questioned his accuracy.

Is the quotation authentic? For what it's worth, here it is.

When asked whether he believes in the God of Spinoza, Einstein is supposed to have replied as follows:

  "I can't answer with a simple yes or no.
  I'm not an atheist and I don't think I
  can call myself a pantheist. We are in
  the position of a little child entering
  a huge library filled with books in many
  different languages. [...] Our limited
  minds cannot grasp the mysterious force
  that moves the constellations. I am
  fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but
  admire even more his contributions to
  modern thought because he is the first
  philosopher to deal with the soul and
  the body as one, not two separate
  things."

Did Einstein actually say this? The nonsense phrase "mysterious force that moves the constellations" troubles me. This seems much more likely to have been inserted by the scientifically ignorant Viereck than it does something that Einstein would say.

The Viereck interview with Einstein appeared first in the Saturday Evening Post (Oct. 26, 1929, p.17) under the title "What Life Means to Einstein."It is curious that Einstein's statement about Spinoza does not appear in that article. Did Viereck choose not include it? Did Einstein object to its inclusion in the article? Or was the Spinoza material removed by the editors? [...]

The quotation may not be completely inauthentic. It seems improbable that Viereck could have recorded Einstein's answer verbatim during an interview. Surely Viereck would have taken brief abbreviated notes that he expanded later. Or perhaps he jotted down the conversation at some time afterwards, putting down Einstein's answers from memory. In neither case would you expect 100% accuracy.

Thanks, personally I never take any citation literally, both parts (agreeing and opposing) could have, even subconsciously, changed some parts.

As for the book I mentioned: it didn't influence or change my mind, it has only been a very, very interesting read (because there are opinions from a few christian people, but most are from non-religious people, who recognized the geniality of the New Testament, and the absolutely unique position of Jesus Christ in history (in both past and present).

Few people know how deeply the whole european history has been positively influenced by christianity. One of the best statements of the book is: christians don't ask people not to be rational, but to be it profoundly!

(If you only stay on the surface of the things, everything seems possible. Only a deep understanding shows the whole reality...)

Here is, apparently, Antonio Socci's blog: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.goo...

[Original Italian text sentences alternating with translated English sentences:]

Nel microscopico la grandezza della carica dell’elettrone ei rapporti col protone: “i valori di questi numeri” scrive Hawking “sembrano essere stati esattamente coordinati per rendere possibile lo sviluppo della vita”. In the microscopic size of the charge of electronics and proton relations with "the values of these numbers," Hawking writes, "seem to have been exactly coordinated to enable the development of life." E poi la velocità di espansione dell’universo: se un secondo dopo il Big Bang fosse stata un pochino superiore o appena inferiore sarebbe accaduta la catastrofe. And then the speed of expansion of the universe: if a second after the Big Bang had been slightly higher or lower would be just the disaster happened. Diceva Albert Einstein che nelle leggi della natura “si rivela una ragione così superiore che tutta la razionalità del pensiero e degli ordinamenti umani è al confronto un riflesso assolutamente insignificante”. Albert Einstein said that in the laws of nature "is one reason so superior that all rational thought and human systems is a reflection of a comparison is absolutely insignificant."

The rest of the blogpost is standard "the world is too perfect to be of natural origin" ID stuff. Are the quotes above what were in the book (Indagine su Gesù) regarding Einstein's and Hawking's alleged beliefs in God?

Apparently, the original Einstein quote in English was: http://www.google.com/search?q=einstein+%22utterly+insignifi...

This page http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/einstein_religion.html says the quote is from:

Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, Secaucus, New Jersey: The Citadel Press, 1999, pp. 24-29.

That page includes the book's preceding 11 paragraphs, in which Einstein states that belief in God is naive and childish.

...and sorry for this annotation:

The US certainly suffers 'superficiality' more than any other country. If you want to find really scientific stuff about religion, you often need to go back to good old Europe...

Flew's book "There is a God" may or may not be written really intelligently, but it doesn't appear to have been written by Flew. His comment on this: "My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 per cent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I’m 84 and that was Roy Varghese’s role. The idea that someone manipulated me because I’m old is exactly wrong. I may be old but it is hard to manipulate me. That is my book and it represents my thinking." I don't see any credible way to interpret that other than as admitting that he didn't actually write the book.

You may define "science" in such a way as to make every philosopher a "scientist" if you wish. For that matter, you may define it so as to make every banana a "scientist". However, if you want to communicate with other people then I recommend that you use words in something like the same sense as others do. Antony Flew is not a scientist.

I seem to recognize the pattern:

Everybody seems to encourage (even in a contradictory way) the proper opinion, and refutes quite absolutely the proper change of it...

Poor humanity, if everybody thinks like this...

Your assuming a faith is correct, but christian faith is a splinter group of Judaism which has plenty of splinter groups within it. Without bias choosing any group over another without evidence is simply guessing. Is it the baptists or the born again, or some non denominational feel good blob of goo?

People don't need to make assumptions or guesses about anything, your first option is to have no opinion, but if you want to make a guess you have many many options:

The absolute simplest idea is the world is random there is zero cause / effect relationship. There seems to be fairly direct evidence that this is not the case but that could still be random chance.

The next option is everything will happen. This covers all bases and is impossible to disprove.

Albert Einstein like many scientists assumed there is some underlying causal relationship in the universe and there are some rules which define behavior so there are limits on what can happen. Which seems like an obvious assumption but it's in opposition to Quantum Mechanics which he never really accepted. That was an act of faith in spite of evidence. He basically said, I see this with my eyes but I don't accept that this can be possible.

So IMO, Einstein had some good ideas but he was a poor scientist.

I'm not entirely sure why a god (or gods) would ever want the people to have a warship. Unless it's used to fight off other warships from competing gods. In which case warship possession is a plausible want for a god.

Atheism is getting older and older. I know that I'm offensive now, but atheists seem to me like people offending their own intelligence.

Let me cite Louis Pasteur: A little bit of science moves away from God, but much science makes return to him.

Yes yes, there are real religions, and the rest are imaginary, as theology is a complex field...

What, nobody else saw that one coming?

These kinds of arguments make me tensor.

Religion is always referring to something that we can not reach with our own intelligence.

It's in the nature of this concept that it can be faked in infinite ways...

Allowing that both are real is incorrect, even as they define themselves. Christianity and Judaism, by identity, allow only one of them to be real, if real is defined by correspondence with existence.

By 'real' I mean a religion which is elevating the human spirit, in contrast of being any kind of ideology.

P.S. Judaism and Christianity are the only 2 religions which can be defined really similar. They are much less in contrast as most people think.

If Judaism and Christianity are real religions, what are the fake ones? Did you mean, say, Scientology and neopaganism? Or did you mean, say, other major world religions?

A real religion is elevating the best part of yourself, without encouraging some too human inclination (I could make examples, but I don't want to).

All 'fake' religions are (in reality) some kind of auto-idolatry (let it be violence, egocentrism, and so on, it's a never-ending list...)

That's an interesting division. But, how does elevating ourselves, even if the better part, not reduce to ego gratification too?

Ego gratification is not bad: it's good and even necessary to grow.

But we can't always (by ourselves) distinguish between gratification (read: elevating growth) and egoism (destructive growth).

So we need some 'illumination', which is, in another term: Religion.

I'm sorry you get downvoted so much for your views. They are interesting and you conduct yourself well. So, feel encouraged.

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