Platonia Dilemma
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Platonia Dilemma
In the platonia dilemma introduced in Douglas Hofstadter's book ''Metamagical Themas'', an eccentric trillionaire gathers 20 people together, and tells them that if one and only one of them sends them a telegram (reverse charges) by noon the next day, that person will receive a billion dollars. If they receive more than one telegram, or none at all, no one will get any money, and cooperation between players is forbidden. In this situation, the superrational thing to do is to send a telegram with probability 1/20. Luring Lottery A similar game, referred to as a "Luring Lottery", was actually played by the editors of ''Scientific American'' in the 1980s. – reprinted in: To enter the contest once, readers had to send in a postcard with the number "1" written on it. They were also explicitly permitted to submit as many entries as they wished by sending in a single postcard bearing the number of entries they wished to submit. The prize was one million dollars divided by the total n ...
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Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'' won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction"General Nonfiction"
. ''Past winners and finalists by category''. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
and a (at that time called The American Book Award) for Science.
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Metamagical Themas
''Metamagical Themas'' is an eclectic collection of articles that Douglas Hofstadter wrote for the popular science magazine ''Scientific American'' during the early 1980s. The anthology was published in 1985 by Basic Books. The volume is substantial in size and contains extensive notes concerning responses to the articles and other information relevant to their content. (One of the notes—page 65—suggested memetics for the study of memes.) Major themes include: self-reference in memes, language, art and logic; discussions of philosophical issues important in cognitive science/AI; analogies and what makes something similar to something else (specifically what makes, for example, an uppercase letter 'A' recognizable as such); and lengthy discussions of the work of Robert Axelrod on the prisoner's dilemma, as well as the idea of superrationality. The concept of superrationality, and its relevance to the Cold War, environmental issues and such, is accompanied by notes on exper ...
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Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it is the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. ''Scientific American'' is owned by Springer Nature, which in turn is a subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. History ''Scientific American'' was founded by inventor and publisher Rufus Porter (painter), Rufus Porter in 1845 as a four-page weekly newspaper. The first issue of the large format newspaper was released August 28, 1845. Throughout its early years, much emphasis was placed on reports of what was going on at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. Patent Office. It also reported on a broad range of inventions including perpetual motion machines, an 1860 device for buoying vessels by Abraham Lincoln, and the universal joint which now can be found ...
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Superrationality
In economics and game theory, a participant is considered to have superrationality (or renormalized rationality) if they have perfect rationality (and thus maximize their utility) but assume that all other players are superrational too and that a superrational individual will always come up with the same strategy as any other superrational thinker when facing the same problem. Applying this definition, a superrational player playing against a superrational opponent in a prisoner's dilemma will cooperate while a rationally self-interested player would defect. This decision rule is not a mainstream model within the game theory and was suggested by Douglas Hofstadter in his article, series, and book ''Metamagical Themas'' – reprinted in: as an alternative type of rational decision making different from the widely accepted game-theoretic one. Superrationality is a form of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, and is closely related to the concept of Kantian equilibrium proposed b ...
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Dice
Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing games, and games of chance. A traditional die is a cube with each of its six faces marked with a different number of dots ( pips) from one to six. When thrown or rolled, the die comes to rest showing a random integer from one to six on its upper surface, with each value being equally likely. Dice may also have polyhedral or irregular shapes, may have faces marked with numerals or symbols instead of pips and may have their numbers carved out from the material of the dice instead of marked on it. Loaded dice are designed to favor some results over others for cheating or entertainment. History Dice have been used since before recorded history, and it is uncertain where they originated. It is theorized that dice developed from the practice ...
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Googolplex
A googolplex is the number 10, or equivalently, 10 or 1010,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 . Written out in ordinary decimal notation, it is 1 followed by 10100 zeroes; that is, a 1 followed by a googol of zeroes. History In 1920, Edward Kasner's nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, coined the term ''googol'', which is 10, and then proposed the further term ''googolplex'' to be "one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired". Kasner decided to adopt a more formal definition because "different people get tired at different times and it would never do to have Carnera ea better mathematician than Dr. Einstein, simply because he had more endurance and could write for longer". It thus became standardized to 10(10100) = 1010100, due to the right-associativity of exponentiation. Size A typical book can be printed with 10 zeros (around 400 pages with 50 lines per page and 50 ...
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Superrationality
In economics and game theory, a participant is considered to have superrationality (or renormalized rationality) if they have perfect rationality (and thus maximize their utility) but assume that all other players are superrational too and that a superrational individual will always come up with the same strategy as any other superrational thinker when facing the same problem. Applying this definition, a superrational player playing against a superrational opponent in a prisoner's dilemma will cooperate while a rationally self-interested player would defect. This decision rule is not a mainstream model within the game theory and was suggested by Douglas Hofstadter in his article, series, and book ''Metamagical Themas'' – reprinted in: as an alternative type of rational decision making different from the widely accepted game-theoretic one. Superrationality is a form of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, and is closely related to the concept of Kantian equilibrium proposed b ...
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Game Theory
Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has applications in all fields of social science, as well as in logic, systems science and computer science. Originally, it addressed two-person zero-sum games, in which each participant's gains or losses are exactly balanced by those of other participants. In the 21st century, game theory applies to a wide range of behavioral relations; it is now an umbrella term for the science of logical decision making in humans, animals, as well as computers. Modern game theory began with the idea of mixed-strategy equilibria in two-person zero-sum game and its proof by John von Neumann. Von Neumann's original proof used the Brouwer fixed-point theorem on continuous mappings into compact convex sets, which became a standard method in game theory and mathema ...
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