Recommended reading for background to the gambling discussion below: Geralomo Cardano (1501-1576), *Liber de Ludo Aleae*, "The Book of Games of Chance,"
davew On Sat, Apr 18, 2020, at 3:35 PM, David Eric Smith wrote: > Yes, both Eric C. and Marcus have already answered this better than what I am > about to say, because they have already abstracted it into concepts. But I > will put only a particular. > > I got this from the polymath Elwyn Berlekamp (who did run a hedge fund) in > the kitchen on an Erdos-like visit by him to Santa Fe. > > The conceptually phrased problem is: what is the deterministic response (“a > practice”) to a distributional input as object? > > Suppose you are playing a betting game, and you know the set of possible > outcomes, and the probabilities of each. (Can be poker, though that is > complicated enough to take work to describe. A simple double-or-nothing > roulette would be a minimal model). > > You have some money. You can put some of your money as a bet for as many > outcomes as you want. Bets have some smallest denomination, so it is possible > for you to lose everything for some allocations. How do you allocate? > > 1. If you want to maximize your expected payoff in one play, you put all your > money on whichever outcome is most likely. > > 2. If you wish to play repeatedly, and you want to both avoid going broke and > to maximize your long-term payout, you bet a fraction of your money > proportional to the probability of each outcome (or as close as you can get > to that with your finite denomination), in every round. I think one of the > Bernoullis solved this in 1700-something, and it is widely taught. I was just > raised in a woodshed, so I didn’t know about it until Elwyn came by. Your > expected rate of growth of your pot is proportional to the relative entropy > between your distribution of bets and the distribution of probabilities of > the various outcomes. I’m pretty sure this is in Cover and Thomas’s Elements > of Information Theory. If your starting pot is finite, your probability of > survival to round-N is some other function, now of both distributions and how > finely you can divide the money, and there is some distribution of likely > survival times that can also be computed. (Remember that there is no way you > can be assured to survive; if you make bad distributions and lose more than > you gain in too many rounds, you will eventually have too little to be able > to place nonzero bets on every outcome with your nonzero denomination, and > will start to run nonzero risks of losing all.) > > Ole Peters has built a whole privately-funded institute on this specific > metaphor, which he packages in terms of expected utility: > http://lml.org.uk/people/ole-peters-2/ > But of course endlessly more sophisticated variants are developed in almost > any field I can think of. > > So, for elections? Maybe something about investment in state and local > organizing, how much attention the national committee gives to on-the-ground > organizations and what they say their constituents are asking for, capture of > congressional seats, a strategic view of what happens if legislatures won’t > make laws so that court interpretations become the de facto origins of > legal-precedent-as-new-law, feeding back to which elections are > consequential. Stuff like that. > > Of course, for all of those things, more is always better. But on a budget, > how you prioritize the time/attention/work you can get out of citizens to > support your projects should depend on what the mechanics of the process is > through time. > > Eric > >> On Apr 19, 2020, at 5:16 AM, <thompnicks...@gmail.com> >> <thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> But Eric, >> >> If, over his career, Nate's site gives a 2/3 vs 1/3 split 1,000 ti mes, and >> something near 333 times the 1/3 split wins, I think he gets to declare >> himself accurate >> >> How is that practicial? I.e., how can we base a practice on it? Nate’s >> career isn’t over yet? >> >> Nick >> Nicholas Thompson >> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology >> Clark University >> thompnicks...@gmail.com >> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ >> >> >> >> *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles >> *Sent:* Saturday, April 18, 2020 1:59 PM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> >> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] anthropological observations >> >> If, over his career, Nate's site gives a 2/3 vs 1/3 split 1,000 ti mes, and >> something near 333 times the 1/3 split wins, I think he gets to declare >> himself accurate. >> >> Similarly, a modern poker pro isn't trying to guess what the opponent has. >> The modern player is trying to put the opponent on a spread of possible >> hands under the circumstances. The outcome of any given hand doesn't matter, >> and there is an expected amount of variance in performance even under a >> game-theoretic perfect strategy. The question is whether the strategy pays >> out in the long run, and whether the player has a deep enough bankroll (in >> comparison to the stakes they are playing at) to ride out the variance. If >> you think the pro is doing something else, you probably are still a very >> long way from getting to that level. >> >> >> >> ----------- >> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. >> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist >> American University - Adjunct Instructor >> >> >> On Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 2:32 PM <thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> So, Eric [Charles], >>> >>> What exactly were the *practicial* consequences of declaring that Hillary >>> was “probably” going to win the election or that a full house was probably >>> going to win the pot given she lost and the dealer held a strait flush? >>> >>> Nick >>> >>> Nicholas Thompson >>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology >>> Clark University >>> thompnicks...@gmail.com >>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ >>> >>> >>> *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles >>> *Sent:* Saturday, April 18, 2020 12:06 PM >>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> >>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] anthropological observations >>> >>> -------- Nick says --------- Nate constantly says that making such >>> predictions is, strictly speaking, not his job. As long as what happens >>> falls within the error of his prediction, he feels justified in having made >>> it. He will say things like, "actually we were right." I would prefer him >>> to say, "Actually we were wrong, *but I would make the same prediction >>> under the same circumstances the next time.” *In other words, the right >>> procedure produced, on this occasion, a wrong result. ----------------- >>> >>> Well... so this connects a lot with poker, which I am in the process of >>> teaching the 10 year old... If I recall, Nate was giving Trump a 1/3 chance >>> of victory, which was much higher than most of the other models at the >>> time. You can hardly fault someone because something happened that they >>> said would happen 2/3 of the time. >>> >>> If a poker player has a model that predicts a given play to be the best >>> option, because it will work 2/3 of the time, and this one time it doesn't >>> work, that isn't grounds to say the model failed. >>> >>> YOU want the modelers to have models that rarely give anything close to >>> even odds. So do I, so I'm sympathetic. But the modeler might prefer a more >>> honest model, that includes more uncertainty, for a wide variety of >>> reasons. >>> >>> ----------- >>> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. >>> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist >>> American University - Adjunct Instructor >>> >>> >>> On Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 12:17 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> I think it's interesting that you seemed to have *flipped* your thinking >>>> within the same post. You restate my point about conceptual metaphors by >>>> saying models/computation merely *justifies* decisions/rhetoric. Then a >>>> few paragraphs later, you suggest that's conflating language with thought. >>>> >>>> My diatribe to Nick was that he *uses* metaphors/models simply to impute >>>> his conceptual structure onto Nate. Nick's decision is already made and he >>>> wants Nate's work to justify it. And the way he *imputes* his conceptual >>>> structure into Nate's work is through the sloppy use of metaphor. Then >>>> when Nate tells Nick (indirectly) that Nick's wrong about what Nate's >>>> done, Nick rejects Nate's objection. >>>> >>>> I'm picking on Nick, of course. We all do it. I wish we all did it much >>>> less. >>>> >>>> On 4/18/20 6:14 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: >>>> > But frankly as often as not, I saw >>>> > them use our work to *justify* the decision they had already made or >>>> > were leaning heavily toward, *apparently* based on larger strategic >>>> > biases. >>>> > >>>> > [...] >>>> > >>>> > As for your gut-level (and often well articulated) mistrust of >>>> > "metaphorical thinking", you may conflate a belief (such as mine) that >>>> > language is metaphorical at it's base with being a "metaphorical >>>> > thinker". Metaphor gets a bad rap/rep perhaps because of the >>>> > "metaphorical license" often taken in creative arts (albeit for a >>>> > different and possibly higher purpose). >>>> >>>> -- >>>> ☣ uǝlƃ >>>> >>>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... >>>> .... . ... >>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam >>>> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... >>> .... . ... >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam >>> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... >> .... . ... >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam >> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... > .... . ... > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >
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