Hybrid Model Reveals People Act Less Rationally In Complex Games, More Predictably In Simple Ones (phys.org) 71
alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Researchers at Princeton University, Boston University and other institutes used machine learning to predict the strategic decisions of humans in various games. Their paper, published in Nature Human Behavior, shows that a deep neural network trained on human decisions could predict the strategic choices of players with high levels of accuracy. [...] Essentially, the team suggests that people behave more rationally while playing games that they perceive as easier. In contrast, when they are playing more complex games, people's choices could be influenced by various other factors, thus the "noise" affecting their behavior would increase.
As part of their future studies, the researchers would also like to shed more light on what makes a game "complex" or "easy." This could be achieved using the context-dependent noise parameter that they integrated into their model as a signature of "perceived difficulty." "Our analysis provides a robust model comparison across a wide range of candidate models of decision-making," said [Jian-Qiao Zhu, first author of the paper]. "We now have strong evidence that introducing context-dependence into the quantal response model significantly improves its ability to capture human strategic behavior. More specifically, we identified key factors in the game matrix that shape game complexity: considerations of efficiency, the arithmetic difficulty of computing payoff differences, and the depth of reasoning required to arrive at a rational solution."
The findings gathered as part of this recent study also highlight the "lightness" with which many people approach strategic decisions, which could make them vulnerable to parties looking to sway them towards making irrational decisions. Once they gather more insight into what factors make games and decision-making scenarios more challenging for people, Zhu and his colleagues hope to start devising new behavioral science interventions aimed at prompting people to make more rational decisions.
As part of their future studies, the researchers would also like to shed more light on what makes a game "complex" or "easy." This could be achieved using the context-dependent noise parameter that they integrated into their model as a signature of "perceived difficulty." "Our analysis provides a robust model comparison across a wide range of candidate models of decision-making," said [Jian-Qiao Zhu, first author of the paper]. "We now have strong evidence that introducing context-dependence into the quantal response model significantly improves its ability to capture human strategic behavior. More specifically, we identified key factors in the game matrix that shape game complexity: considerations of efficiency, the arithmetic difficulty of computing payoff differences, and the depth of reasoning required to arrive at a rational solution."
The findings gathered as part of this recent study also highlight the "lightness" with which many people approach strategic decisions, which could make them vulnerable to parties looking to sway them towards making irrational decisions. Once they gather more insight into what factors make games and decision-making scenarios more challenging for people, Zhu and his colleagues hope to start devising new behavioral science interventions aimed at prompting people to make more rational decisions.
Bad news, gentlemen... (Score:3)
The guys who do mobile game monetization are laughing into ~$125 billion/year at the idea of someone attempting to study how games make people act irrationally in order to do something other than encourage them. And that's not counting the overt gambling and day trader facilitating operations.
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how irrational is cheating? and yet look how it pervades not only our games but also our society, people put shallow self-gratification before ethical decisions almost every time, this is why our society is corrupt, crumbling and ineffective, our leadership is steering us all right to hell
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people are free to change the system we live in but that does not happen because most people are unethical, selfish and irresponsible, we the people get the governments we deserve
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The culture is us. If the aggregate we wanted to change it, we would.
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There's "wanting to change it" and "having enough spare bandwidth to do the politics needed to change it". Even just staying well educated enough to know which candidates most match your values once every two years is a significant undertaking. If you aren't keeping up with the news on a daily-to-weekly basis all year long, you don't have context for most of the issues a given candidate can affect. People end up voting all one party because of national issues, ignoring state and local issues where other par
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the reality is if enough ethical 'principled' people want things to change, it's possible
the fact that things are clearly getting worse is a sure sign of not enough ethical people
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The number of Russian defectors who have said they really thought Nazis had taken over Ukraine is an easy example of just how twisted ethical people can become when disinformation campaigns really get going.
We are in a whole new information landscape these last five years than in the previous entire history of humanity. The tools needed to spread false messages direct to individuals with few institutional checks are far stronger than ever before. I'm not willing to sell most people short in this environment
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Within their worldview, they're being entirely rational.
Red states aren't uneducated. They have a sick culture. I mean look at its fucking foundations- these people are 60 years out from Jim Crow, and they fought it longer than that.
2TecTom is right. We have the system we deserve.
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For many you're correct, but that's only about 75% of Trump's support. The disinformation campaign has bent more than a few who are just discovering how wrong they were.
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But still, even those people knew they were making a tradeoff, and they've learned a lesson about willful blindness and believing in the better angels of a demagogue.
For even the people we don't want to call "Trump Supporters" (My step mother is, I think, a good example of these), the
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Cheating can be rational. Getting an advantage over others makes a lot of sense. There are many ways to do that, but people have designated some of them to be "cheating".
However, if you do it and not get caught then it is a rational decision. The same applies if the punishment for getting caught is less than what you gained by doing it (which is why some companies pay huge fines for breaking the law, but do not stop breaking the law).
Take any law and people will be doing their best to find ways around it.
Ge
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spoken like a real loser, just saying an unethical life isn't worth shit, just remember, it's all the cheating that's created a hell on earth for so many
ethics are foundational, people who don't get that, don't want to because they don't, or won't, understand how little quality they can truly appreciate, they lead shallow lives filled with endless needs and insatiable greed
it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the gates of heaven
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it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the gates of heaven
Or for anyone else for that matter, given that heaven does not exist.
You were talking about rationality. It is rational to use any and all advantages you have. Any ethics or honor rules were created to attempt to change that, in that while it would be rational to do X, but it will get you punished, so it is no longer worth it.
And yes, I would rather have a worthless, meaningless life of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or, well, anyone who has more money than me than have a "soul rich" life. Yeah, IIRC the Communists
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Wow, another classist commentator, of course, you can choose to believe that you understand everything, me, I know better than to be so arrogant. What I see self-justification.
Often affluent people will claim others are jealous or resentful of their success. There are two problems with this, first, many of us are neither resentful nor jealous. The second is in the definition of success. No one decent resents being reasonable and earning our appreciation honestly, nor do we resent others doing so. As well, w
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Real success comes from inner and spiritual development and living up to one's responsibilities as an ethical human being.
These things do not enjoy corporeal existence. They exist in deluded ape brains only. Not only are you completely missing Pentium100's very salient points, you're doing so in the dumbest, most abusive, way possible.
Not only did you miss the boat... you failed to navigate the gangplank. Like most self-delusional apes that profess to have a personal relationship with invisible sky-beards.
Maybe read up on Game Theory ... or pretty much any non-fiction book that isn't a faery tale about incest, slavery, murd
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Game theory easily demonstrates the value, and therefore the rationality, of behaving ethically.
The fact that you claim this makes it glaringly obvious you are exactly as clueless and opinionated as you appear to be. Kudos.
You are a moron.
What is it with the delusional sky-beard cultists and their desperate need to denigrate anyone who doesn't buy in to their faery tale or their highly distorted view of reality?
Look. We get it. Your education was sub-par and your IQ is developmentally challenged but waving your inferiority complex schlong around like it was helping your case is not doing you any favours.
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What is it with us? We understand we don't really understand. You on the other hand falsely believe you've got it all figured out when clearly that's impossible. Your beliefs are no different than anyone's else's beliefs except your to arrogant to understand the limits of your understanding. Just remember, you're the one claiming there's nothing you don't understand, all we're doing is accepting the possibility that's there's more than we can understand.,
Besides, your need to be insulting speaks volumes abo
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Kurzweil predicts machines with human-level intelligence will be available from affordable computing devices within a couple of decades, revolutionizing most aspects of life. He says nanotechnology will augment our bodies and cure cancer even as humans connect to computers via direct neural interfaces or live full-time in virtual reality. Kurzweil predicts the machines "will appear to have their own free will" and even have "spiritual experiences". ~ Wikipedia
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We understand we don't really understand
False. Your lot claim "revealed wisdom" which should not be questioned... ever... on pain of eternal torture.
Your beliefs
False equivalence and your cult's sad little attempt to imply philosophies of equal standing. Wrong on every level imaginable.
your
Wrong. You're... as in a contraction of "you" and "are".
to arrogant to understand the limits of your understanding
Wrong. The word you're missing here is "too" as in "too arrogant". Additionally, I understand full well my own limits and will adapt my understanding based on the introduction of new data and repeatable test results. Cul
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Wow, another classist commentator, of course, you can choose to believe that you understand everything, me, I know better than to be so arrogant. What I see self-justification.
Yep, most criminals (caught or uncaught) like to think they did nothing wrong.
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Yep, most criminals (caught or uncaught) like to think they did nothing wrong.
It's not a like, it's a need. People need to see themselves as 'justified' so they rationalize. This is lying to oneself, the very beginnings of mental illness. Indeed, mental health is grounded upon both self-honesty and critical reasoning. People make choices and those choices effect the people making them the most.
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Indeed. It is basically the staring into the abyss. Although it is hard to imagine some of the really evil people (and we have quite a few at this time) actually being affected in proportion to their evil. Well, maybe they will only get crappy reincarnation options for the next 100'000 times...
As to mental health, by that definition, many people are pretty unhealthy regarding the self-honesty. And critical reasoning is something only about 10-15% of all people can even do.
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It's not interesting, it's just Christianity.
So the fevered imaginings and wholesale theft of prior art cobbled together by bronze-age goat herders to form a cult is now the ultimate argument? Really?
The christ cult at it's best. Pointless, raving and lost.
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than have a "soul rich" life..
The other poster is not advocating for a "soul rich life," but a soul-rich afterlife. Something entirely unprovable. While forsaking any gains in our only provably real life (this one). He thinks his fantasy trumps reality, thus is "rational."
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Actually, no. Not everybody is scum. A lot of people are though.
Getting yourself in a disadvantage because of "ethics" or "honor" is the irrational decision most of the time.
Spoken like somebody that does not understand either. Here is news for you: That behavior is entirely rational if you want society to do well. And in most cases that gets you more and better benefits than if you (and many others) just take what you can. It does take a mind that can see larger connections though, and I gather you are very much not in possession of one of those.
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Cheating isn't irrational, it's a perfectly rational response, especially to things that are perceived as random - to reduce the risk.
Cheating in gambling games is rampant because it's rational to want to put the finger on the scale to tilt the balance in your favor, and not the house's.
Cheating in multiplayer games takes many forms - from cheating the matching algorithms so you can get cannon fodder for an opponent (this is especially if you are planning on "showing off" via streaming or other thing), so y
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cheating is unethical, no matter how you try to justify it
cheaters never win, winners never cheat
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not to mention how the cheaters are ruining everything for everybody because it sure isn't the ethical and responsible adults causing all these problems, it's all the cheaters
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Cheating in multiplayer destroys the game. Has happened time and again. The cheaters are not smart enough and usually complain about others then, though.
Don't conflate rational with morality. (Score:2)
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being without ethics and not have a sense of morality is the very definition of sociopathy, there's nothing rational about mental illness
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how irrational is cheating?
Will it meet our goals better? Rational decision-making in action.
Now how likely are we to be caught? Are there behaviors to avoid being caught? What are the penalties? Again, still entirely rational. It's all a problem of risk vs reward. It's only when we don't think (like most Americans committing ~3 felonies a day without knowing) that it's irrational.
"make more rational decisions" (Score:3)
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I would say in more complex games, especially if we are talking single player, there is also a lot of from for roleplaying.
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Indeed. In simple games like Tic-Tac-Toe, you can easily brute-force calculate the most optimal decisions and just use those. In more complex games, where you can't brute-force calculate all the optimal decisions, you have to use strategies, like playing in a very attacking, or a very defensive way, or, if it's a card game, bluffing a lot. Those already introduce suboptimality - if you're locked into a very attacking mindset, you can easily miss more optimal defensive decisions. Simple games otoh often don'
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So. If folks want to actually read the article, theres a preprint of it here on arXiv dot org, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.078... [arxiv.org] . Dont stress, its legit, thats how preprints work.
Anyway. From best I can work out, this is a fairly game-theoretic approach. But essentially "rationality" here would seem to mean "makes decisions that would get the highest utility according to funky bayesian scoring system" which, its totally a thing in economics and also corners of the internet obsessed with that kind of thing,
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Stepping on toes (Score:2)
Zhu and his colleagues hope to start devising new behavioral science interventions aimed at prompting people to make more rational decisions
What? They want to undermine the decades of applied propaganda science which has resulted in fairly reliable shaping of public thought and behaviour? How dare they co-opt somebody else's research subjects!
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decades of applied propaganda science
Decades? This began when people were told invisible all-powerful beings were real without any evidence thousands of years ago, and should be blindly obeyed through the people who just happen to know what those beings want.
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Oh yawn. Whether God is real or not has limited influence on the fact that believing in him makes my life better, makes my family's life better and makes society around me better.
I'd rather it turns out I am wrong and had the advantages than being right when I suicide. Good for you if you don't need a god because you're a perfectly content human being. Seeing as you just had to throw that morcel of insight out there seems to be telling another story though.
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Whether God is real or not has limited influence on the fact that believing in him makes my life better
Surrendering personal agency to a non-existent sky-beard makes your life better? Really? Fascinating. A complete delusional interpretation of facts but fascinating nonetheless.
makes my family's life better
Personal delusion.
makes society around me better.
Personal delusion. Also, terrible lesson to the kids that "We behave because iff we don't, Terrible Sky-Beard will burn us FOREVER!" - I mean.. along with the indoctrination, just shocking parenting.
I'd rather it turns out I am wrong and had the advantages than being right when I suicide.
Pascal's wager. As nonsensical as when it was first uttered. Not original either.
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Such a shame there isn't a -1; Hopelessly Naive mod.
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believing in him
Remember, kids, lying is bad.
that morcel of insight
Thank you. I'm glad you agree.
Tesla Drives think they're playing Mario Cart (Score:2)
Hwy. 17 between Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz are two lanes of 65MPG traffic. Maybe at 2am without any accidents.
During rush hour, (8am and 5pm commutes), it turns into slower, congested traffic where drivers seem to forget the "1 car length for every 10MPH" rule I learned in Driver's Ed in 1970. Back in the 2000s, there used to be a web site "HWY17 HALL OF SHAME" where people would post phone camera pics of assholes who followed to slowly complete with license plate visible. I'm sure Auto Insurance comp
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Actions you take that cause other drivers to make riskier decisions are BAD actions, regardless of what you learned in Driver's Ed in 1970.
Precisely this.
Automative traffic is a complex system and like *all* complex systems it relies on *flow* to reduce failure - "accidents". Anything that introduces noise, (erratic driving, impeding flow, etc), increases the likelihood of failure.
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98% of traffic problems on highway 17 are caused by dipshits who should never be allowed to use the left lane. 1% are caused by that one dip in the fast lane on the EB side that they don't seem to be able to fix ever. The remaining 1% are caused at the first exit on the inland side when it's busy.
Before Teslas even existed I was passing the clowns who don't know what a passing lane is for on the right on the 17. The only meaningful difference between then and now is that there's more drivers, including more
Preference for perfection or fun? (Score:1)
While I do like to win. I also want to make sure that everyone has fun when playing a game in person.
My actions are somewhat tempered by my desire to have fun vs. beating everyone into the ground every round.
well yes, (Score:2)
Let me guess (Score:2)
Half the people have an IQ of under 100%
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Unlike you, I'm at the right side of the bell curve.:-)
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Over 8 billion people have an IQ under 100%.
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Indeed and I just found one: IQ is not measured in percent and cannot be measured in percent. It makes no sense to do so.
Greetings Professor Falken. Shall we play a game? (Score:2)
it's simply the Known vs the Unknown. (Score:2)
What makes a game complex or easy? We really need to research this. using AI! Maybe they can apply is to Chess vs Checkers while wearing jeans.
Duh. (Score:2)
Games that people understand the game rules have people that play logically.
Games that people do not understand the rules cannot be played logically and must instead be played using non-logical methodology.
Note, a lot of the theoretician's claims of 'illogical' behavior is caused by people's natural mistrust of other people. (I.E. those money now vs money later studies do not take into account the people not trusting the scientist to actually pay them later. The scientists think the pay later is 100% guar
Memo to classical economists (Score:2)
So much for the "rational actor" in the markets.
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"Rational actor" has been disproven for a very long time.
My favorite easy experiment (you can run it with a grade school class) is this one:
Two participants. One participant is given one dollar. The other participant is given nothing.
Now, the participant with one dollar must offer some amount of that dollar to the other participant. The other participant can say 'yes,' take that amount, and they both walk away, or 'no,' and both participants get nothing.
The 'rational actor' would accept an offer of 'I'll
Waste of University Brainshare (Score:2)