Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Game Theory 101: Always Trust a Signal from a God (Gods don't need to bluff.)

Define:

Signal - A signal is a bit of information that could be true or false.

Screen - An Attempt to determine a signal's truth.

Example - In the Princess Bride, Vizzini was attempting to screen in which goblet Wesley hid the poison. Because he was unaware that he was playing a game of incomplete information, Vizzini assumed that if Wesley was willing to drink the wine from a goblet that it must be free from poison, so set up a screen to determine which goblet was poisoned. We know how that turned out.

Moral 1: Always assume that you are playing a game of incomplete information. (You don't know all the potential possibilities.)
Moral 2: It is also best to assume that information in the game is also asymmetric. (Your opponent knows more than you do.)

Pascal's Wager says it is best to believe in the existence of God because you have nothing to lose on the contrary. However, Pascal's Wager is a false dilemma, as it only provides two possibilities:
A benevolent God exists or benevolent God doesn't exist.

To fully consider this question we'd have to somehow have to compare the probabilities of all possible lemmas, the existence of a benevolent God being but one of them.

Naturally, this causes one to speculate on the potential possibilities.

Speculation is suffering. It is a good thing that there is a solution for suffering...

BTW, I finished a 10 mile race at a pace of 8:06, I was pleased.

No comments:

Post a Comment