Geek Out with the Engineer Guy

"How to Read Philosophy" - Ben Myers

Sherlock, pilot

Brilliant.

Dr. Watson: That... was amazing.
Holmes: Do you think so?
Dr. Watson: Of course it was. It was extraordinary, it was quite extraordinary.
Holmes: That's not what people normally say.
Dr. Watson: What do people normally say?
Holmes: Piss off!

Go watch this pilot. 88 minutes long.

Black Books

just started watching black's books

Then you might like this:


My first view of of the show. For those who haven't seen it, it's about an alcoholic asshole who's had all life-love sucked from his soul and owns a bookshop, a neurotic bitch, and a positive, idealistic pushover. I don't understand though why hulu puts a matured audience stamp on it, and would appreciate anyone who explains it too me.

I realize some of you may be unfamiliar with bachelor-style cooking. While its ethos or philosophy may be crudly mistaken as "I'm lazy and need a woman to whip me into caring for myself", its very heart is unconventionality:



This is why following directions is so hard.

In other news:

"Shackleton's whisky recovered from South Pole ice"

(I know it's old. I forgot about it until a friend reminded me today.).

Yunus' Vision for an Alternative Future

I don't know much about microloans but get all excited in the hype. I do know they're the baby of Muhammad Yunus, whose accolades includes the Nobel Peace Prize (along with his Grameen Bank, the only business corporation to of done so), the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 26 honorary doctorate degrees, and a host of others. I should mention he's also won a place on my FB fanpage. So, I've been meaning to and now am on a mission to find out more about this man, as it might be nice to know a little bit about the guy I'm supporting and the ideas which supposedly do it for me. Apparently along the way he's picked up some economical critics. Tied to his work is his mission of fighting poverty. The below quotes come from an RSA lecture.

When talking about the "hypothetical" example of an illiterate mother and a doctor daughter, said:

What creates poverty? Is poverty inside the person, or is poverty imposed on the person? The answer comes very clear everyday experience. It is definitely not inside the person. It's not something missing in the person, the basic ingredient of the person. It is the failure of the system, failure of society which makes that person the way she is. A little change can make it all the difference.

So the conclusion you always come up with if poverty is created by the system, it is an external imposition on human beings not internal outgrowth of the person. So how do we fix the system? That's the question you'll be asking as we go along

*bobs head side-to-side*, it might be a little more complicated than that. Okay though, so where are microloans heading?

[W]hen people say, "What is it you want to change? Would like us to change at this moment?" I say not at this moment, I have been talking it for many, many years now. The financial system is not doing the right thing. That needs to be changed, because they deny access to so many millions even billions of people from that system. It cannot be the right system. For those billions of people banks do not exist. How can you run your life, which runs on money, without getting connected with the financial system. So you are condemning to another world because they have no bank system for them.

People ask me in NY, when we were opening the third branch in *unintelligible*. One journalist asked, "So you are spreading your branches from another. What do you ultimately look for?" I said well I hope someday we will be able to provide financial service to all people in NYC. To those who are deprived from the conventional system. "And what will that mean?" I said that will mean, NYC will be the first be the first city in the United States, they'll be no payday loans anymore. They'll be gone. I said this is a sickness in the society to have payday loans, and go and advertise in the newspaper, advertise on television that come we'll lend you money. Interest rate 1500%. Interest rate 1000%. Nobody cares, and people are condemned to deal with them and that becomes a trillion dollar business. Because it doesn't concern me and you, we are not invovled in it. So *unintelligible*

I said if you are successful, there will be no check-cashing companies. Cause the whole United States is filled with check-cashing companies. People cannot cash their check. Check they receive from the government; check they receive from the employer. They cannot get their money. Bank will not let them open a bank account. Millions of people in the United States are not fortunate to have bank accounts, because bank will not let them open a bank account. They're too small for them. So they go to the check-cashing companies to get their money, and they get less than their check. Because the check-cashing company takes money off from the check.

And NYC will be the first city in the United States where you will not see pawnshop signs, big pawnshop everywhere you see. This city will never have pawnshop anymore because we take care of those needs for the people and so on.

So this is a system. We pride ourselves being the most sophisticated banking system in the world, but it's not provided to the people. I keep saying the people who live under the shadows of those skyscrapers, the banks don't do business with them. They do business with the world, but not to their own neighbors. So we need to fix that system. What about it is, is it should be an inclusive system, nobody will be rejected.

Wow, if that's not a vision for shalom, I don't know what is. Alright, I'll shill. Tell me more.

There are two kinds of businesses. Business to make money, business to solve problems. And let them decide what kind of business they would like to be in, as an employee or as an investor or as an entrepreneur. Today there is no choice. If you want to be successful, either you own a business company or you join a business company to make money for somebody else. So you devote all your talent, all your creativity in the company so that the shareholders of the company can make bigger money. That's all our prospect is. I said that's not something that inspires human beings. Human beings are much bigger than making than just making money for our shareholders. We have big capacity to address the problems and move on to a better life for everybody.

Social businesses, hmm....

Thoughts?

Rethinking News: Sources I

For Rebekah:

To point with what a windbag I am, I think I asked her what do you want me to write on? And she said something like "Wine and what news sources are good for quick coverage so one can stay informed." The details are a little fuzzy now. Anyways...

We have two different demographic profiles sis, and mine is definitely on the more extreme and weird side, yours more Christian libertarian. It is at a loss to me why anyone would watch "Fox News" and I feel compelled to show them the folly of their way, whereas you'd shrug your shoulders I guess. On the other hand I like talk-radio, and stereo-typical Christian news-sources. So, without further ado...

Junk Food

Take your pick: Huffington Post (Progressive)/Drudge Report (Conservative)/Politico (Junkie)/World (Conservative Christian)

I read the New York Times a lot, which probably has to do with Dr. Nina Morgan and free copies on campus in my college days than anything else.

There's also Democracy Now!: the War and Peace Report. It's not a paper, it's purely audio/video/transcripts with renowned journalist Amy Goodman. Great for international coverage both developmentally and conflict; however, it's progressive. You also wouldn't have Jon Steward showing up on her show accusing her of asking soft-ball questions, in fact.... Clinton I think described her as out-and-out "hostile and combative". If this is junk food, then I'd consider it more along the lines of the In-and-Out of fast food, or take-out Chinese or something. They'll cover issues you won't see in the mainstream, and interview the folks others simply do stories on.

Research Groups

Let's see, I subscribe to the Barna Group cause it's referenced in a lot of Christian papers. They and others also bring up the Pew Research Center which, I've never subscribed to until I just thought of it now. There's the Brookings Institute which is much ado about nothing, and has um an RSS feed. Again, there's the Gallop Poll. You might wanna just select the feeds from those sites that are on topics of interest to you, but like I said why not go to the source?

Podcasts

The World Next Week. Okay, I don't know why I listen to this one. It's put out by the Council on Foreign Relations and its mag Foreign Affairs, and two guys just discuss the upcoming weeks international events. It's fine and all, but it might interest you more than me. It's about 10-18 minutes, generally 13 minutes.

Freakonomics Radio. BTW - all these have iTune options too. This is cool. This is one of the many things that Kev turned me on to recently. I'd read the Freakonomic section before, but I kinda always forgot about etc, and Kev told me he read it, and I had recently gotten all excited about their new book, so I was like a kid "hell yea!" and got their podcast and am loving it. The folks from Freakonomics, a NYT journalist and UoC economist (that's fresh-water fyi), have put together two books, one which had everyone caught up in the hype.

The authors attempt to demonstrate the power of data mining. Many of their results emerge from Levitt's analysis of various databases, and asking the right questions. - wiki

What questions? Well I'm glad you asked:

Chapter 1: Discovering cheating as applied to teachers and sumo wrestlers (See below)
Chapter 2: Information control as applied to the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents
Chapter 3: The economics of drug dealing, including the surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of crack cocaine dealers
Chapter 4: The controversial role legalized abortion may have played in reducing crime. (Levitt explored this topic in an earlier paper entitled "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime.")
Chapter 5: The negligible effects of good parenting on education
Chapter 6: The socioeconomic patterns of naming children

It's cool stuff.

Audio Mises Daily. This is of course, Austrian School economics and is very heterodox. You probably won't find this a great deal for value/time investment, although you can as mentioned download them and play them on the Bose while cooking or something.

There are some others on my iTouch, but... I'm too lazy to hook up the iTouch to comp so...

Rethinking News: Part III

Once upon a time, there were only the three networks for news: ABC, NBC, and CBS. Children sat cross-legged and America listened attentively to trusted voices like Edward R. Murrow, Martha Rountree and Lawrence E. Spivak, and Walter Cronkite.
Only one problem, it isn't and was never true. And I forgot where I'm going with this...

News isn't just what's supplied by news agencies. Gossip is probably the oldest form of news, and still one of the best. News media includes documentaries like Invisible Children and The Take. Remember one doesn't have to rely either on one's communities for notification of the latest issues: RSS feeds. Often times these can be found in poor quality online or via a friend with Netflix. There's books. Boring and requires commitment, but bite the bullet. Mass media is any form of medium for dispersal to a larger audience. Email-forwards (not advised). Despite all these various forms, they share some things in common I'm writing about.

I wanna touch on one of these: newsworthiness. First though something you need to reflect on, is why are you following the news? We do it for a number of legitimate/illegitimate purposes, including: entertainment; information for purposes of decision-making, self-cultivation, and awareness; task-assistance, and mental-stimulation. We follow sports for the cross purposes of entertainment and decision-making, e.g. betting or going to a game. We follow the fashion for self-cultivation, awareness of what's going on, task-assistance like shopping, etc. These are kinda trivial but not really. Newsworthiness is what you wanna find out about + somethings you might not wanna consider but know you kinda need to. When selecting the sources though to follow, one needs to be honest of what one is going after. The rest is dedicated to political newsworthiness.

"If" the journalism is there for enabling the body politic, they've failed miserably in the entailed responsibilities. Walter Lippmann (a.k.a. a big-time bastard) especially believed in a public sphere broke-down model, in which sense he's not a bastard. Part of this has to do with focusing on "what to think" vs. critical thinking of events/issues. In this model, the press translates, simplifies, and summarizes for you what is going on in the world, telling you what to think. This is good for Lippmann cause he makes the astute observation that people are too stupid and self-absorbed to care and understand (one might wish to include the elites here too). This is much of what news agencies do. Self-honesty is key here on several fronts. Your responsibility is to engender the critical thinking. A) You're not stupid and... not stupid. B) There are news sources don't just inform and keep an eye out on govs, but participate in the deliberative process and help nurture your critical thinking about events. If you want political junk food though, then go for it! I LOVE talk-shows. I've drawn a NPR faux-tattoo on my thigh before. There is another front to honesty though.

Some specialized news sources require an advanced level of literacy. Either develop it, or ignore the topic. If you don't have the understanding, you're vulnerable to manipulation and worse the illusion that you do. For instance, if you wanna understand the economy, one doesn't follow the stock market. Press Releases by the Fed need a high literacy level. You can't just substitute that with talking-heads analysis commentary. On the other hand, you don't need to hear a 5 minute explanation on NPR to get find out what you could have in five-seconds. Here is the key point, acknowledge your limitations. This is an intellectual virtue! Then if there is a specialized news issue you want to find out about subscribe to sources which are involved in the debate and foster a higher literacy level.

Let me reassure you what I'm not saying. You don't need a Ph.D. to see through or call the bullshit of some pretentious elitists. You do need the humility to not be a know-it-all and willingness to learn and the courage to engage and make mistakes. Okay, I never said earlier anything about courage or being vulnerable to risk-taking, but I should have.

FYI - The New Yorker Review mentioned in the previous post is this new fusion of the New Yorker and the New York Review if anyone is curious. Haven't heard of it? Well now you have and remember that you heard it here first! Now all we gotta do is make sure the the New Yorker and the New York Review hear the what's happened. Also, I am NOT a journalist, and share folks antipathies against them. If I got my junk wrong though, please post it in the comment section. This blog does have a corrections notice column. Also, I lied, there's going to be another piece on the hermeneutics of news.

Rethinking News: Part II

Anything self-advertising as in-depth, integrity, reliable, "you can trust", and comprehensive coverage is not. Those are going to fall in the "junk food" category of your news intake, a nice luxury of a bourgeois society that you can do without. There are news sources that are in-depth, comprehensive, etc. You need these staples, and you need to tune-in to them. The really nice thing about them is they're typically weekly or bi-weekly, and more likely monthly, quarterly, yearly. Some exceptions are going to be commentary news sources like blogs that might be published more frequently. What these do is give context for the news. I'm not referring to a perversion of context either, e.g. "Scientist have discovered Tues. x which throws all previous models out the window." That's just bad journalism.

What commonly drives most mainstream sources are economic considerations; mainstream is synonymous with corporate. Note: there's also the sense of it being an outlet for hegemonic dissemination. Not talking about that. Mainstream can also be interchangeable with popular, or has mass appeal. I'd caution against this understanding when taking about public media. These considerations affect what news is covered and how as it's customized for the target audience's consumption. It's what improves ratings minus various filters. It precludes though specialized news, which while a general population might not consider newsworthy, we do and expert news which is not set to the common denominator of the target audience. The target audience is not the primary clients of a news source, the advertiser are. IOWs, we are the product, and not the actual publication. My 2¢: the propaganda model is very helpful for thinking about public media; however, when it becomes a reductionistic, totalizing critique it ventures into the domain of bs. What a few corporation do is own all the news outlets, so that say the folks owning CNN also have Time and Adult Swim and Sports Illustrated.

One of the filters mentioned are for news pieces alienating PR (public relations) sources, at least toning down the language. All PR is propaganda. The term was coined precisely cause its Father (Edward Bernays) realized that people held a negative aversion to the word propaganda. What this means is that they're masters of manipulative techniques. Not a problem, just be suspicious. Many folks have fallen into a form of inconsistent cynicism. This is not advisable. Obviously, there's a difference even in the level of professionalism between the White House Press Secretary (Gibbs) and a spokesperson for Wheaton. Front groups are different than the ACLU or Focus on the Family. Just be conscious of the dynamic and look to honest sources for undisclosed information, how it's being spun, etc. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh don't count. Instead of a naive trust and a reactionary cynicism, its probably best to go for a critical trust (assuming they've earned it).

Now there's a cluster of ideals that need to be tossed out when thinking of news. Bias is not bad. Bias is just the formation of opinions and tendencies. If one isn't biased, that's cause they've not engaged whatever the subject matter is. That also generally means their opinion isn't worth much. There are good and bad biases; they're still biases. What's bad is when a news source exhibits particular vices, e.g. superficiality, willful naïveté, wishful thinking, dogmatism, epistemic blindness, etc. So rather than asking the unhelpful question of is this news source biased, it's better to evaluate whether and how a news source exhibits these undesirable traits. Another thing to think about is that objectivity is not a real goal or ideal for news sources. Without getting too philosophical here, these types of accusations are cliché and outdated. The nice thing about living in 2010 should be we can fast forward to see where these went. Avail yourself of this possibility. Again, instead we should consider what's meant by objective, and reformulate our criterion for evaluation. Are they attempting to get at the truth of the matter or are they trying to construct a persuasive narrative which the reality of the situation doesn't allow? Related, I also don't understand the whole pretense to non-partisanship. Politics has historically been understood as a factional enterprise between rivals. The press is a democratic institution like the Church, Jury, or Militia. When it allows itself to become a tool of others, that's not a good thing. However, the idea that it can't takes sides or offer a perspective is ridiculous.

Notice I didn't mentioned "balanced" up above. That's because it's a joke. Both or two-sides is a farce and pretense. There are multiple perspectives and sides to any event or issue. As human beings, there is no substitute to getting a plurality of viewpoints. Moreover, they need significant diversity. IOWs - switching between news sources that are basically sharing the same take is NOT diversity.

One last thing, traditional news is a "packaged deal". With the expanding business, the market strategy shifted to customizing products to satisfy a demographic. Technology has allowed this to obviously be taken to a new level. Some of it works for us though, and that includes as mentioned in the previous post the ability to filter news which is of interest to you. You no longer have to get the whole New Yorker Review to read a trusted author. You can just read the articles in the papers on beer if you prefer. The main limitations are your own creativity and awareness of what's out there as well as topical literacy. Take advantage of this.

I also lied, I'm going to post another rethinking news part.

Rethinking News: Part I

For Rebekah:

Sorry this is over a year late.

Who has the time to keep up? Well, you do. The key is to organize the inflow of information and honing one's browsing techniques, although this is not the key to fully availing oneself of the press' benefits. First though:

Welcome to the 21st century. The first step is finding a RSS reader. Forever, I just used blogger's because I was lazy. The problem with this one is that it doesn't help with categorizing your feeds and only allows excerpt updates. Here's a good vid for what RSS readers do:


Browsing techniques is simple but difficult. Skim, prioritize, schedule, lengthen attention-span, etc. Reading a 5-page story in the morning is a mistake for most of us. Still, being able to sit down and read 5-pages at some point is indispensable. These are common sense things that we need to be reminded of. Develop discipline in clicking the "Mark as Read" button, you don't need to scan 400+ entries obviously. Skim on most. Go to topics that are relevant. Avoid spam emails.

As mentioned though, this is not a good way to fully utilize news. The next part is kinda long, and then I'll post what you asked for.

Thank you Kevin

Since listening to Freakonomic's podcast "World Cup Edition" I can summarize the points made so you don't have listen for 8:44 minutes. The second part was just game theory to PKs which we've already covered. The one addition they make to that conversation, is that kickers should kick to the center, cause one of the payoffs for the two players is not to look foolish which is not typically taken into consideration. A recap on the last game theory post:

So there's a lesson here, and it's pretty much (just to make the lesson resonate again): imagine there you are in the World Cup, you're playing for England, you have to justify your actions not only to your teammates and your manager, and your boss, but to about 60 million rather angry fans. What's the lesson here? I'm hoping it was going to be obvious, what's the lesson here? The lesson is, do not shoot to the middle. Let me qualify that lesson slightly, unless you're German. Germans can do whatever they like.

Noticeably, players also don't follow Levitt's advice, accountably for his explanation of the private payoff. Except maybe the Germans. Of note, when Levitt's in the World Cup next, goalies go for the left, as he won't be following his advice either.

The first point though: home field advantage. One aspect of this is there are two types of soccer stadiums, those exclusively designed for soccer and those which are multipurpose, e.g. track and field. The former has a much larger advantage, ostensibly for a referee intimidation factor. This is measured among others in divergences in stoppage time allotted. So basically, the close presence of the fans bullies the refs into favorably calling for the home team.

Nothing Substantial to Add

This is weird, as I actually have never had these conversations with soccer views, as they either have known more than me or an equal amount over the years. We've always had better things to discuss, like how much America sucks and how Americans suck and well you get the idea. Also learned some of the "American" traits like score tracking and highlights, which if you didn't get the gist from the previous post is bad. Ah, the beauty of the college years (which probably lasted a few World Cups too many and left me none the wiser!).

We've arrive at the Knockout Stage of the tourney, a source of contention for soccer fans. If at the end of extra-time (or after extra-time) there is still a tie, they then go for a tiebreaker by each side kicking 5 penalty kicks one-on-one w/ the goalie. At the national level, a win by penalty shots is considered less than a victory and a loss on penalty kicks is considered equal to a tie. How much has changed recently, to a victory by penalties counting for 2 points and a loss by penalty kicks counting, you guessed it if you've had your morning coffee, 1. Basically, TV & Newspaper folks bitched at FIFA after the last World Cup to the point where they dumbed it down. I like this new system, because A) for the first time, I don't have to reference a chart to remember it and make a bunch of fancy calculations and B) it's no less inaccurate than previous systems. So focusing, the teams draw (w/ exceptions which really aren't pertinent to any World Cup cherries), just the tiebreaker instead of being in the game arbitrary broken by factors relating to a team's soccer abilities (e.g. goals scored while playing soccer, goal-differentials), is arbitrarily decided by a sensationalized really cool televised climax.

Why I like it: it gives the under-dog a chance. Since in general, I root for a nation based on the nations wealth-standing, from bottom-up, and since generally, wealthier nations have better teams (not this tourney! ha!), it's no surprise that I'd like this aspect. Beyond though it gives better odds to the the teams I like to advance?

Why I dislike it: it's not a soccer competition as much as a craphoot. When that Libran sense of fairness kicks in, they just don't balance out, or perhaps I'm just a Debby-downer. Nothing really gets the blood pumping these days (just go ahead and ignore my explicatively titled past
post please).

So basically, PKs are unfair way of deciding unless they serve a greater fairness.

Recently though, there was a major shift, resulting in the infamous Doherty-Mal bet that somehow ended with me naked in front of about 14 people futilely arguing my point. I befriended a kraut, and started rooting for the Germans. Now obviously, they are not at the bottom of the national socioeconomic totem pole, and I did feel really guilty and strung-up inside when they beat Portugal in the Euro 08. Still, we all realize I think that I have no conscience. Oh yea, the shift, so I'm in class class ethics switching to emphasizing the unfairness again.

Traditionally, many of the players I'd like to see shooting can be banned from the game. (Note: Any dipshit that wants to pull a Zidane, deserves to help their team loss.). With the new yellow cards have having to go 5 games in a row w/out collecting two means we're probably going to be seeing more of this come into play during the finals. It also means though that THE final and semi-final it's going to be less.

Alright, I lied, I am going to contribute something to this ENDLESS debate: a game theory analysis of ties and eliminations in soccer. Don't worry, this is not technical: zero-sum games and non-zero-sum games.

A zero-sum game is an easy concept. I win, you lose. In fact, one even says it like that in explanation unless they're uber-sensitive-conscious, in which cause it's "Say you win and I lose, then..." The notion is there is a limited amount of the pot and we're all in cut-throat competition for it. There is no point where are interest match. So, if I take a point, you have to lose a point, so that it equals zero.

Most games rely heavily upon this. Poker is my fav.

A non-zero-sum game is the "win-win" scenario, where we both have something to gain, and we can even cooperate so that while one player wins more, the other player can win less but still not lose. This affects strategy in unexpected ways.

Now, most sports are a combination of the two, soccer is most definitely more of the latter than most Americans are familiar with. Still, most Americans are familiar with watching a game their team is not directly involved in, but hoping that a team with so many losses wins or losses say so that it'll affect the bracket that their team is playing in. With soccer, this is exasperated. For example, they mentioned in the Algeria game in 1982 W Germany v. Austria qualifier they colluded to exclude Algeria from the World Cup by fixing the match. I think the commentator called it the "odious Germany v Austria game". This being the second big game for this to happen, FIFA came along and ruled that group finals have to be played simultaneously.

So, all fine and dandy, what about shootouts? Obviously, in a single elimination, a draw is unacceptable, you have to have a tie-breaker. Ah, never mind. I just realized where I was going with this went back to the traditional argument of shootouts aren't soccer, making the analysis superfluous. Just go for sudden-death and long-term repercussions be damned!

Game Theory and Soccer

I like game theory. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much real-world practicality to it. However, there is one important exception: soccer. This is especially true of penalty kicks.

Since it is World Cup time, I'm gonna bring out a portion of the lecture "Best responses in soccer and business partnerships" in Yale Professor Ben Polak's Game Theory course. For those not interested in a lecture, A short interview of some noone from last year's tourney is "The Game Theory of Penalty Kicks".

Those who not wanting read the entire lecture, the cliff note version is here:

So there's a lesson here, and it's pretty much (just to make the lesson resonate again): imagine there you are in the World Cup, you're playing for England, you have to justify your actions not only to your teammates and your manager, and your boss, but to about 60 million rather angry fans. What's the lesson here? I'm hoping it was going to be obvious, what's the lesson here? The lesson is, do not shoot to the middle. Let me qualify that lesson slightly, unless you're German. Germans can do whatever they like.

For those who don't wanna watch the vid, here is a printout of what the lecturer true on the whiteboard.

So this is a game that occurs in soccer and just to give an idea of how important it is for those people who are unfortunate enough not to be soccer fans here, the last World Cup was decided on penalty kicks. In England's case, England goes out of every single World Cup and every single European competition because it loses on penalty kicks, usually to Germany, it has to be said...

So what we're going to do is we're going to look at some numbers that are approximately the probabilities of scoring when you kick the penalty kick in different directions. But just make sure everyone ─ do I need to explain what's going on here? Is everyone familiar with this situation? There's one guy who's going to run up and kick the ball. The goal keeper is standing at the goal. And their aim is to kick it into the goal. That's probably enough. You've all seen this right? If you haven't seen this, go see it. I mean come on! So things you should do in life: read Shakespeare and see a soccer game.

So the rough numbers for this are as follows ─ and actually later on in the class I'll give you some more accurate numbers, but these will do for now. There are three ways, the goal─ the attacker could kick the ball. He could kick the ball to the left, the middle, or the right. And I shouldn't just say he here of course, I mean this is he or she but if I get that wrong going on, please forgive me for it. The goalie can dive to the left or the right. In principle the goalie could stay in the middle. We'll come back and talk about that later. So this is the guy who is shooting, he's called the shooter and this is the goalie.

These are roughly ─ well, let me put up the payoffs for this game and then I'll explain them. So you'll notice that I'm just going to put in numbers here and then the negative of the number and the numbers are roughly like this: (4,-4). So the numbers are (4, -4), (9, -9), (6, -6), (6, -6), (9, -9) and (4, -4). And the idea here is that the number 4 represents 40% chance of scoring if you shoot the ball to the left of the goal and the goal keeper dives to the left. So the payoff here is something like u1(left) if the goal keeper dives to the left is equal to 4, by which I mean there's a 40% chance of scoring.

So the number for the--The payoff for the shooter is his probability of scoring and the payoff for the goal keeper is just the negative of that. Let's keep things simple. As I said before, for now we'll ignore the possibility that the goal keeper could stay put. So how should we start analyzing this important game? Well we start with the ideas we learned already several weeks ago now, or more than a week ago, which is the idea of dominant strategies. Does either player here have a dominated strategy? Does either player have a dominated strategy? No, it's kind of clear that they don't.

Let's just look at the shooter, for example. So you might think that maybe middle dominates left, but notice that middle has a higher payoff against left than shooting to the left. It has as lower payoff if the goalie dives to the right. So, not surprisingly in this game, it turns out, that if the goalie dived to the left you're best off shooting to the right, second best off shooting to the middle, and worst off shooting to the left. That's if the goalie dives to the left. And if the goalie dives to the right, you're best off shooting to the left, second best off shooting to the middle, and worst off by shooting to the right; and that's kind of common sense.

Okay, so if we had stopped the class after the first week where all we learned to do was to delete dominated strategies, we'd be stuck. We'd have nothing to say about this game and as I said before, this is the most important game, so that would be bad news for Game Theory. But luckily, we can do a little bit better than that. Before I do that, let's just take a poll of the class. How many of you, if you were playing for, I guess it's going to be America, which is a sad thing to start with, never mind. You guys are playing for America and you're taking this penalty kick and it's the last kick in the World Cup, how many of you, show of hands, how many of you would shoot to the left? How many of you would shoot to the middle? How many of you would shoot to the right?

We've got kind of an even split there, pretty much an even split. We're going to assume these are the correct numbers and we're going to see if that even split is really a good idea or not. So how should we go about thinking about this? What I suggest we do is we do what we did last time and we start to draw a picture to figure out what my expected payoff is, depending on what I believe the goalie is going to do. So this is the same kind of picture we drew last time.

So on the horizontal axis is my belief, and my belief is essentially the probability that the goalie dives to the right. Now as I did last time, let me put in two axes to make the picture a little easier to draw. So this is 0 and this is 1. And you probably have lines in your notes but I don't, so let me just help myself a bit. So this is 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, so this is going to be 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 and over here 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. This would be the basis of my picture.

So it starts with a possibility of shooting to the left. Let's do this in red. So I shoot to the left and the goalie dives to the left, my payoff is what? It's 4. If I shoot to the left and there's no probability of the goalie diving to the right, which means that they dive to the left, then my payoff is 4, meaning I score 40% of the time. If I shoot to the left and the goalie dived to the right, then I score 90% of the time, so my payoff is .9. By the way why is it 90% of the time and not 100% of the time? I could miss; okay, I could miss. That happens rather often it turns out, well 10% of the time.

So we know this is going to be a straight line in between, so let's put this line in. So what's this? It's the expected payoff to Player I of shooting to the left as it depends on the probability that the goal keeper dives to the right. And conversely, we can put in … well let's do them in order.

So middle: so if I shoot to the middle and the goal keeper dives to the left, then my payoff is .6, is 6, or I score .6 of the time, and if I shoot to the middle and the goalie dives to the right I still score 60% of the time, so once again it's a straight line in between. So this line represents the expected payoff of shooting to the middle as a function of the probability that the goal keeper dives to the right.

Finally ─ let's do it in green ─ let's look at the payoffs, expected payoffs, if I shoot to the right. So if I shoot to the right and the goalie dives to the left, then I score with probability .9, or my payoff is 9. Conversely, if I shoot to the right and he or she dives to the right, then I score 40% of the time, so here's my payoff .4. And here's my green line representing my expected payoff as the shooter, from shooting to the right, as a function of the probability that the goalie dives to the right.

Did everyone understand how I constructed this picture? Easier picture than the one we constructed last time. So what does everyone notice from this picture? What's the first thing that jumps out at you from this picture? Assuming these numbers are true, what jumps out at you from this picture? Can we get some mikes up here? So Ale, can we get this guy? Stand up first, the guy in red. What's your name? Don't hold the mike; just shout.

Student: There's no point at which the 6, at which it shooting in the middle gets a higher payoff.

Professor Ben Polak: Exactly, exactly. So the thing that I hope jumps out at you from this picture is (no great guesses about figuring out this is a ½), so if the probability that the goalie's going to jump to the right is less than a ½, then the best you can do is represented by this green line, which is shoot to the right. So the goalie is going to shoot to the right with the probability less than a ½, sorry he's going to dive to the right with the probability less than a ½, you should shoot to the right.

Conversely, if you think the goalie's going to shoot to the right with probability more than a ½, then the best you can do is represented by the pink line, and that's shooting to the left, or if you think the goalie's going to dive to the right with the probability more than a ½, the best you can do, your best response is to shoot to the left. And there is no belief you could possibly hold given these numbers in this game that could ever rationalize shooting the ball to the middle. Is that right? So no: to say it another way, middle is not a best response to any belief I can hold about the goal keeper, to any belief.

So there's a lesson here, and it's pretty much (just to make the lesson resonate again): imagine there you are in the World Cup, you're playing for England, you have to justify your actions not only to your teammates and your manager, and your boss, but to about 60 million rather angry fans. What's the lesson here? I'm hoping it was going to be obvious, what's the lesson here? The lesson is, do not shoot to the middle. Let me qualify that lesson slightly, unless you're German. Germans can do whatever they like.

George Carlin on Religion and God

Travis turned me on to this act. My less religious subscribers will probably appreciate it (and some of the more so too).

English tip

*gasp* Joshua is finally giving one.

I've been reading a lot of testimonies lately of people who've shed their "repressed" past lately, and a common term keeps popping up: conservative.

Now, it comes as no surprise that I'm not a fan of the conservative; however, I'm thinking they're mistaking it perhaps with a synonym, like say... a prude.

E.g.:

I used to be a lot more prudish about one night stands, but then I gave it a swirl.

I hold to the conservative opinion that marriage is between members of differing sexes.

Capisci?

They're two different words mind you, not presicely interchangeable. One deals with the old order of things; one deals with being inappropriately appropriate (hyper-appropriate) and naively innocent.

Approval

What drives I wonder the blogs that require approval for comments. I can get some of the various reasons for people not wanting to have a comment section at all, plus there are probably more. And I can understand if someone has had say spam requiring approval. But otherwise, isn't it just about wanting to control what people say on one's blog? Is what other people have to say really that bad?

Random thoughts this morning with my head spinning around.