Conversations in which you enter with eyes rolled and your sole purpose is to prove the other person wrong in order to test if they are correct generally do not go anywhere.

This is why Buddhism teachers us to empty our up, and not come into any conversation as a skeptics. Buddhism also teaches us to question everything, but you do not understand the difference.

I came here in the name of peace, you come here daily because you cannot see your own skeptical conditioning that you act upon with zero ability to use self restraint. You are not deciding to act this way you were born and raised to.

I have said this to you before, skepticism does not allow for the possibility that your own skeptical view is warping your own observations.

That is until you turn your skepticism inwards, and question your skeptic attitude.

Skepticism is not helpful, not positive, and not intelligent.

I agree with this but I have something else in mind. Propaganda, lack of info sources, and lack of education are what's causing the population's ignorance. If Americans knew that the US wars going on were incredibly unjust ones, the wars wouldn't be happening. But if all anyone hears is that we're fighting terrorism, what reason would they have to question that?

There are more important and more concrete steps toward peace that need to take place first before we can even dream of some mathematically optimal peace. Even if you had some mathematical blueprint for peace, you'd have to take power from the selfish people (who currently control the world) before getting to apply it. You won't be able to convince those in power to have your outlook, they steadfastly think looting the world benefits them.

Yep I derailed with a bit of politics but was there even a such thing as derailing in this case?

This is the whole point. His claim that the world is a certain way is just patently false. People have their utility functions. The utility functions he claims exist do not (for everyone). I think he means that they could exist, people could change their minds and choose to have his preferred utility function, but that sort of hypothetical isn't particularly interesting, and its incredibly misleading when he skips over the changes that would be required and just says 'is'.

no not really, especially not in the way you did it.

War is a product of a belief in the division between me and you in this you can see that America cannot be brought to peace with the world. Its very boundaries create war.

I am not giving you a proof, I am suggesting you are seeing the issue wrong, and that inability to see the problem correctly makes it unsolvable.


I can assure you the first step is admitting it is possible. The next is believe we are capable of bringing such change about. Then the next is working together to figure out how to do such a thing.

The problem you would face for example if you were to help negotiate peace between say Syria and its rebels, is generally you will perpetuate the false division between the two. Or to say, small steps are partial and do not effect the real issue. In that small steps are really what causes war.

Those people you refer to seem separate than you, and there is division in that. It is not 'them' that keeps the world at war, it is your belief they are separate from you and thus you think you are separate from the cause of the problem.

The issue is with your own internal view on the world.

Lastly if you know game theory you understand as the 'players' trend towards eq. it gets less and less profitable to continue to deviate so far.

By working together to solve poker, we will see that everyone has to follow suit.

I think maybe you have understood me well here, even best. I could not say it like this for fear of using Jargon, but I want to explain it this way. It seems correct.

No its interesting I assure you. I would like to understand what you feel I skipped over.

What I mean is I know that its rooted in logic, but one I don't function and am not well practice in your form of written logic, so I don't know how to express it all properly in your familiar terms.

However I am strong in logic.

Also again something come so naturally to me I forget to explain them, but I am confident that I can if you point out what I skipped.

I am double quoting this because i think i understand it better and this is important.

We both see peoples utility function is skewed and imo incorrectly placed.

True intelligence (this word means something different to me) would put the utility towards the group and the self.

This is something to be taught.

I realize the world doesn't work like this but the argument is can this be taught and how and I can explain that very very easily.

this is not true as a general statement. It is true for some games. But there also exist games without smooth/linear reward structures where the equilibrium exists at a discontinuity, such that deviation would be increasingly profitable throughout the entire trend.

Can you point me towards that because I'm interested for poker reasons.

Are we saying that its non linear of that when everyone plays a NE strat there are games that its most profitable to deviate?

no. that when they are 'close' to a NE strat, it can be even more profitable to deviate.

not exactly a game, but close enough to still illustrates the point - think of a bunker with a bomb going off above it, the closer you get to the bunker the worse off you are, until you get into the bunker and are completely safe. Similarly some games have optima in places where once you leave the optima, you are in a very bad situation that gets better the further away you get.

Right but thinking in terms of poker if we continue to hold our deviated strategy while the field trends towards an equilibrium we expect to profit less and less?

I do not claim to have a strong knowledge of GT and this touches on the edge of what I know. I am not sure if I am asking this right but, as the field trends towards this equilibrium do we gain more, the same, or less if we are the only exploitative player in poker.

I may have a follow up to this, because I wonder if we gain more or a lot, or do we just gain the most out of all the field. Does that translate to being 1st place overall on average, or does it translate to making more $

Not sure if I asked that well.

If I change my belief, that won't change the Koch brothers' belief nor the beliefs of those falling prey to their propaganda. They are separate physical bodies and brains from me, therefore with separate thoughts and actions. I believe (my brain believes) there is only one consciousness, but that doesn't mean the physical entities aren't separate.
I don't particularly believe in countries either. But I'm not the one controlling the drones or giving orders to the easily programmable drone-like humans. And the wars mostly aren't between countries, they're between the elites and everyone else. The top 0.1% doesn't wanna stop until everyone else is either their slaves or dead. But they wouldn't have any power if the rest of us didn't let them, so their power is mind control. Until we can reverse the effects of propaganda (which involves concrete non-mathematical steps), we'll never come anywhere close to the kind of peace you're imagining. Doesn't matter if you and I have a formula for peace, you either have to convince the Koch bros of the world or convince the general population (and I'm not sure which is harder). Convince the avid Fox News viewers and then you'll be on to something. It's hard to compete with a lifetime of propaganda from all news networks and newspapers. You'll just sound crazy to whomever you're trying to convince.

that's fine as long as you keep your conclusions about poker. but you cant necessarily extract your conclusions and apply them to another game since this particular feature (smoothness) is not universal.

Part of becoming competent at using the internet is learning to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy sources of information. On a forum like 2p2, this means figuring out how to distinguish between those posters who actually know what they are talking about and those who don't. Some of what we use are fairly direct--we look for people who are able to back up their claims with good evidence when asked. However, we also use a lot of more indirect clues for reliability, such as good, clear writing, openness to contrary evidence, an appropriate level of credulity, plausible claims of institutional expertise, a facility with a relevant technical vocabulary, and so on.

In my view, you have fairly consistently failed almost all of these criteria for showing yourself to be a trustworthy source of information. On the one hand, my time is limited and once someone demonstrates themselves to be untrustworthy I'm generally not that interested in talking with them. However, there is a general problem with figuring out if someone is trustworthy. The less familiarity a person has with a subject the more difficult it is to evaluate the trustworthiness of someone on the criteria I list above. It is useful for these people for those who are more familiar with the topic to not just give their opinions on the idea under discussion but to also signal their view of the trustworthiness of the source of that idea.

This is part of why you are getting some of the hostile responses you've received in this (and other) threads. I disagree with PairTheBoard's superrationality suggestion, but his discussion of it demonstrates to me his competence and trustworthiness on the topic. I also disagree with you, but in my response I am not only expressing my disagreement with you, but also my judgement that you are an untrustworthy source from which to learn. Essentially, this hostility is a way of communicating and enforcing the epistemic values of the intellectual disciplines in question (this is also why these kinds of discussions can be useful for neophytes as they often are the clearest expressions of these intellectual standards).

This is also why you are not completely wrong when you accuse us of not agreeing with you because you are thinking more "outside the box," etc. But this is not, in my opinion, a bad thing. It is, I think, a sign of a healthy and mature science when there is a general consensus on how to investigate its area of interest.

I think people apply this wrong. There are different ways to explain and talk about it. If the world IS one, and you change your belief to that then the whole world would change. If it doesn't change you might suggest that belief is wrong, or you might instead realize that you yourself did not change that belief...that is the you that you think you are is really just a partial division of the whole. And changing the belief of the partial division is not changing belief of the real self.

Because we are one me and you are just as responsible as they are if not for anything else specifically for believe that 'they' are 'separate' from us. When 'they don't cooperate' its not because of their faults its because we see them as 'they' separate from 'us'

They don't actually hold any power, we are all just ignorant and divisive. Also I should point out they are not above us in this way, if anything they are further from the intelligent understand of a peaceful world, because a peaceful world needs know leaders. Again their lack of intelligence is obviously our own lack of intelligence.

Yes Nash's work gave us the tools to do this. When we work together to create the equivalent of this in poker we will have the tools to bring peace to the world.
True, I feel like it would be a step to admit in a group that intelligence trends towards non violence. I think that alone would bring great change.

Yes by definition its crazy , this is why Bohm stood beside Jiddu K. to try to give him credibility as a man whos intelligence was obv important.

Poker is fine, I never really thought about other games.

This is why it takes 50 pages on discussing in's and out's of Buddhism for Nek to agree I have any understanding of any of it. I understand what you are saying and am patient about it.

I am not saying I know a lot about Buddhism at all, but I think I can show that I understand the important question that Buddhism brings to the table.

I am not a source to learn GT through, I barely know anything about it.

But I know that it can be used to bring peace and we tend to use it to try and win war.

And that is not intelligence.

you said before that real life is not a game yea? you can't extract the conclusion to be applicable to real life either.

what's the difference between bringing peace and winning war?

if you maintain that we are currently at war, aren't bringing peace and winning war exactly the same? (to nit, allow for the possibly that winning war is just a subset of bringing peace since losing war would also bring peace as would ending war in a draw)

So you disagree that physical entities are separate from one another? So why do anything? Why eat food, you are the food? Why go anywhere, you are the place you're going to?

Or are you suggesting that I can telepathically control everyone else's minds by thinking positive thoughts of peace, because all our minds are interconnected?

No we said that you cannot extract a moral foundation from a game. What I am suggesting is by solving poker in a cooperative manner we will gain the tools needed to do the same irl.

The math derived from Nash's work is supposed to be used to bring peace.

First winning one war does not bring peace to the world. When one war ends another begins because we are a violent civilization and one that believes in division. War cannot bring peace.
When I say war that is one aspect of the conflict that creates suffering in the world, the ending of that conflict comes from the ending of division.

You cannot win, because the division between us and them is false.

No I don't deny that. We are separate in that sense but obv part of the same existence from the same source.
No but one would think they should be able to. But 'I' cannot control 'them'.

I did?

"Agree" is just another word to add to newguy's list of personal jargon.

Okay, then how is one physical entity responsible for what another separate physical entity does? As you seem to suggest below: Also, how are my thoughts (whether/not I see "them" as separate from me or not) supposed to affect the course of external physical objects (their brains and bodies)?

First pretend we proved that the best world is a world in which each person believes we are connected.

If you don't take blame for someone else's mistake you become the ignorance that divides the world.

That is not the question, the question is what happens if you never impose your thoughts on your external world again. What if you auto pilot eternally.

Your thoughts are manifestations of the belief that you are a separate self, when there are no thoughts there is no thinker.