Talk:Platonia dilemma

I have expanded the discussion of the Luring Lottery, but the following points still need clarifying:

1. How close did the magazine come to telling the readers the "superrational" strategy? I believe, from memory, that they introduced the basic concept of superrationality and described how it applied to the Plutonia Dilemma, but left the application to the Luring Lottery (which is similar but not the same) as an exercise for the reader.
2. The details of the superrational strategy need checking and possibly proving. As the article says, you have to start by estimating the number of potential contestants (IIRC, Hofstadter guessed that it would be about 10% of the readership, not 5%). For the original Plutonia Dilemma, the simulated die should have N sides, where N is the number of participants. The Luring Lottery is slightly different, because if two people send in postcards, the prize it not wiped out, only reduced in value. This means that the optimum size of the simulated die is reduced (the probability with which one should send in an entry to get the best possible result is increased), but I can't remember all the mathematical details, and Hofstadter may not have discussed them himself.

--Ekaterin 13:59, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Reputedly the publisher and owners were very concerned about betting the company on a game." <-- If they were worried, couldn't they have just sent in a postcard saying "1000000", and that would have guaranteed the prize would be no more than $1?

Some of the contestants were clearly not thinking rationally. For example, the one who sent in a postcard with a googolplex---even if he had won, his googolplex would have diluted the prize to less than a cent, all by itself.

It is you (along with Hofstadter) who isn't thinking rationally: receiving less than a cent is still better than receiving nothing. The "superrational" strategy isn't rational at all for those who don't win the die toss, unless their goal is for the magazine to have to pay as much as possible -- but why would that be anyone's goal? People's goals are self-oriented, and the people submitting astronomical numbers were hoping to win the contest (winning a significant amount of money clearly being out of reach) -- or they were hoping, as a number of us were, to demonstrate how wrong Hofstadter was. -- 98.108.198.236 (talk) 01:20, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Hofstadter doesn't claim to be thinking rationally, right? (I haven't read the book.) Also, in many places you can't "receive less than a cent", so it is equivalent to "receiving nothing", not "better". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.118.164.245 (talk) 22:46, 27 June 2011 (UTC)