Category: Games

The Industrial Organization of the Miami Heat

A new study by Northwestern's Adam Galinsky looked at 11 NBA seasons and found that on average, teams that pay one star a lot and the rest not as much, win more games.  "The study shows how pay is tied up with status," Galinsky says.  Exhibit A: Kobe.  He makes nearly 25 mil a year, roughly equal to all the subs combined.  That payscale ensures his teammates know their roles, and that leads to better team play.  In Miami, LeBron, Chris Bosh and D-Wade all earn about the same.

That is from the new ESPN magazine, not yet on-line.  Here is one related bit:

“Status is such an important regulating force on people’s behavior, hierarchy solves so many problems of conflict and coordination in groups,” says Adam Galinsky, a psychologist at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management who did the research on social hierarchies on basketball teams. “In order to perform effectively, you often need to have some pattern of deference.”

Here is Galinsky's home page, and here, though I cannot find the NBA paper on-line.   

When I look at the Miami Heat, I think of Bengt Holmstrom, and his models of why the input suppliers in a firm require strong external constraint.  When I look at the Miami Heat, I think of Hart and Moore 1990 — their chef, skipper, and tycoon example – which suggests a successful small enterprise should not have three separate veto points.

Overall, I put greater stock in Holmstrom, Hart, and Moore (and Bryant) than I do in James, Bosh, and Wade.

Markets in everything, unexpected loopholes edition

"Crafted from 40,000-year old Woolly Mammoth Ivory, they capture the exquisite design and proportions of the original Staunton pattern Chess set, registered by Nathaniel Cook and produced by Jacques of London in 1849"

For more than 2,000 years, Mammoth Ivory has been traded and it remains a highly prized commodity across the world. While that demand for the Mammoth Ivory has always been higher than its supply, it skyrocketed in 1963 when the CITES agreement was enacted. This agreement banned all sales of new Elephant or Walrus Ivory, in an effort to protect the animals from extinction. As a result, Mammoth Ivory became the only type of animal-based ivory that is exempt from the international trade restrictions because it is considered to be a fossil.

The price is $9.995.00.  If that's not offbeat enough for you, try "Endangered Parrots of the World Chess Set," for $4,790.00, although I suspect they would come down if you bought them in quantity.

Why don’t people rock the boat in early on-line dating encounters?

Well, some of them do.  But many don't.  Dan Ariely writes:

We picked apart emails sent between online daters, prepared to dissect the juicy details of first introductions. And we found a general trend supporting the idea that people like to maintain boring equilibrium at all costs: we found a lot of people who may, in actuality, have interesting things to say, but presented themselves as utterly insipid in their written conversations. The dialogue was boring, consisting mainly of questions like, “Where did you go to college?” or “What are your hobbies?” “What is your line of work?” etc.

…What we learned from this little experiment is that when people are free to choose what type of discussions they want to have, they often gravitate toward an equilibrium that is easy to maintain but one that no one really enjoys or benefits from. 

First, email is a bad medium for making and negotiating outrageous claims.  You can't communicate subtleties of tone and teasing and you can't easily do "repair work" if you offend the audience, even assuming you can notice the offense or keep the dialog going after an offense. 

More generally, when I see cautious behavior I ask if some kind of threshold incentive is in place.  Imagine a process where both the writing man and the writing woman have inferred they are above the other's minimum standard for a personal meeting, perhaps for having demonstrated looks, money, status, etc.  Given that a relatively impressive credential already puts each person in the running, on the written exchange each is simply hoping to "break even" for the time being and avoid dismissal.  Draw your own implications as to what attracts people in the on-line dating world. 

Addendum: Robin Hanson offers related comment.

Status plateaus

Colin, a loyal MR reader, writes to me:

My girlfriend and I were having dinner at a swanky place…and noticed everyone had essentially the same phones–either an iPhone or some version of a Blackberry–which are the same models I see all over campus…It seems to me that with most items like cars, handbags, or houses, there are always more expensive/prestigious items one can get to signal a new tier of wealth, but with phones this is not the case (iPhones and Blackberrys look to be the end of the line, and are not particularly exclusive to the wealthy). We were curious if you could come up with any other items or industries that plateau like this–the only other we could really think of was media/entertainment (plateau at the NYT/WSJ; everyone sees roughly the same new released movies or tv shows). Thanks for your consideration and thanks for keeping up the excellent blog! 

Other than reading blogs, what are further examples?  By the way, here is the world's most expensive cellphone (beware: the pop-up at the link offers audio), at 300k, but I think your wealthy friends will simply laugh at you. Only 28 of them have been produced.

Status plateaus may be profit-maximizing when large numbers of upper-middle class customers wish to believe that they are enjoying the truly cutting edge technology and they are willing to pay for it.  Creating the "iPhone plus for billionaires" would lower the demand for iPhones proper.

Cineplex hopping, sentences to ponder

The surrealists André Breton and Paul Éluard used to enter movie theaters at random and stay only a little while, until the plot became clear to them and the films’ images were drained of their power. In the Cineplex you can do the same thing all in one building. I did that one day this summer. What I saw was not excerpts from ten different movies, but one movie made up of ten interchangeable parts–the imperial power of Hollywood, still alive and well, surviving postmodern fragmentation and resisting détournement

Here is the adventure itself.  For the pointer I thank Paul Sas.

Why nerds like games

That's a topic from Robin Hanson.  I'm not sure "nerds" is the right word here (or if there is a correct single word), but I get what Robin is trying to say:

Another explanation is that while nerds like to socialize, they are terrified of making social mistakes…Games let nerds interact socially, yet avoid mistakes via well-defined rules, and a social norm that all legal moves are “fair game.” Role-playing has less well-defined rules, but the norm there is that social mistakes are to be blamed on characters, not players.

I endorse this explanation (I am not sure if Robin does) and I notice some testable predictions.  If nerds are otherwise constrained and thus underconsuming social experiences, nerd-run games should be especially boisterous and enjoyable.  Nerds should invest more resources to play these games than non-nerds will find explicable; to non-nerds the games will seem superfluous.  Nerds should seek out games with intensely social elements.  In my limited sample of experience (I don't like these games myself, but every now and then they are played in my place of employment), I see these predictions being validated.

What is emblematic of the 21st century?

A recent reader request was:

What things that are around today are most distinctively 21st century?  What will be the answer to this question in 10 years?

Here is what comes to mind and I think most of it will remain emblematic for some time:

Technology: iPhone, Wii, iPad, Kindle.  These are no-brainers and I do think it will go down in American history as "iPhone," not "iPhone and other smart phones."  Sorry people.

To read: blogs and Freakonomics, this is the age of non-fiction.  I don't think we have an emblematic and culturally central novel for the last ten years.  The Twilight series is a possible pick but I don't think they will last in our collective memory.  Harry Potter (the series started 1997) seems to belong too much to the 1990s.

Films: Avatar, Inception (for appropriately negative reviews of the latter, see here, here, and here).  Both will look and feel "of this time."  Overall there have been too many "spin-off" movies.  Keep in mind this question is not about "what is best."

Music: It's been a slow period, but I'll pick Lady Gaga, most of all for reflecting the YouTube era rather than for her music per se.  I don't think many musical performers from the last ten years will become canonical, even though the number of "good songs" is quite high.  Career lifecycles seem to be getting shorter, for one thing.

TelevisionThe Sopranos starts in 1999, so it comes closer to counting than Harry Potter does.  It reflects "the HBO era."  Lost was a major network show and at the very least people will laugh at it, maybe admire it too.  Battlestar Galactica.  Reality TV.

What am I missing?  What does this all add up to?  Pretty strange, no?

p.s. Need to add Facebook and Google somewhere!

The worst Americans of all time?

Status games, why not?  At least the purpose is upfront and the weather is nice. Here is a list from right-wing bloggers and here is a list from Bainbridge, both in one link with Bainbridge's comments.

It's bizarre that Jimmy Carter comes out as the all-time worst from the right-wing bloggers and I don't have to tell you who is number two.  It's also hard for me to see how Bainbridge ends up with Paris Hilton and Michael Moore in his list of the worst and he seems to acknowledge this oddity toward the end of his post.

The most plausible picks are, I think, any number of political figures behind slavery and its continuation (it's debatable who is truly focal here), Woodrow Wilson, the Rosenbergs, and any number of assassins, domestic terrorists, and serial killers.  

Who am I forgetting?  Are there focal figures who held back public health advances?  Led slaughters against Native Americans?  What else?

Who is the worst Canadian of all time?

Hat tip goes to Andrew Sullivan.

My dialogue at Ess-a-Bagel

That's the excellent bagel and smoked fish shop at 3rd Ave., just north of 50th St.

I order my bagel from a gentleman with a thick New York accent and he eyes me suspiciously.  Finally he grunts out, in a tone slightly less than that of accusation:

Server: "Where are you from?"

(I pause.  There are different answers to this question, depending who is asking and where you are.  Is it about where you were born, where you grew up, where you live now, and in the latter case how specific should the location be?  In Ghana I should say "Washington," though in Portland that answer fails.  In North Carolina I can say "northern Virginia."  In Arizona I should say "Virginia."  In El Salvador I try "Falls Church.")

I answered, after a pause, with a feeling of insecurity:

TC: "New Jersey"

Server: "Really.  You look like a farmer!" (pronounced as if the concept were a deeply alien one)

"I thought you were from California or something."

Russian gypsy fortune teller loops

A man was jailed by a Kemerovo region court on Thursday for assaulting a Gypsy fortune teller who predicted that he would be jailed, the Investigative Committee said.

Gennady Osipovich tried to kill the unidentified female fortune teller, who told him she saw a “state-owned house” – a Russian euphemism for jail – in his future, the committee said in a statement on its web site.

The woman managed to escape, but Osipovich stabbed to death two unidentified witnesses of the assault, which took place in October. He was sentenced to 22 years in a maximum-security prison.

The link is here and hat tip goes to The Browser.

Is “futile busyness” good for us?

The researchers proceed to argue that, unfortunately, most people will not be tempted by futile busyness, so there's a paternalistic case for governments and organisations tricking us into more activity: 'housekeepers may increase the happiness of their idle housekeepers by letting in some mice and prompting the housekeepers to clean up. Governments may increase the happiness of idle citizens by having them build bridges that are actually useless.' In fact, according to Hsee's team, such interventions already exist, with some airports having deliberately increased the walk to the luggage carousel so as to reduce the time passengers spend waiting idly for luggage to arrive.

Here is much more.

Why do we like adventure stories with guides?

Robin Hanson asks:

I’ve been sick, so watched tv more than usual. Watching Journey to the Center of the Earth, I noticed yet again how folks seem to like adventure stories and games to come with guides. People prefer main characters to follow a trail of clues via a map or book written by someone who has passed before, or at least to follow the advice of a wise old person.

Dante of course provides another example, as does Sibyl and Aeneas.  And Robin's conclusion?:

This has a big lesson for those who like to think of their real life as a grand adventure: relative to fiction, real grand adventures tend to have fewer guides, and more randomness in success.   Real adventurers must accept huge throws of the dice; even if you do most everything right, most likely some other lucky punk will get most of the praise.

If you want life paths that quickly and reliably reveal your skills, like leveling up in video games, you want artificial worlds like schools, sporting leagues, and corporate fast tracks.  You might call such lives adventures, but really they pretty much the opposite.  If you insist instead on adventuring for real, achieving things of real and large consequence against great real obstacles, well then learn to see the glorious nobility of those who try well yet fail. 

What career helps other people the most?

That's a question from Katja Grace.  Let's assume pure marginalist act utilitarianism, namely that you choose a career and get moral credit only for the net change caused by your selection.  Furthermore, I'll rule out "become a billionaire and give away all your money" or "cure cancer" by postulating that said person ends up at the 90th percentile of achievement in the specified field but no higher.

What first comes to mind is "honest General Practitioner who has read Robin Hanson on medicine."  If other countries are fair game, let's send that GP to Africa.  No matter what the locale, you help some people live and good outcomes do not require remarkable expertise.  There is a shortage of GPs in many locales, so you make specialists more productive as well.  Public health and sanitation may save more lives than medicine, but the addition of a single public health worker may well have a smaller marginal impact, given the greater importance of upfront costs in that field.

An important question is whether the said job candidate should be seen as precommitting to an honest disposition or whether we should treat the person as developing the median disposition, in the chosen career field, over time.

What do you all think?  What other career — at the margin — has the stongest positive effect on other people?

How Singapore runs a casino: bump not nudge

To discourage locals from gambling, the government collects casino entrance fees — $70 for a 24-hour period or $1,400 for a year — from all Singaporeans and permanent residents.  Almost 30,000 people, mostly recipients of public assistance or those who have filed for bankruptcy, are automatically barred from entering.

The casinos, of course, are intended for foreign tourists.  Reversing his earlier position, Mr. Lee finally backed casino gambling, saying it was vital to Singapore's future.  He said rejecting casino gambling would send the message that:

…we want to stay put, to remain the same old Singapore, a neat place and tidy place with no chewing gum.

That's from the 4 June 2010 IHT, I can't find it on-line, at least not yet.

A mini-revolt against computers in chess

Mikhalchishin is not an advocate of too much computer use. ‘Engines like Rybka, although very strong, can be also very dangerous, because after an hour of a computer analysis the player is completely under the Rybka’s guidance and can’t invent anything, just follow the machine. They can analyse some position, but it is very difficult to get a valuation of a position with Rybka – there is always something unclear, you never know what the real variation is. Rybka takes a lot of mental energy. Computer analysis switches off the brain. I enjoy seeing how the brain works, not computers.’

There is more here, for instance:

…he feels that an interesting trend is taking place in the chess world presently: a new generation of players, that he calls ‘post-Carlsen generation’, is coming up; young players who are not so much dependent on computers and are more practical, ‘hand players’. Carlsen may even become a world champion, but at this moment, a new generation is growing and training. ‘Richárd is one of them; then there is Nyzhnyk, a very interesting player from Ukraine, Berbatov, a very talented young player from Bulgaria. But the leader of this generation I would say is Wesley So. He is extremely talented and has produced some very interesting games, like his wins against Ivanchuk at the World Cup. These post-Carlsen players have a different style and attitudes. They are not obsessed with the opening theory, like their older predecessors. They are looking for much more practical play and are very aggressive. They are not necessarily a computer generation, as Carlsen’s generation was. Computers came with their powerful programs and chess players wanted to try them. But I feel this trend is finishing now.’

I wouldn't put too much stock in this as a practical development (Carlsen's the guy who's #1), but it's an interesting point about the roots of creativity and independent thought.