From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Mar 19 2002 - 06:38:08 MST
On Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 06:39:49PM +1100, Colin Hales wrote:
>
> > A lot of people appear to be taking this experiment
> > seriously. I think this
> > is probably a mistake.
> >
> > Emlyn
>
> I agree. The test seems to be logically the equivalent of a computer game.
> People are trained to kill from the moment they sit in front of a screen.
Yes. I think Emlyn's analysis a few posts back is correct - there is a
real risk for subject bias here. The situation reminded me of Eliezer's
"The game with no rules" - a lot of people see competition where there
are none, and if the setting also suggests that competition is somehow
relevant it might occur anyway.
> The game was pre-set to generate the outcome and I bet it gets a lot more
> publicity for those involved as a result. A touch of cynicism here?
I think that is a tad bit too cynical. This kind of paper is a dime a
dozen; lots of people are studying game behavior and getting all sorts
of suprising (and unsurprising) results. Some of these papers then get
noticed by the popular press, but that seems to be a more or less random
phenomenon.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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