My friend, Tony, does prop work in Hollywood. Before he was big and famous, he would sell jewelry and such at Ren Faires and the like. One day I’m there, shooting the shit with him, when a guy comes up and looks at some of the crystals that Tony is selling. he finally zeroes in on one and gets all gaga over the bit of quartz. He informs Tony that he’s never seen such a strong power crystal. Tony tells him it a piece of quartz. The buyer maintains it is an amazing power crystal and demands to know the price. Tony looks him over for a second, then says “If it’s just a piece of quartz, it’s $15. If it’s a power crystal, it’s $150. Which is is?”
The buyer actually looked a bit sheepish as he said quietly “quartz”, gave Tony his money and wandered off. I wonder if he thought he got the better of Tony.
Story kind of bothers me. Yeah, you can get someone to pretend not to believe something by offering a fiscal reward, but that doesn’t prove anything.
If I were a geologist and correctly identified the crystal as the rare and valuable mineral unobtainite which I had been desperately seeking samples of, but Tony stubbornly insisted it was quartz—and if Tony then told me it was $150 if it was unobtainite but $15 if it was quartz—I’d call it quartz too if it meant I could get my sample for cheaper. So what?
I think the interesting part of the story is that it caused the power crystal dude to shut up about power crystals when he’d previously evinced interest in telling everyone about them. I don’t think you could get the same effect for $135 from a lot of, say, missionaries.
Part of me wants to say that it was foolish of Tony to take so much less money than he could have gotten simply for getting the guy to profess that it was a piece of quartz rather than a power crystal, but I’m not sure I would feel comfortable exploiting a guy’s delusions to that degree either.
Was the buyer sane enough to realise that it probably wasn’t a power crystal, or just sane enough to realise that if he pretended it wasn’t a power crystal he’d save $135?
Is that amount of raising-the-sanity waterline worth $135 to Tony?
I would guess it’s guilt-avoidance at work here.
(EDIT: your thanks to Tony are still valid though!)
And with that in mind, how would it have affected the sanity waterline if Tony had donated that $135 to an institution that’s pursuing the improvement of human rationality?
There’s no guarantee the guy would have bought it at all for $150. The impression I get is that this was ultimately a case of belief in belief, Tony knew he couldn’t get much more than $15 and just wanted to win the argument.
I doubt he would have bought it for $150, but after making a big deal of its properties as a power crystal, he’d be limited in his leverage to haggle it down; he’d probably have taken it for three times the asking price if not ten.
And then the guy walks away trying to prevent himself from bursting out with laughter at the fact that he just managed to get an incredibly good deal on a strong power crystal that Tony, who had clearly not been educated in such things, mistakenly believed was simple quartz.
Meh. Tony ruined that guy’s role-playing fun at a Ren Faire. People pretend to believe all kinds of silly stuff at a Ren Faire.
Last year my husband and I went to Ren Faire dressed as monks, pushing our daughter, dressed as a baby dragon, around in a stroller. (We got lots of comments about vows of celibacy.) We bought our daughter a little flower-shaped hair pin when we were there, after asking what would look best on a dragon. What Tony did would have been like the salesperson saying “That’s not a dragon.”
-- genesplicer on Something Awful Forums, via
I wonder if the default price was more like $10.
Wow, anchoring! That one didn’t even occur to me!
Note to self: do not buy stuff from Nancy Lebovitz.
Better yet, don’t go gaga. And use anchoring to your advantage—before haggling, talk about something you got for free.
Story kind of bothers me. Yeah, you can get someone to pretend not to believe something by offering a fiscal reward, but that doesn’t prove anything.
If I were a geologist and correctly identified the crystal as the rare and valuable mineral unobtainite which I had been desperately seeking samples of, but Tony stubbornly insisted it was quartz—and if Tony then told me it was $150 if it was unobtainite but $15 if it was quartz—I’d call it quartz too if it meant I could get my sample for cheaper. So what?
I think the interesting part of the story is that it caused the power crystal dude to shut up about power crystals when he’d previously evinced interest in telling everyone about them. I don’t think you could get the same effect for $135 from a lot of, say, missionaries.
Part of me wants to say that it was foolish of Tony to take so much less money than he could have gotten simply for getting the guy to profess that it was a piece of quartz rather than a power crystal, but I’m not sure I would feel comfortable exploiting a guy’s delusions to that degree either.
I thank Tony for not taking the immediately self-benefiting path of profit and instead doing his small part to raise the sanity waterline.
Was the buyer sane enough to realise that it probably wasn’t a power crystal, or just sane enough to realise that if he pretended it wasn’t a power crystal he’d save $135?
Is that amount of raising-the-sanity waterline worth $135 to Tony?
I would guess it’s guilt-avoidance at work here.
(EDIT: your thanks to Tony are still valid though!)
And with that in mind, how would it have affected the sanity waterline if Tony had donated that $135 to an institution that’s pursuing the improvement of human rationality?
Look, sometimes you’ve just got to do things because they’re awesome.
But would you feel comfortable with that maxim encoded in an AI’s utility function?
For a sufficiently rigorous definition of “awesome”, why not?
If its a terminal value then CEV should converge to it.
I think he would have been better off taking the money and donating it to a good charity.
There’s no guarantee the guy would have bought it at all for $150. The impression I get is that this was ultimately a case of belief in belief, Tony knew he couldn’t get much more than $15 and just wanted to win the argument.
I doubt he would have bought it for $150, but after making a big deal of its properties as a power crystal, he’d be limited in his leverage to haggle it down; he’d probably have taken it for three times the asking price if not ten.
And then the guy walks away trying to prevent himself from bursting out with laughter at the fact that he just managed to get an incredibly good deal on a strong power crystal that Tony, who had clearly not been educated in such things, mistakenly believed was simple quartz.
Meh. Tony ruined that guy’s role-playing fun at a Ren Faire. People pretend to believe all kinds of silly stuff at a Ren Faire.
Last year my husband and I went to Ren Faire dressed as monks, pushing our daughter, dressed as a baby dragon, around in a stroller. (We got lots of comments about vows of celibacy.) We bought our daughter a little flower-shaped hair pin when we were there, after asking what would look best on a dragon. What Tony did would have been like the salesperson saying “That’s not a dragon.”