Personally, I hate Banana Laffy Taffy (it has that awful chemical Cavendish taste), but since you’re voluntarily offering to trade me for mine, you must be offering me a bad deal! I wonder what TsviBT knows that I don’t know?! I can’t risk accepting any Laffy Taffy deal below 2:1.
Well, trade does have a more zero-sum character when both sides of the trade have the same preferences, but if you can credibly claim to have different preferences, you’re also in a better position to convince the person on the other side of the trade that you’re not trying to offer them a bad deal. (For example, if you’re selling stock because you want to spend the money, you don’t care if you disagree with someone about what the stock will be worth in the future; you just want to sell it for the best offer you can get right now.)
You don’t need to have different preferences to make mutually beneficial trades. Human preferences tend to be roughly unbounded but sublinear—more of the same good isn’t as important to us. So if I have a lot of money and you have a lot of ripe oranges, we can both benefit greatly by trading even if we both have the same love of oranges and money.
Meta: I kind of wonder about the moderation score of gwern’s comment. Karma −5, Agreement −10. So someone saw that comment at −4 and thought ‘this is still rated too high’.
FWIW, I do not think his comment was bad. A bit tongue in cheek, perhaps, but I think his comment engages with the subject matter of the post more deeply than the parent comment.
Or some subset of people voting on LW either really like Banana Taffy or really hate gwern, or both.
Bruh. Banana Laffy Taffy is the best. Happy to trade away non-banana to receive banana, 1:1.
Personally, I hate Banana Laffy Taffy (it has that awful chemical Cavendish taste), but since you’re voluntarily offering to trade me for mine, you must be offering me a bad deal! I wonder what TsviBT knows that I don’t know?! I can’t risk accepting any Laffy Taffy deal below 2:1.
(yes I know you’ve being ironic)
Well, trade does have a more zero-sum character when both sides of the trade have the same preferences, but if you can credibly claim to have different preferences, you’re also in a better position to convince the person on the other side of the trade that you’re not trying to offer them a bad deal. (For example, if you’re selling stock because you want to spend the money, you don’t care if you disagree with someone about what the stock will be worth in the future; you just want to sell it for the best offer you can get right now.)
You don’t need to have different preferences to make mutually beneficial trades. Human preferences tend to be roughly unbounded but sublinear—more of the same good isn’t as important to us. So if I have a lot of money and you have a lot of ripe oranges, we can both benefit greatly by trading even if we both have the same love of oranges and money.
Yes, I know.
(sorry for thread necromancy)
Meta: I kind of wonder about the moderation score of gwern’s comment. Karma −5, Agreement −10. So someone saw that comment at −4 and thought ‘this is still rated too high’.
FWIW, I do not think his comment was bad. A bit tongue in cheek, perhaps, but I think his comment engages with the subject matter of the post more deeply than the parent comment.
Or some subset of people voting on LW either really like Banana Taffy or really hate gwern, or both.