Bob and Carl are about to negotiate. Conveniently, the thing they’re negotiating over is the division of six spherical cows. Each of them would ideally like all six for themselves.
Bob considers the situation and opens by saying “I think the reasonable thing to do here is go with 3 each. That seems fair.”
“I’d rather have 5,” says Carl breezily.
“That doesn’t seem fair at all,” says Bob, a little surprised. “That’s not compromising.”
“Hrm, tell you what. I’ll compromise, and I’ll have 4.” Carl says with good cheer.
“I- what? No, the fair thing is 3 each.” Bob sounds a little angry now.
“Now who isn’t compromising?” Carl asks, and Dean (who started watching the discussion recently, but wasn’t around long enough to have a good sense of what their goals are) nods in agreement.
“Fine, I’ll take 2,” Bob splutters. But he’s not happy about it.
Bella and Chloe are about to negotiate. Conveniently, the thing they’re negotiating over is the division of six spherical cows. Each of them would ideally like all six for themselves.
“I want 6,” Bella says, “do you want to just meet in the middle?”
“That’s hardly fair,” Chloe says. “You’re not giving anything up.”
“I said I wanted 6. I can compromise. You want 6 as well, right?” Bella asks.
“How about I get 15?” Chloe proposes as though that’s a reasonable number of spherical cows to be given out of the six at hand.
“I- what?” Bella is baffled. “Is that what you want or what you suggest as a compromise?”
“I suppose I’ll be generous. I’ll take 5.”
“I’m sorry, but no. That’s not fair at all.” Bella says, starting to get annoyed.
“Why not?” asks Darla, who has been watching long enough to hear the conversation but not long enough to have a sense of their goals, or of the range of spherical cows. “Chloe is offering a lot more to go from 15 to 5 than you are to go from 6 to 1.”
“You can’t actually expect me to take her getting 15 as a reasonable starting position. That’s blatantly setting the zero point.” Bella argues, getting heated.
“I suppose I accept your apology, but to make up for it can we compromise at least on me getting 4?” Chloe says, with an air of resignation.
“See Bella? Chloe is offering to compromise again,” Darla points out, trying to be helpful. “And you did say sorry, which sounds like you agree you made a mistake.”
“That’s not- you know what, fine, whatever,” Bella says. But she’s not happy about it.
Bryer and Cameron are about to negotiate. Conveniently, the thing they’re negotiating over is the division of six spherical cows. Each of them would ideally like all six for themselves.
“I think the fair thing is 3 each.” Bryer says.
“Well, I think-” Cameron starts, but Bryer interrupts them.
“And since both of us know the standard way to divide gains, you know I’ll randomly reject divisions that stray from that with a probability proportionate to how unfair it seems to me,” Bryer finished.
″. . . I get 4?” Cameron suggests.
“If that’s your final offer I’ll accept with slightly less than 3⁄4 probability. 3 because that’s what I think I is fair for you to get, 4 because that’s what you think is fair for you to get,” Bryer says.
“That’s a weird bit of math you just suggested, and I’m not sure it’s applicable,” Cameron says.
“It’s not that weird,” Dakota says. Dakota wasn’t really paying attention, at least not long enough to know what everyone’s goals are, but who did pay attention to the math. “We all learn that in school, usually by the time we’re ten. And if we didn’t, we pick it up from the Dungeons and Dragons[1]BDSM fanfiction that’s required reading for everyone in our subculture. I was as surprised as you were when the rightful caliph declared it was required reading, but we did all read it. And there’s a short version to point people at if they don’t know it.”
Cameron opens and closes their mouth a few times. They say “3 then.” But they’re not happy about it.
I agree this is actually Pathfinder. I also stand by calling it D&D here because I expect calling it Pathfinder would confuse more people than it enlightens, Pathfinder’s close enough to round to D&D for these purposes, and I guess I can add this footnote.
4 because that’s what you think is fair for you to get
4 should be there not because it’s what Cameron thinks is fair but because it’s what they’re offering.
Cameron opens and closes their mouth a few times. They say “3 then.” But they’re not happy about it.
That’s only the right thing to do if Camerons know that the fair split is actually 3:3 (it’s unclear why they’d be unhappy about it if they think it’s fair: are they unhappy because they were interacting with someone who couldn’t be convinced to give up some of the cows?). If Cameron thinks the fair split is 4, they are supposed to still offer 2:4. (They could also offer 3:3 with a bit under 2⁄3 chance and walk away otherwise, but they don’t need to do it here.)
Maybe Cameron is a CDT agent, though, in which case they’re unhappy about the unfair split but can’t do anything about it. In that case, the right course of action for Bryer would be to say that they’re going to accept splits with a probability of 1/(6-offered), so that Cameron offers 5 and gets 1.[1]
If they’re allowed to do more than that, you could also say that you will reject any offer unless the procedure that Cameron employs is offering 6 99.99999% of the time and offering 5 the rest of the time.
It’s hard being a CDT agent. You are often not happy about what you do.
The calculation is just based what C gets if their offer is accepted, and on what B thinks is fair; it doesn’t matter if the split is fair according to C, it’s just in the calculation B does so that the expected payout of C is not higher than what’s fair according to B due to them offering this split. If C thought that the fair split is 5:1, but offered an C!unfair (unfair-according-to-C) split of 4:2, B does the same calculation; the goal is to make C get a bit less than 3 in expectation in all B!unfair splits, because the B!fair split is 3:3
The high-level purpose is that this enables people with different notions of fairness to mutually cooperate almost always; and if you do this procedure, you incentivize fair-according-to-you splits. Others don’t have to do what you think is fair; and even if they offer what you consider unfair, you’ll often accept (you just need to reject enough for it you!unfair splits to not be worth offering just for the purpose of exploiting you, as it won’t work).
That’s only the right thing to do if Camerons know that the fair split is actually 3:3 (it’s unclear why they’d be unhappy about it if they think it’s fair: are they unhappy because they were interacting with someone who couldn’t be convinced to give up some of the cows?). If Cameron thinks the fair split is 4, they are supposed to still offer 2:4. (They could also offer 3:3 with a bit under 2⁄3 chance and walk away otherwise, but they don’t need to do it here.)
In these stories, the Cs are not aiming at a fair split (or to the extent they are, it’s more of an “all’s fair in love, war, and spherical cow negotiations” kind of fair.) They are aiming at getting as many cows as they can. This is not stated explicitly and I do think there’s a valid reading of the text where the Cs are just really badly calibrated on what’s fair, but in my head I was writing it with a mind to “okay, what’s some really annoying low hanging fruit for aggressive negotiation tactics?” Cameron is written as unhappy because in the author’s head, their attempts to get some ‘free’ extra cows failed.
Depending on context, I don’t think the Cs are doing something morally wrong- if I go to buy a used car from a dealer, I expect them to try this kind of thing on me and I’ll do it right back to them if I can. If I’m negotiating salary with a standard corporation, I expect them to try this kind of thing on me and I’ll to it to them too. But it’s not behavior I want from people on my team within the team.
Xannon: “Oh, dear. It seems we have a dispute as to what is fair. For myself, I want to divide the pie the same way as Yancy. But let us resolve this dispute over the meaning of fairness, fairly: that is, giving equal weight to each of our desires. Zaire desires the pie to be divided {1/4, 1⁄4, 1⁄2}, and Yancy and I desire the pie to be divided {1/3, 1⁄3, 1⁄3}. So the fair compromise is {11/36, 11⁄36, 14⁄36}.”
I have added a footnote: “I agree this is actually Pathfinder. I also stand by calling it D&D here because I expect calling it Pathfinder would confuse more people than it enlightens, Pathfinder’s close enough to round to D&D for these purposes, and I guess I can add this footnote.”
I’m curious if this satisfies you?
(I’m also amused that I see the “It’s not D&D, it’s Pathfinder” point brought up repeatedly but don’t think I’ve run across someone making the “It’s not BDSM, those are abusive relationships” point.)
It does. Strenuously arguing the distinction, with the bold and caps, was mostly in jest: I’ve myself referred to all TTRPGs as “D&D.”
The irony of quibbling over the D&D vs. Pathfinder distinction instead of what one might have expected would be the sticking point was intended to be funny.
I agree the internet actually can convey tone-of-voice. I also stand by calling it the internet here instead of “text communication” or “forum software” because the opportunity to make this pedantic footnote amused me.
I mean, mostly this is in jest, but like, Pathfinder is really mostly DnD with some changes. Pathfinder is much more similar to DnD than any other TTRPG setup. So referring to it as “Dungeons and Dragons” seems appropriate, given the former is much more widely known.
There’s not any reasonable standard by which you could label Pathfinder (especially 1st edition PF, which is what Project Lawful is based on) as being “not D&D”, while also labeling D&D 5e as being “D&D”[1]. PF was, after all, informally called “3.75” when it was released (referring to the goal of the Pathfinder RPG project being to clean up and improve the D&D “3.5e” rule set).
“You can’t actually expect me to take her getting 15 as a reasonable starting position. That’s blatantly setting the zero point.” Bella argues, getting heated.
This is a very odd response. Why would Bella reply by invoking this sort of abstract, somewhat esoteric, meta-level concept like “setting the zero point”, instead of saying something more like “… uh, Chloe, are you ok? you know we don’t have 15 cows to divide, right?”.
This makes me suspect that whatever this fictional conversation is a metaphor for, is not actually analogous to dividing six spherical cows between two people.
Why would Bella reply by invoking this sort of abstract, somewhat esoteric, meta-level concept like “setting the zero point”, instead of saying something more like “… uh, Chloe, are you ok? you know we don’t have 15 cows to divide, right?”.
Because she’s in a silly shortform dialogue that’s building up to the esoteric, meta-level concept like the game theory in the third part mostly. I wanted some kind of underhanded negotiating tactic I could have Chloe try, I came up with asking for way more than is reasonable to set the stage for “compromise,” and then I noticed that the tactic had a good conceptual handle and I referenced it.
This makes me suspect that whatever this fictional conversation is a metaphor for, is not actually analogous to dividing six spherical cows between two people.
It’s pretty generic, abstracted negotiation and Chloe is being pretty blatant and ambitious. Asking for value that the other person didn’t even think was on the table is a negotiation move I’ve seen and heard of though, sometimes successfully. For a more realistic version, compare a salary negotiation where the applicant asks for 10% higher salary, gets told the company doesn’t have that much to pay employees, and then tries for a couple weeks extra vacation time or more company stock instead.
I think the math at the end still works even if the two sides don’t agree on how many cows are actually available.
Bob and Carl are about to negotiate. Conveniently, the thing they’re negotiating over is the division of six spherical cows. Each of them would ideally like all six for themselves.
Bob considers the situation and opens by saying “I think the reasonable thing to do here is go with 3 each. That seems fair.”
“I’d rather have 5,” says Carl breezily.
“That doesn’t seem fair at all,” says Bob, a little surprised. “That’s not compromising.”
“Hrm, tell you what. I’ll compromise, and I’ll have 4.” Carl says with good cheer.
“I- what? No, the fair thing is 3 each.” Bob sounds a little angry now.
“Now who isn’t compromising?” Carl asks, and Dean (who started watching the discussion recently, but wasn’t around long enough to have a good sense of what their goals are) nods in agreement.
“Fine, I’ll take 2,” Bob splutters. But he’s not happy about it.
Bella and Chloe are about to negotiate. Conveniently, the thing they’re negotiating over is the division of six spherical cows. Each of them would ideally like all six for themselves.
“I want 6,” Bella says, “do you want to just meet in the middle?”
“That’s hardly fair,” Chloe says. “You’re not giving anything up.”
“I said I wanted 6. I can compromise. You want 6 as well, right?” Bella asks.
“How about I get 15?” Chloe proposes as though that’s a reasonable number of spherical cows to be given out of the six at hand.
“I- what?” Bella is baffled. “Is that what you want or what you suggest as a compromise?”
“I suppose I’ll be generous. I’ll take 5.”
“I’m sorry, but no. That’s not fair at all.” Bella says, starting to get annoyed.
“Why not?” asks Darla, who has been watching long enough to hear the conversation but not long enough to have a sense of their goals, or of the range of spherical cows. “Chloe is offering a lot more to go from 15 to 5 than you are to go from 6 to 1.”
“You can’t actually expect me to take her getting 15 as a reasonable starting position. That’s blatantly setting the zero point.” Bella argues, getting heated.
“I suppose I accept your apology, but to make up for it can we compromise at least on me getting 4?” Chloe says, with an air of resignation.
“See Bella? Chloe is offering to compromise again,” Darla points out, trying to be helpful. “And you did say sorry, which sounds like you agree you made a mistake.”
“That’s not- you know what, fine, whatever,” Bella says. But she’s not happy about it.
Bryer and Cameron are about to negotiate. Conveniently, the thing they’re negotiating over is the division of six spherical cows. Each of them would ideally like all six for themselves.
“I think the fair thing is 3 each.” Bryer says.
“Well, I think-” Cameron starts, but Bryer interrupts them.
“And since both of us know the standard way to divide gains, you know I’ll randomly reject divisions that stray from that with a probability proportionate to how unfair it seems to me,” Bryer finished.
″. . . I get 4?” Cameron suggests.
“If that’s your final offer I’ll accept with slightly less than 3⁄4 probability. 3 because that’s what I think I is fair for you to get, 4 because that’s what you think is fair for you to get,” Bryer says.
“That’s a weird bit of math you just suggested, and I’m not sure it’s applicable,” Cameron says.
“It’s not that weird,” Dakota says. Dakota wasn’t really paying attention, at least not long enough to know what everyone’s goals are, but who did pay attention to the math. “We all learn that in school, usually by the time we’re ten. And if we didn’t, we pick it up from the Dungeons and Dragons[1] BDSM fanfiction that’s required reading for everyone in our subculture. I was as surprised as you were when the rightful caliph declared it was required reading, but we did all read it. And there’s a short version to point people at if they don’t know it.”
Cameron opens and closes their mouth a few times. They say “3 then.” But they’re not happy about it.
I agree this is actually Pathfinder. I also stand by calling it D&D here because I expect calling it Pathfinder would confuse more people than it enlightens, Pathfinder’s close enough to round to D&D for these purposes, and I guess I can add this footnote.
:)
A couple of notes:
4 should be there not because it’s what Cameron thinks is fair but because it’s what they’re offering.
That’s only the right thing to do if Camerons know that the fair split is actually 3:3 (it’s unclear why they’d be unhappy about it if they think it’s fair: are they unhappy because they were interacting with someone who couldn’t be convinced to give up some of the cows?). If Cameron thinks the fair split is 4, they are supposed to still offer 2:4. (They could also offer 3:3 with a bit under 2⁄3 chance and walk away otherwise, but they don’t need to do it here.)
Maybe Cameron is a CDT agent, though, in which case they’re unhappy about the unfair split but can’t do anything about it. In that case, the right course of action for Bryer would be to say that they’re going to accept splits with a probability of 1/(6-offered), so that Cameron offers 5 and gets 1.[1]
If they’re allowed to do more than that, you could also say that you will reject any offer unless the procedure that Cameron employs is offering 6 99.99999% of the time and offering 5 the rest of the time.
It’s hard being a CDT agent. You are often not happy about what you do.
How about “4 because that’s what you say is fair for you to get”? Cameron isn’t offering 4 to Bryer, it’s a 2:4 split with 4 to Cameron.
(I want to make sure I get this part right, and appreciate the edit pass!)
The calculation is just based what C gets if their offer is accepted, and on what B thinks is fair; it doesn’t matter if the split is fair according to C, it’s just in the calculation B does so that the expected payout of C is not higher than what’s fair according to B due to them offering this split. If C thought that the fair split is 5:1, but offered an C!unfair (unfair-according-to-C) split of 4:2, B does the same calculation; the goal is to make C get a bit less than 3 in expectation in all B!unfair splits, because the B!fair split is 3:3
The high-level purpose is that this enables people with different notions of fairness to mutually cooperate almost always; and if you do this procedure, you incentivize fair-according-to-you splits. Others don’t have to do what you think is fair; and even if they offer what you consider unfair, you’ll often accept (you just need to reject enough for it you!unfair splits to not be worth offering just for the purpose of exploiting you, as it won’t work).
In these stories, the Cs are not aiming at a fair split (or to the extent they are, it’s more of an “all’s fair in love, war, and spherical cow negotiations” kind of fair.) They are aiming at getting as many cows as they can. This is not stated explicitly and I do think there’s a valid reading of the text where the Cs are just really badly calibrated on what’s fair, but in my head I was writing it with a mind to “okay, what’s some really annoying low hanging fruit for aggressive negotiation tactics?” Cameron is written as unhappy because in the author’s head, their attempts to get some ‘free’ extra cows failed.
Depending on context, I don’t think the Cs are doing something morally wrong- if I go to buy a used car from a dealer, I expect them to try this kind of thing on me and I’ll do it right back to them if I can. If I’m negotiating salary with a standard corporation, I expect them to try this kind of thing on me and I’ll to it to them too. But it’s not behavior I want from people on my team within the team.
(from The Bedrock of Fairness)
This caused me to get around to writing a comment on the linked How to Give in to Threats post, which I had meant to for a while.
Pathfinder is NOT DnD.
I have added a footnote: “I agree this is actually Pathfinder. I also stand by calling it D&D here because I expect calling it Pathfinder would confuse more people than it enlightens, Pathfinder’s close enough to round to D&D for these purposes, and I guess I can add this footnote.”
I’m curious if this satisfies you?
(I’m also amused that I see the “It’s not D&D, it’s Pathfinder” point brought up repeatedly but don’t think I’ve run across someone making the “It’s not BDSM, those are abusive relationships” point.)
It does. Strenuously arguing the distinction, with the bold and caps, was mostly in jest: I’ve myself referred to all TTRPGs as “D&D.”
The irony of quibbling over the D&D vs. Pathfinder distinction instead of what one might have expected would be the sticking point was intended to be funny.
The internet’s[1] lack of tone-of-voice claims another victim.
I agree the internet actually can convey tone-of-voice. I also stand by calling it the internet here instead of “text communication” or “forum software” because the opportunity to make this pedantic footnote amused me.
Come on:
IDK, imagine someone made an LLM that felt so much like 3 Opus that it was informally nicknamed 3.1 Opus
(Also, is planecrash placed in a world that descended from the first edition of Pathfinder and not second?)
I mean, mostly this is in jest, but like, Pathfinder is really mostly DnD with some changes. Pathfinder is much more similar to DnD than any other TTRPG setup. So referring to it as “Dungeons and Dragons” seems appropriate, given the former is much more widely known.
It really is, though.
There’s not any reasonable standard by which you could label Pathfinder (especially 1st edition PF, which is what Project Lawful is based on) as being “not D&D”, while also labeling D&D 5e as being “D&D”[1]. PF was, after all, informally called “3.75” when it was released (referring to the goal of the Pathfinder RPG project being to clean up and improve the D&D “3.5e” rule set).
I won’t even get into the 4e question…
But it is DnD fan fiction, so OP is basically fine
I’d say it’s more like D&D 3.5 than any two of [AD&D, D&D 3.5, D&D 4E, D&D 5E] are like each other.
This is a very odd response. Why would Bella reply by invoking this sort of abstract, somewhat esoteric, meta-level concept like “setting the zero point”, instead of saying something more like “… uh, Chloe, are you ok? you know we don’t have 15 cows to divide, right?”.
This makes me suspect that whatever this fictional conversation is a metaphor for, is not actually analogous to dividing six spherical cows between two people.
Because she’s in a silly shortform dialogue that’s building up to the esoteric, meta-level concept like the game theory in the third part mostly. I wanted some kind of underhanded negotiating tactic I could have Chloe try, I came up with asking for way more than is reasonable to set the stage for “compromise,” and then I noticed that the tactic had a good conceptual handle and I referenced it.
It’s pretty generic, abstracted negotiation and Chloe is being pretty blatant and ambitious. Asking for value that the other person didn’t even think was on the table is a negotiation move I’ve seen and heard of though, sometimes successfully. For a more realistic version, compare a salary negotiation where the applicant asks for 10% higher salary, gets told the company doesn’t have that much to pay employees, and then tries for a couple weeks extra vacation time or more company stock instead.
I think the math at the end still works even if the two sides don’t agree on how many cows are actually available.