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Cooperation Works if Majority Can Punish Freeloaders
plasmid writes: "Some Swiss economists ran an investment game... they found that if the majority could punish freeloaders, cooperation flourished. I think this has implications for cooperative peer-to-peer systems and, to a lesser extent, for open source development. I'm so inspired I plan to go out an punish someone right now, as a matter of fact." I had just read this article the other day (go memepool), so this Nature piece seems oddly apropos.
This "game" sounds like a development of one which I read in The Economist a few years ago.
In that, the idea was a group of people had 10 beans , of which some were added to the pot and the rest were kept by the participant. At the end, the he pot was shared amongst all, and the goal was to maximise the indivuduals holding (with no concept of punishment).
This was carried out at a university (where else?) and it found that while students of most disciplines did the same thing, kept five and shared five, (only) students of economics kept 9 and shared 1. The summary of The Economist wondered whether this was cause or effect of studying economics.
I wonder if people like Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, ESR et al would keep 1 and share 9, and whether Bill Gates and co would behave more like economists.
People will pay to punish - suggesting that their
notions of fairness outweigh selfish considerations.
This quote reminds me of an experiment. It runs something like this: A group of people is divided into two groups of equal size. Then each group is asked this simple question: We will either give both groups $2 per person or we'll give each of you three bucks and each of them four bucks. What would you prefer?
85% of the participants go for the two bucks.
I definately agree with you and have seen examples of this on IRC. A few weeks ago when the FBI busted all those warez servers, traffic died down quite a bit. I read somewhere that they found out the reason for this wasn't necessarily because people were afraid to serve, but because there were only a few people that basically served a lot that everyone else mooched off of, and those were the people that got busted.
On the other hand, though, I think there are other reason for not contributing. Case in point (switching gears somewhat to Morpheus), I have Morpheus running ALL THE TIME on a DSL connection. But when I want to surf the web or download something, all those downloads kill my bandwidth. For this reason, I've set the maximum number of users that can download off of me at one time to 1, and the maximum bandwidth allowed for that to about 3.5kb/s. Now, I'm not using my computer all the time and I don't have a problem with allowing more users and more bandwidth when I'm not, but it's such a hassle to change the settings every time I want to step away from my computer and every time I come back. So, it stays at 1 user at 3.5kb/s.
But, if there was a better program that would, say, allow 10 users at a time and my max bandwidth whenever the screensaver came on, and then brought it back down to 1 user for 3.5kb/s (Morpheus allows resuming, so the cancelled downloads could connect again later) when the screensaver went off (i.e. I'm using the computer), then I would have no problem letting people download to their heart's content.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is, sometimes contributing is beyond the convenient means of some people. Mayhaps a system (in general, not necessarily a warez system) where contributing was easier, or maybe even somewhat, if not mostly, transparent, would see fewer freeloaders and more people contributing.
No sig for you.
Taoists would say that a wise man who REALLY groks his own self-interest does not seek to raise himself above the others, since by so doing he invites attack.
Imagine two people acting like this, one a Machiavellian, the other a Taoist. Both end up contributing to and sharing in the common good in an objectively equivalent way: their behaviour is indistinguishable. Although their motivations and perspectives may be different, they are each wise enough to know that their best chance at "happiness" lies in serving the community.
I don't see how you can really call this selfishness. It is a balancing act between investment/sacrifice and profit/reward. Selfishness and wisdom are at odds, here.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
A lighthouse is for the common good, but can't exist without being charged for. However, due to its nature (it just emits light), you cannot deny service to those who don't pay - they'll see light regardless of whether they've contributed.
The dilemma is - as a ship owner, you have no incentive to pay for upkeep as the service is delivered to you anyway. This works right up until the moment the lighthouse has to close, at which point it becomes in your best interest to ensure everyone pays. Note that - everyone, not just you. If only you pay, you're still at a disadvantage.
Can't remember the exact terminology they used - I think it's a form of 'free good', but I'm prepared to be corrected on that. Why these researchers felt the need to reprove a very old and established theory is beyond me.
Cheers,
Ian
PS: 'A'-Levels - the exams in the UK taken when you're about 18.
Interesting that this post should come up at the same time that "Beautiful Mind" is in the theaters
The finding of the Swiss Economists is close to the very premise of pure democracy and why forms of it have by-and-large overcome monarchic states. Combined with the assumption that game theory and John Nash's work is based on(see Beautiful Mind -- or better, read his research) "that equilibrium can be predicted when you take into account that each player acts in his/her own self interest", you have good theoretical evidence supporting the findings of this research.[Actually both Game-theory and Nash tend to start with the presumption that people will act in their own self-interest first and foremost]
In order for the majority to have the power to punish freeloaders, they must first have power to begin with. With majority vote and regular turnover, the opportunity to enact this is provided for. If everyone acts in their own self interest and they have the power to vote, then freeloaders MUST be punished.
If the majority are freeloaders, then those that contribute least will be punished. (Napster is shut down, but everyone who knows how to contribute still has access by some means). If this "freeloader" society is self-sufficient, it will eventually turn itself around if it is interested in self-survival. In the case of government, democracies turn themselves around because the cost of non-cooperation is death. Napster and p2p are bad examples becase the cost of community-death is not as dire as individual-death.
The summary of this rant: community works if either 1) the act of cooperation is equivalent to the act of acting in the majority's self-interest and/or 2) acting in the majority's self-interest does not lead to the destruction of the community. True democracy allows for consistent societal change in both of these directions.
Punishment is a purely selfish strategy: spend money punishing someone, so they will invest more, so your profits increase.
Incorrect - In the actual experiment, if you chose to punish a `freeloader' then you paid out of your own profits, and no one else's. The games were not iterated (played repeatedly with the same cast of players), so any consequent change in the freeloader's behavior would not be to your benefit. Perhaps on the next time around, the freeloader would have a change of heart, but even if s/he did this was not likely to be to your own benefit.
Thus in the context of the game, choosing to punish was a very counter-selfish act - not selfish at all, but quite the opposite. That's what makes the research so interesting.
-Renard
Really - what is their positive contribution to the system?
As far as i can see, the only positive side of freeloaders is:
- They spread the word - thus bringing more users to the system, even some that aren't freeloaders
- They might stop being freeloaders (for example: a person that starts with nothing to share but shares what he/she gets)
- It feels good to "just share"
Number 1 just adds speed to how fast new users find the system (those which are not freeloaders also "spread the word").For number 2, if a P2P system allows some sort of "punishment" against freeloaders while at the same time leting them know WHY they are being "punished" probably the number of freeloaders that are "converted" would actually increase.
For number 3, it feels even beter to share when you know that the persons that get stuff from you will share it further.
As i see it, less freeloaders means more bandwith for everybody else.
Just as I'll claim if you try to use traditional economic arguments to justify "ownership" of software, or whatever, analogies between physical property (money) and property that can be duplicated (software, information) just don't hold up. The fact that you can share software or information with a friend without losing it yourself makes a HUGE difference in any kind of economic game. (There is some cost, for instance bandwidth in a peer-to-peer system, but I think it is mostly negligible.)
However, I would expect that this result does in fact hold for IP-less software economies as well. I am just saying that making direct comparisons is always trouble.
This is why copyright is supposed to be limited to a short period. If if still were, the system would work as intended. Much the same with patents (which originally had a longer term, because of they're supposed to represent a physical device, with the additional associated costs). The flaw is not in the basic concept, but in it's perversion by our government.
Let's see... freeloaders use up the service without contributing. And you think it's a bad thing to get rid of them because if you do, then "there goes your userbase." But if you kick these people off you GAIN: more bandwidth, more room for people that contribute to the service. On top of that, a certain portion of potential freeloaders will be more likely to contribute if they find out they are in danger of being kicked off the service, thereby increasing the value of your service even more.
As long as it is made very easy to contribute to a service, you should not lose any meaningful users.
"And like that