Misplaced Patriot

Game Theory and Segregation

2009-09-15T18:57:00.002-04:00

I've been watching the "Game Theory" lectures by Ben Polak on the Yale Open Courses site, and he gives an example game that's a bit depressing.

He deals with an abstract game of racial balance. Suppose you have two (large) sets of people of equal size, N green people and N blue people. Suppose that there are also two neighborhoods of equal size that these people can live in.

The nature of game theory is to start with a postulate about what result makes people happy. In his example, he takes an optimistic view of human nature - that all green and blue people would prefer to live in a neighborhood that is split 50%/50% between blue and green. The only racial discrepancy is that a green people prefer to live in green-majority neighborhood rather than blue-majority neighborhood, if the mix is unequal. So if a green person had to choose between a neighborhood that is 40% green and a neighborhood that is 60% green, he will prefer the 60% green. Similarly, blue people prefer to be in the majority in their district rather than in the minority.

This game has three Nash equilibria. A Nash equilibrium is a solution where nobody could improve their situation by changing their decision. Two of the cases are segregated - all the greens are in neighborhood A and all the blues are in neighborhood B, or visa versa. In both these cases, nobody has any desire to change - they cannot improve their happiness by moving, because moving means becoming the minority in the other neighborhood.

The other equilibrium is when each neighborhood is exactly 50% green and 50% blue. Then nobody benefits from switching because they all prefer to be in 50%/50% neighborhoods, and moving would mess that up.

Unfortunately, this last equilibrium is "unstable." If you jostle it a little, say, making the blue/green mix 53%/47% in neighborhood A (and hence 47%/53% in neighborhood B) then a green person in A thinks, "Ideally, I'd love to convince 3% of the greens in B to switch places with 3% of the blues in A, to get back to 50%/50% mix, but, unfortunately, I have no such power over them. However, if I move from A to B, I will be happier than I am now, because I prefer to be in the majority if there is an unequal mix.) Similarly, the blues in neighborhood B have reason to want to move to A. So what happens is a horrible surge towards segregation.

Now, of course, this is only a theoretical game. Still, it's remarkable that, even with an optimistic view where living in the 50%/50% neighborhood is considered ideal by everybody, you get something like a mutual "white flight" just by assuming that people prefer to be in the majority rather than the minority.

Now, most segregation is, of course, not of this kind. But this game can be applied to, say, school choice in public schools. If a school system allows parents to pick schools for their kids, without the system enforcing racial balance in each school, you might well get a self-segregation in the system, even if everything is fair, even if all parents agree they'd prefer perfect racial integration.

On the other hand, consider a converse case. Let's say you have N men and N women. A simple model here might make people prefer to be in the sexual minority in a neighborhood, and even prefer being the only man or woman in a neighborhood. (Okay, that's a bit extreme.) In this case, oddly, the people rush towards purely mixed neighborhoods. In this case, nobody wants to be in the majority, so the rush is towards equality.

A liberal's definition of libertarianism

2009-08-09T13:58:00.004-04:00

Via Hullabaloo, a query for a definition of libertarianism from a liberal.

Ideologically, libertarianism tries to start from first principals and definitions to define an ideally "free" society. One of the peculiar definitions at the heart of libertarianism is that the things a person owns are essentially considered parts of the self, and threats against property are essentially threats to the self. (An alternative view is to consider the self as part of the person's property - a strict libertarian believes a person should be free to sell herself into slavery.)

Libertarians believe that any government intervention into our lives is the moral equivalent of physical coercion. Strict libertarians will say "taxation is theft."

However, while railing against government intervention, libertarians often take the side of corporations and investors rather than realizing the way that government creates corporations and investment. For example, if I invest my money in a corporation, and that corporation goes broke and bankrupt, I lose my investment, but I am not liable for any of the debts of that corporation. That limited liability is a government protection, not a natural result on libertarian ideals. Yet investment pretty much would not exist if it weren't for the limited liability of investors.

Libertarians often have two arguments to make. One is that it is a morally superior system, since it is based on freedom of person and property. Another is that it is an efficient and effective system. The problem when they make efficiency and effectiveness arguments is that absolutely free markets are not always the most efficient and effective, so it is dangerous for libertarians to move from their moral certitude to arguments about effectiveness and efficiancy. The fact that libertarian ideals lead to unfortunate outcomes that some of us would call "immoral" is not a consideration for libertarians because the outcome springs from their ideal moral system, so, while unfortunate, it is moral. (There is quite a lot of economic research, for example, which shows that racism is a stable economic order, in that those in a racially divided society who stray out of their racial circle will be economically punished.)

Now, what I'm talking about is the ideal of libertarianism. Many people who call themselves libertarians are actually quite fine with state power to restrict personal liberty, they just believe that the state shouldn't get involved in the economy.

Question for Frist

2005-04-16T00:26:00.000-04:00

Some enterprising reporter ought to ask Senator Frist the following question:

Are you suggesting that all of those judges who were not blocked by the Democrats in the Senate were not people of faith?

Culture of Life?

2005-04-01T20:10:00.000-05:00

It seems to me that some people don't know the difference between "culture" and "cult."

Blink

2005-03-24T08:40:00.000-05:00

Has there been a more perfect book title for the Bush era than Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking?

Do Not Call

2005-03-05T20:44:00.000-05:00

Somehow, I'm on every research phone list in the world. I've gotten 10 calls in the last week from people wanting to survey me.

This is pissing me off. Just got one at 8:45PM.

Well, that Explains Carville and Matlin

2005-02-13T23:18:00.000-05:00

Well, this news explains how Carville and Matlin's marriage survived.

Misuse of the National Guard

2004-09-06T09:21:00.000-04:00

One of the great sins of the war on Iraq is the misuse of the National Guard. The National Guard is meant to be used only as a last resort, in the case of national emergency. The war in Iraq, whatever it is, was not an answer to any emergency. The current National Guard members are getting screwed with long deployments interrupting their lives, making it almost impossible for the Guard to woo future members.

I still occasionally see the "One weekend a month, two weeks a year" ads, which seem like a cruel joke right now.

One of O'Neill's Tells

2004-08-26T03:47:00.000-04:00

O'Neill has said that Kerry has told the Christmas/Cambodia story over 50 times.

He has also said that swift boats only got within 50 miles of Cambodia.

The first claim is unsubstantiated, the second claim is blatantly false. I'm suspecting that any time O'Neill uses the number 50, he has pulled the number out his ass.

What about the Book?

2004-08-26T03:02:00.000-04:00

Scott McClellan and Bush have refused to condemn SBVFT's ads, instead preferring to condemn the 527 ads in general. Why hasn't the press then asked about the book, published by Regnery? It is a for-profit effort, with the same smears as the ad, but without the 527 status. It's not covered under Bush's cowardly blanket condemnation of the ads, nor are the TV appearances by the members of SBVFT.

Kerry on Daily Show

2004-08-26T02:40:00.000-04:00

Kerry should have started with, "What better place than a fake news show to respond to fake news."

God speaks

2004-08-18T15:50:00.000-04:00

According to Jeb Bush:

"This is God’s way of telling us that He’s almighty and we’re mortal," the man with his ear to heaven continued.

This is Jeb's explanation for Hurricane Charley's destructive force, but it also calls to mind another recent claim from his brother:

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job."

Perhaps God speaks through Bush in the same way that he speaks through hurricanes. W's stupidity and destructiveness certainly put him in the same league.

Trial Lawyers

2004-07-06T11:57:00.000-04:00

The Republicans have already started to attack John Edwards for being a trial lawyer. It seems to me that there is a very easy answer to this attack: trial lawyers are the people's lawyers. Insurance companies have lots of lawyers. Trial lawyers are necessary because corporations and individuals do not take responsibility for themselves. That failure of responsibility has corroded even the Catholic Church. Without trial lawyers, there is no way to hold the powerful responsible. It is telling that the tort reform lobby regularly peddles urban legends, rather than real cases. Real cases of abuse by trial lawyers are very rare. Absurd cases where the plaintiff wins are even rarer.

Six Morons

2004-05-10T13:54:00.000-04:00

In war, people behave badly. This has always been true. I think the abuse in Abu Ghraib, or something like it, was inevitable.

Around the Pentagon, they are calling the Abu Ghraib soldiers the six morons who lost the war, but what does it say about our efforts in Iraq if six soldiers can derail all our efforts? How is that possible? Despite our leadership's apparent confidence, this must mean that the path to success was a narrow one with very little room for error.

If a luxury liner sinks because six drunks are screwing around on the shuffle board deck, perhaps the liner was not very well designed.

Blogspot and the Mac

2004-04-19T22:42:00.000-04:00

I was tinkering with my layout and at some point, the page started crashing IE 5.2 on the Mac. I'm a fairly experienced CSS hacker, and it took me over an hour to debug this problem. I wonder how users who have no CSS knowledge manage to change their layout. Perhaps they just don't know when they crash on the Mac.

Oil Executives Met to Plan War in Iraq

2004-04-18T22:29:00.000-04:00

So, the Saudi ambassador was informed about the decision to go to war with Iraq before the United States' Secretary of State was told? Isn't the Secretary of State responsible for communicating with foreign governments?

Of course he is, but this was a special case, because the Saudi ambassador was being treated more as a representative of an oil company than as a representative of a nation, and the US President and Vice President were representing major American oil interests, rather than the American people. This was a corporate meeting.

You know, I'm beginning to wonder if the Saudi ambassador is one of the people on Cheney's energy task force list - it would explain why he is holding that list so close.

Gay Marriage

2004-04-18T20:43:00.000-04:00

Or, what are the right wingers defending?

I think I finally figured our what the folks who oppose gay marriage are resisting, and it is not gays. Gays are incidental to their objection.

The resistance, rather, is to the finalization of the equality of husband and wife in straight marriage.

Already, man and wife are pretty much identical from a legal point of view. Are there many legal differences in any states? The 20th century radically changed marriage in the United States, and primarily that has meant the diminishment of the power and rights of the husband.

But there is still an inherent asymmetry in the heterosexual marriage, so that culturally quite a few people believe that the roles of "husband" and "wife" are quite different, even if their legal standing is the same. If gays are allowed to marry, however, then who is the "husband" and who is the "wife?" Who is the patriarch? Who "wears the pants" in this family? Gay marriage gives a model of an equal marriage to a society that resists it.

That is why they say that marriage is threatened. To them, marriage is still about the power of a man over his family. Gay marriage threatens this by eliminating the roles of "husband" and "wife."

Why the name?

2004-04-18T20:24:00.000-04:00

Shortly after 9/11, I started seeing flags all over the place. This was, for the most part a good thing, but sometimes, I'd see a flag in an ironic place, or that had been left draped on a building in such a way that it grew tattered. The flag, after all, is a symbol, and where we place the flag is supposed to indicate our feelings about our country.

The flag pictured to the left was hanging in my local grocery store, where it stayed for over a year and a half. I titled the picture "Misplaced Patriotism," and have since used "Misplaced Patriot" as my moniker when commenting on other blogs.

This is all by way of explaining why I chose the name "Misplaced Patriot."

Welcome

2004-04-18T19:56:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Misplaced Patriot. I've been posting occasionally to the comments of other blogs, but I thought I'd add some thoughts occasionally here. I tend to cover politics, but may occasionally post about movies and culture in general.