This is a linkpost for https://arjunpanickssery.substack.com/p/dominant-assurance-contract-experiment?sd=pf
Dominant Assurance Contract Experiment #2: Berkeley House Dinners
5th Jul 2023
7Lao Mein
8jefftk
6jefftk
15Arjun Panickssery
5Thomas Sepulchre
4Arjun Panickssery
1beck stein
1moyamo
1moyamo
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9 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 8:03 PM
Surely running a dollar auction with decision-theory nerds won't result in hurt feelings.
I think the Game Theory thing to do here is to send you $600 ASAP and post evidence of that everywhere I can, but the fact that I came up with a plan to give a random stranger on the internet $600 probably means I am in a scam and therefore I refuse.
1
1That assumes no one values the dinners happening, no? But since they do, there are probably $100+ in additional contributions and you lose your $600.
I liked your first post and I like this second one. I hope your events succeed
Just to clarify:
- Is anyone invited to the weekly dinners (thus you are providing a public good)?
- Or, are the dinners limited to the contributors (thus it is a club good)?
From reading pu1377.dvi (gmu.edu), I believe that dominant assurance contracts work better for club goods
At least in the sense of "you receiving as much money as possible" or "the contract being more likely to succeed", but obviously you may put value on welcoming everyone, and, in general, those two alternative dinners won't be the same.
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As an afterthought at the end of my previous post on dominant assurance contracts, I decided on a whim as I was typing to append a small dominant assurance contract:
I received exactly nine out of the ten funders needed and lost $45.
Now a second attempt, this time in the real world: at Andromeda House we plan to host large weekly dinners on Monday evenings for the local EA/rationality/etc community at our house in Southside Berkeley.
Here’s how it works:
Example: If you live in town and this service would be worth more than $20 per dinner to you and you'd expect to come to three before September, you should pay at least $60, since you either get a service worth more than that amount or you make a 25% return. You could try to free-ride but the fact that my previous contract received just one less than the target number suggests that I'm well-calibrated.
If you don't live in town—or even if you do—you can also idly speculate if you think that I'm unlikely to hit my target and likely to pay out.
You could also just pseudo-donate money without regard to whether you think I'm calibrated just because you think that DACs are cool and should proliferate.