Schelling Points, Rights, and Game Theory--Part I

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

Part I

I thought I'd write a brief piece on a very interesting angle on "rights,"
especially given the discussion recently about rights of privacy,
children's rights, parent's rights, the role of schools, gun rights, and so
on.

This also shows the role of game theory, imperfect as it is. (I mention
"imperfect" because some have mentioned that game theory does not explain
things  perfectly...of course not.)

Here's a simple example of what a Schelling point is:

Alice and Bob decide to meet on Friday in the Washington, D.C. area. They
forget to say when and where. Is it hopeless? Can they find each other?

Given the millions of places they could be, and the hundreds or more of
time-slices to consider, e.g. "10:23 a.m., 345 Crestwood Drive, Arlington,"
how could they ever meet?

Well, there are certain "mutually more probable" times and locations.
Absent any time specification, "noon" is what each will expect the other to
also think of. (Followed perhaps by 6 p.m., and other on-the-hour times.)
And absent any location specification, there's a short list of likely
places: NSA headquarters (after all, Alice and Bob are well-known there),
in front of the White House, at the base of the Washington Monument, at the
entrance to the Air and Space Museum, on the steps of the Supreme Court,
etc.

I'd say they have about a 10% chance of finding each other, absent any
prearrangement. (In smaller cities, the probabilities are even higher, as
the central plaza is a major Schelling point for such encounters.)

The game theorist Richard Schelling developed this notion, circa about
1960. There are analyses based on "algorithmic information theory," a la
Chaitin and Kolmogorov, which I find appealing, to wit: a Schelling point
has a shorter "description" in terms of mutually-known building blocks than
non-Schelling points. Thus, "noon in front of the White House" has a
shorter description, or is more "compressible," than is "10:23 a.m., 345
Crestwood Drive, Arlington." (Don't think in terms of just ASCII
characters, but in terms of readily recallable building blocks.)

How does this relate to rights?

This is more controversial, and less-developed. David Friedman gave me a
paper he's done on this..."Schelling points" are a Schelling point between
us, as it were.

Part II will get into this briefly.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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