Batman Villains and Cooperation: A Utility Analysis

First, we have to make certain assumptions. Specifically, we need to assign probabilities of capturing Batman and figure out how much these probabilities increase due to the addition of a new cooperating villain. We also need to assign utility values for the Joker for each scenario. Let’s start with utilities.

For not killing Batman, we can obviously assign the Joker a utility of 0.
For capturing Batman on his own, let’s assign the Joker a utility of 10.
For capturing Batman with the help of x other villains, the utility would be 10/x

The last one is sort of tricky. This means that if the Joker cooperates with one other villain (say Two-Face) and together they manage to kill Batman, then the utility for each would be 5. In effect, this means that the villains “split” the utility of 10.

University Economics would’ve been waaaay more fun if we’d been using Batman.

Another talk from TED – this one’s making sense of our morals, specifically cheating and stealing and the factors affect how likely we are to cheat (the fudge factor of the title).

The conclusion about intuition and the difficulty in believing that your own intuition might be wrong is something that definitely rings true for me (as I’m sure Gadsby will attest!)

A series of articles from TIME looking at where the world’s going – the entry on Africa has some good info on trade vs aid:

In 2006, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, foreign investment in Africa reached $48 billion, overtaking foreign aid for the first time. That gap has only widened, reflecting a quadrupling of foreign investment since 2000… War is down. Democracy is up. Inflation and interest rates are in single digits. Terms of trade have improved. Crucially, said Nellor, “growth is taking off.” The IMF puts Africa’s average annual growth for 2004 to ’08 at more than 6% — better than any developed economy — and predicts the continent will buck the global recessionary trend to grow nearly 3.3% this year.

I think the Ecological Intelligence entry is probably the most important though:

But ecological intelligence is ultimately about more than what we buy. It’s also about our ability to accept that we live in an infinitely connected world with finite resources. Goleman highlights the Tibetan community of Sher, where for millenniums, villagers have survived harsh conditions by carefully conserving every resource available to them. The Tibetans think ecologically because they have no other choice. Neither do we. “We once had the luxury to ignore our impacts,” says Goleman. “Not anymore.”

Also slightly scarily:

[Coke] uses 5% of the world’s total sugar crop

That’s something like 7 million tonnes of sugar.

(via kottke)

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.