JoJo's Blog- Peek into my Life

Week 13 Last Blog

The last blog has arrived because the semester is coming to an end. Before I get into the main subject of this blog I would like to answer some of the questions we were asked to think about when we left class today. The questions were: What was your favorite book and why? What book did you dislike most and why? What did you learn? Here are my responses. The book I enjoyed reading most was “Linked”. It has many interesting random facts that were tied together very nicely. Even though there were some examples that I found less comprehensible, in a whole it was entertaining as well as educational. The book I liked least was probably “Digital Ground”. It also brought up many different aspects of the world but failed to do so in a comprehensible manner. What made it a difficult read was how after reading each page the underlying message was hidden behind all the philosophical examples. I learned so much from the class it is hard to pinpoint one in particular but an important one was the ubiquity of networks.
We have been reading about game theories in my political science course. The only ones we discussed were the more interesting ones: Prisoner’s Dilemma and Stag Hunt. I understood stag hunt but was confused before with the explanation of Prisoner’s Dilemma what I read in “Smart Mobs” cleared it all up. What I get out of it is that individuals are better off picking the suboptimal choice because it guarantees them something. In both games if a person assumes the other is going to do what would be in their best interest as a whole they face the chance that they are wrong and that would leave them with the least optimal result. For example, with the Stag Hunt theory the optimal choice would be to catch the stag but it relies on the cooperation of both hunters. When the rabbit appears there is a chance that the other hunter will take his eye off the deer. The suboptimal choice guarantees food, while aiming for the optimal choice may actually result in the least optimal choice which is having neither the deer nor the rabbit. The suboptimal choice is sort of pessimistic or better yet realistic making it the most acceptable.
Last year in my political science course that dealt with lobbying and interest groups the free rider problem came up. The free rider problem is that everyone wants the benefits from the public goods but not everyone contributes. It results in a combination of competition and selfishness that leads to the public goods not being utilized to the fullest potential because with few contributing it is bound to become scarce. Many applications were mentioned as displaying this problem. One example was how Napster users downloaded music but the majority did not bother to share their own files. The only way it seems that this problem can be addressed is if the applications no longer allow people to have the option of free riding. A standard has to be made so that those benefiting also contribute and loopholes cannot exist.