LESSWRONG

Despite dictatorships being the only strategyproof mechanisms in general, more interesting strategyproof mechanisms exist for specialized se

In which the limits of dominant-strategy implementation are explored. The Gibbard-Satterthwaite dictatorship theorem for unrestricted prefer

In which the Revelation Principle is introduced, showing all mechanisms can be reduced to incentive compatible mechanisms. With this insight

tl;dr Mechanism design studies how to design incentives for fun and profit. A puzzle about whether or not to paint a room is posed. A modeli

Mechanism design is the theory of how to construct institutions for strategic agents, spanning applications like voting systems, school admi

Rereading Hofstadter's essays on superrationality prompted me to wonder what strategies superrational agents would want to commit to in asym

Mark Eichenlaub posted a great little case-study about the difficulty of updating beliefs, even over trivial matters like the slope of a bas

Inspired by Konkvistador's comment Posts titled "Rational ___-ing" or "A Rational Approach to ____" induce groans among a sizeable conting

Today's post, Third Alternatives for Afterlife-ism was originally published on May 8, 2007. A summary (from the LW wiki): One source of hope

Today's post, The Third Alternative was originally published on May 6, 2007. A summary (from the LW wiki): People justify Noble Lies by poin