BelKor has allegedly won Netflix Prize despite being second on the leaderboard

Re:BelKor has allegedly won Netflix Prize despite being seco... by davidw on Monday July 27, 2009 @10:16AM (#725854)

I wrote contest, not knowledge. The knowledge is external to the contest. Some contests, like this one, have lots of external benefits to the top guys, but "winner takes all contest" in the abstract sense seems to me to be a zero sum game, so I stand by what I said: it's generally better to sink your time into something where the "external stuff" is actually the main benefit.

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Re:BelKor has allegedly won Netflix Prize despite being seco... by mhb on Monday July 27, 2009 @11:08AM (#725970)

The term "zero sum" does not really make sense here. Netflix obviously thinks they're getting more than what they're spending on the contest and the winning team obviously thinks they're receiving more than what they've invested. So between those two parties, there is a net gain as is the case in most voluntary transactions.

At best, what you're saying is that other competitors have wasted their time, but I don't think that's true either.

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Re:BelKor has allegedly won Netflix Prize despite being seco... by davidw on Monday July 27, 2009 @11:33AM (#726012)

> Netflix ... here

For the third time: I am talking about the abstract case, not 'here', and I am talking about the point of view of the competitors, not the entity running the contest.

> At best, what you're saying is that other competitors have wasted their time, but I don't think that's true either.

They haven't won anything, and unless there are externalities, they have wasted their time. How can they not have? They received nothing.

So, what I said is true: the contest is a "zero" or "fixed" sum game, and the other competitors gain only through externalities. You can downmod that all you like, but this more or less concurs with the definition of "zero sum game" in wikipedia.

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Re:BelKor has allegedly won Netflix Prize despite being seco... by mhb on Monday July 27, 2009 @12:26PM (#726127)

The reason you are having to dogmatically repeat your idiosyncratic use of the term "zero sum" is that you are using it in such a narrow sense that it adds nothing to what you are saying. A typical example of a zero sum game is a futures contract which is contrasted with a non-zero sum game like stock investing.

If you exclude externalities like all parties in a transaction being happier with the outcome or placing present value on some possible future outcome, then there is no net positive sum game.

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Re:BelKor has allegedly won Netflix Prize despite being seco... by davidw on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:09PM (#726344)

My view is that a lot of contest type things are not a good deal for the participants, and that it's a good idea to recognize that, going in. If there are external benefits, well, then it may be worth it. Otherwise, you're probably better off investing your time in something that's positive sum, such as, say, a startup. I would have thought that people here would get that.

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