Mating Game

This is what I found in it's entirety...

Why do we give gifts during courtship, and what makes a good gift? In 2005, University College London mathematicians Peter D. Sozou and Robert M. Seymour modeled the question with a game. The male begins by offering one of three gifts — valuable, extravagant, or cheap — depending on how attractive he finds the female. After he offers the gift, she decides whether to accept it and mate with him. Afterward, he decides whether to stay with her or seek another partner.

Each is trying to judge the intentions of the other. She must decide whether he wants a serious relationship or only a brief encounter, and he must decide whether she’s really attracted to him or only wants the gift.

According to the courtship game, the most successful strategy for the male is to offer an “extravagant” gift that’s costly to him but intrinsically worthless to the female. This tells the female that he has resources and values her highly, but it protects him from coy fortune-hunters.

“By being costly to the male, the gift acts as a credible signal of his intentions or quality,” write Sozou and Seymour. “At the same time, its lack of intrinsic value to the female serves to deter a ‘gold-digger’, who has no intention of mating with the male, from accepting the gift. In this way, an economically inefficient gift enables mutually suitable partners to be matched.”

(Peter D. Sozou and Robert M. Seymour, “Costly But Worthless Gifts Facilitate Courtship,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 272, 1877–1884, July 26, 2005.)

Oh ffs. Behaviour in a game setting is not the same as behaviour in real life.

This is back to what we were talking about the other day about researchers and human behaviour. How about a well-chosen gift that shows the potential partner is paying attention to what their prospective mate likes and enjoys? Or how about feeling really fucking uncomfortable if someone you barely know starts buying you expensive gifts?

Who the fuck makes relationship decisions based on gifts anyway?

Did you see the dates? Proceedings of the Royal Society 1877-1884.

125 years later...

I assumed they were volume numbers or something because of the 2005 date, my bad.

as for the above - what a nasty thing to do!

Yes it is, wish I'd thought of it.

Fuckin' A.

Given she ended up having to go to court to try and get her name removed from the registration, it's a pretty dickish move to do to someone. No reason is given for why he decided to take such revenge, other than that she broke up with him.

During the nearly three-year ordeal, Ms Fitzgerald was unable to remove her name from the registration and was forced into court to address the growing fines.
Finally, with the help of an attorney, she has filed a counter lawsuit asking the court to find she was not the owner of the car and therefore not liable for the parking tickets.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2238891/Woman-gets-105k-parking-fines-ex-boyfriend-parks-car-airport-3-years.html#ixzz497DtBX9v


A pretty shitty thing to do to an unemployed single mother.

DanaC;960528 wrote:

Given she ended up having to go to court to try and get her name removed from the registration, it's a pretty dickish move to do to someone. No reason is given for why he decided to take such revenge, other than that she broke up with him.




Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2238891/Woman-gets-105k-parking-fines-ex-boyfriend-parks-car-airport-3-years.html#ixzz497DtBX9v


A pretty shitty thing to do to an unemployed single mother.

It's like that song by Carrie Underwear (I guess it's her, all those Hats & Fluff Kuntry "singers" are the same) about tearing the shit out of her bf's truck.

Get a grip, chick. Leave him. Live well as revenge, instead.

But, you know...class. It ain't just a room in a school. :p:

Hi im!

It's clever, and I appreciate the creativity that went into it, but it shows a lack of wisdom, judgement, empathy, class, and decency that he went forward with the idea after thinking of it. In fact, I bet somebody else came up with the idea, because I'd expect a creative mind to have more good judgement.

We have no idea what went on prior to this. It may have been perfectly fitting.

Also, does anyone actually think he was going for wisdom, judgement, empathy, class, or decency? He couldn't have given us a definition of any of those words when this went down.

Of course it was an illogical act, but, at that time there was no place for logic in the man's actions. There will be plenty of room in his wallet for logic, though.

But, that's later.

The thing is, he had to be very methodical and patient with this. He had to fill out forms and stuff. It wasn't a heat of the moment kind of thing.

The very definition of premeditated.

Gravdigr;960554 wrote:

We have no idea what went on prior to this. It may have been perfectly fitting.

or it may not.

Also, does anyone actually think he was going for wisdom, judgement, empathy, class, or decency? He couldn't have given us a definition of any of those words when this went down.

Of course it was an illogical act, but, at that time there was no place for logic in the man's actions. There will be plenty of room in his wallet for logic, though.

But, that's later.

So, you've already come to a fair few conclusions about his relationship with this woman, and whether or not she is likely to have deserved this vengeful act based on no idea what went on prior to this act. You've deduced that she was bleeding that wallet of his and that he'll be financially better off without her. For alll we know he could have been leeching off her welfare benefits and bleeding her dry.

Or not - we don't know. The only thing we do 'know'* is that this man engaged in an act of vengeance after the woman ended their relationship.







*I say know, but we only have the news article to speak to the fact that she broke up with him.

You must admit it was damn clever, though. :D

Seems to me she was aware of the situation long before it got to a fortune, and could have done things to stop it. In the beginning she could have paid the small fine and sold the car. Or at least take the plates and numbers off it.



But remember, it doesn't have to be an invading army to hang you with your diary.

DanaC;960478 wrote:

Oh ffs. Behaviour in a game setting is not the same as behaviour in real life.

This is back to what we were talking about the other day about researchers and human behaviour. How about a well-chosen gift that shows the potential partner is paying attention to what their prospective mate likes and enjoys? Or how about feeling really fucking uncomfortable if someone you barely know starts buying you expensive gifts?

Who the fuck makes relationship decisions based on gifts anyway?

Yeah. They are way off the mark here. How about the silly gag gift to check for a sense of humor?

They're off the mark by who's standards? For two mathematicians in 1880 UK, it was probably normal everyday logic.

DanaC;960559 wrote:

or it may not.



So, you've already come to a fair few conclusions about his relationship with this woman, and whether or not she is likely to have deserved this vengeful act based on no idea what went on prior to this act. You've deduced that she was bleeding that wallet of his and that he'll be financially better off without her. For alll we know he could have been leeching off her welfare benefits and bleeding her dry.

Or not - we don't know. The only thing we do 'know'* is that this man engaged in an act of vengeance after the woman ended their relationship.







*I say know, but we only have the news article to speak to the fact that she broke up with him.

Uh, no. What you've done here, perfessor, is jumped head first into a head-deep Pit of Wrong.

You've come to a conclusion or two yourself here.

What I "deduced" (your word, I didn't deduce anything, and your deduction was lacking in this case) is that someone is going to have to pay those parking tickets. That someone is more than likely going to be the person who parked the car. That's the guy, if you're still confused. After he pays those fines, pays some more fines and hires a lawyer and goes to jail, there's going to be a lot of room in his wallet. By that I mean he's not going to have a lot of money. Left in his wallet. From paying the fines.

Now, I've got to go do the today in history thing, and I'm afraid I'll look funny walking over there, so, if you wouldn't mind taking your Rocket Dog boots out of my ass, that would be lovely.

Please/Thank you.

Ticket writer upon seeing the car each day: "I'm shocked. Shocked! that this car is still parked here. I gave them a ticket yesterday. Why didn't they move it? I guess I have to write another ticket so they will move it."

The airport has never heard of a tow truck? Give them like 6 tickets and then tow the fucker.

The airport shouldn't be rewarded for their boneheaded policy by awarding them any money.

Actually, I retract the posts above. Both of these people belong on Jerry Springer.

Here's the real story.

Preveau [boyfreind] bought the car from [girlfriend] Fitzgerald’s uncle, who signed the title of the car over to Fitzgerald. Preveau worked at O’Hare and drove the car to work regularly, according to the suit. On Nov. 17, 2009, it said, the car was ticketed for the first time for being an abandoned vehicle, but wasn’t removed until the city towed it in October 2012, nearly three years later.

Fitzgerald said in April that she had been unable to access the car because it was in an employee lot. She also said she had given her spare set of keys to Preveau when he lost his.

Tickets went beyond the car being abandoned in the lot. Fitzgerald was also ticketed multiple times for improperly tinted windows, not having the proper city sticker, expired plates or registration, cracked or missing windows and broken lamps, according to the lawsuit.

In all, 678 tickets were placed on the car without it ever being towed, according to the complaint.

While the vehicle in the O’Hare lot accrued more than $100,000 in parking tickets, Fitzgerald also had several thousand dollars of parking violations on another vehicle that was in her name, Drew said.

She ended up settling with the city for around $4k.

Gravdigr;960624 wrote:

Uh, no. What you've done here, perfessor, is jumped head first into a head-deep Pit of Wrong.

You've come to a conclusion or two yourself here.

What I "deduced" (your word, I didn't deduce anything, and your deduction was lacking in this case) is that someone is going to have to pay those parking tickets. That someone is more than likely going to be the person who parked the car. That's the guy, if you're still confused. After he pays those fines, pays some more fines and hires a lawyer and goes to jail, there's going to be a lot of room in his wallet. By that I mean he's not going to have a lot of money. Left in his wallet. From paying the fines.

Now, I've got to go do the today in history thing, and I'm afraid I'll look funny walking over there, so, if you wouldn't mind taking your Rocket Dog boots out of my ass, that would be lovely.

Please/Thank you.

Grav! I totally misread your post, my bad :P

No worries. I'm already half-drunk, so, in about two hours, it never happened.

:beer: