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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   2928 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 3, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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You’re waiting at a bus station and there’s a big queue beside you at the next stop. Your bus pulls up and the big queue realises they’ve been waiting at the wrong stop the whole time and shuffle over.

In this situation are you in the right to take your place at the head of the new queue and reap the rewards for your good judgment or should you respect the misdirected queue and move to the back?

I haven't lived in England in over a decade now so any respect for bus stop queues has atrophied. I regularly "jump queue" just by standing closer to the kerbcurb than the other aspiring passengers, thus reaping the rewards for my lower risk aversion.

That's almost a prisoner's dilemma, but I suppose technically counts as Chicken. You're doing a (very slightly) negative sum interaction in order to siphon zero sum rewards away from other people. Nash equilibrium, everyone does this and ends up worse off than if they just respected the queue. (Although I suppose queues themselves are a bit of a prisoner's dilemma with respect to arrival time)

Are they worse off? Queues are certainly good in some situations but I'm not sure that holds true for bus stops.

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