I was once at a talk by Barry O'Neal (UCLA Polisci) at IAS Princeton, and Eric Maskin was in the audience. Eric had just won the economics Nobel. Barry asked him whether he would be just as pleased if he had won secretly, with no public announcement. Eric said no of course not. The Barry asked: what if everyone knew privately but didn't know that anyone else knew. Again Eric thought this would be less satisfying.
I think common knowledge is important in the bestowing of honor. This is a bit more subtle, a bit harder to understand, than fear. It seems to matter to us that it is commonly known that we were honored.
That is very interesting. Great anecdote! My interpretation would be that, in such situatons, if you think of Binmore's notion of "social indices" as way to reflect social respect, the selection of a given equilibrium with specific social indices is a coordination game. Hence common knowledge plays a role again here.
Yes something like this would work analytically. But I still feel it's missing something. We seem to want common knowledge of honor even if we think people will be jealous!
Right, I guess jealousy will typically be private knowledge, but you may think that it may increase with common knowledge of the honour. Food for thoughts indeed.
I was once at a talk by Barry O'Neal (UCLA Polisci) at IAS Princeton, and Eric Maskin was in the audience. Eric had just won the economics Nobel. Barry asked him whether he would be just as pleased if he had won secretly, with no public announcement. Eric said no of course not. The Barry asked: what if everyone knew privately but didn't know that anyone else knew. Again Eric thought this would be less satisfying.
I think common knowledge is important in the bestowing of honor. This is a bit more subtle, a bit harder to understand, than fear. It seems to matter to us that it is commonly known that we were honored.
That is very interesting. Great anecdote! My interpretation would be that, in such situatons, if you think of Binmore's notion of "social indices" as way to reflect social respect, the selection of a given equilibrium with specific social indices is a coordination game. Hence common knowledge plays a role again here.
Yes something like this would work analytically. But I still feel it's missing something. We seem to want common knowledge of honor even if we think people will be jealous!
Right, I guess jealousy will typically be private knowledge, but you may think that it may increase with common knowledge of the honour. Food for thoughts indeed.