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Comment by tolmasky | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised no rich student ever just offered ahead of the tally that they'd pay everyone $x if no one choose 6, where x is more valuable than 4 points. He now has the ability to safely choose 6, and everyone else is paid for their cooperation.

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Well, rich students don't need good grades since they'll just live off their trust fund, I suppose? (or get a job at daddy's hedge fund)

Great, except votes are anonymous.

It doesn't matter because the requirement is NO ONE choose it. There is nothing to gain by selecting 6. The second you are writing 6 down on your paper, you better hope the 4 extra points are worth more to you than $x because you have absolutely invalidated the game, not "maybe" invalidated it.

If x is big enough to trivialize 4 points, I am pretty sure no one would choose it (or at least fell well below 10%). For example, if Richy Rich was in your class and offered $1million to EVERYONE as long as NO ONE chose 2, I am quite certain that even the most selfish actors would not write down 6. If he offered 50 cents than I'm pretty sure some people would. Binary search and you'll know how much a point costs.

(apologies if you commented before my edit)

Have I? Assuming that it's a large enough class to where there are at least a handful of slots for 6s, and the one rich kid is offering the money so they get the 6, I might choose 6 as well, betting that few enough people will decide to risk it.

The whole point is that the rich kid is offering the reward solely if no other people choose the 6. NOT if its 10%. By choosing the 6, you necessarily lose the money. Thus, you would only do that if the 6 points are more important to you than the reward, since you will absolutely lose the rich kid's reward if you choose it.

But all votes are anonymous, so the rich kid wouldn't know.

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