What is your take on this possibly philosophical question ?

WARNING : This is quite an earful, so turn back now if you're not interested in reading few paragraphs for the sake of debate.

My friend and I have kept a discussion up for the past two days about a problem we had last week. The two of us and two guests were playing video games together. So four people in total. Three of us wanted to play one game, but one ( my friend ) wanted to play another. We wanted to split up our playing time so that both parties played their favorite game, but we never agreed on how. Here are the two theoretical solutions we had established :

My solution :

Since I believe in complete democracy, I decided that everyone's favorite game should count as a vote. Any one person's ' vote ' is of equal value to that of another's. Every vote counts for one match in that game. So three matches in our game, one in my friend's. 

My friend's solution :

My friend thought this was unfair because he had to wait three whole matches for the satisfaction of playing his favorite game, while we only have to wait one match and we have the satisfaction of playing three of ours in a row. He believed that since there were only two options, we should split our playing time equally. Two matches in our game, two in his. That means every individual player gets the same number of matches in their favorite game as any other player.

His solution is difficult to respond to, isn't it ? It's total equality.

So I took out the pencil and paper.

My data :

After some conversation, the four of us agreed that, while playing your favorite game gives you a positive feeling, playing the other party's game doesn't give you a negative feeling -- just a neutral feeling. As in :  ' whatever, I'm just passing the time '. So taking that into account, I tried to sum up the amount of happiness each solution gave you into a point system. One match in your favorite game gives you individually a +1 happiness point. One match in the other game gives you individually +0 happiness points. Here's the raw data comparison of the happiness points of both solutions. Keep in mind that party one is me and the two guests, while party two is my friend. You can skip this section and move on to the next if you're not interested in the methods I used to get my numbers.

Data : 

My solution

GAME ONE : Party one's favorite game

Party one : +3 points

Party two : +0 points

GAME TWO : Party one's favorite game

Party one : +3 points

Party two : +0 points

GAME THREE : Party one's favorite game

Party one : +3 points

Party two : +0 points

GAME FOUR : Party two's favorite game

Party one : +0 points

Party two : +1 point

TOTAL NUMBER OF GROUP HAPPINESS POINTS GAINED : 10

My friend's solution

GAME ONE : Party one's favorite game

Party one : +3 points

Party two : +0 points

GAME TWO : Party two's favorite game

Party one : +0 points

Party two : +1 point

GAME THREE : Party one's favorite game

Party one : +3 points

Party two : +0 points

GAME FOUR : Party two's favorite game

Party one : +0 points

Party two : +1 point

TOTAL NUMBER OF GROUP HAPPINESS POINTS GAINED : 8

The debate that followed : 

Now, I couldn't prove that my solution was as equal as his, but with this data I could prove that my solution made the group happier as a whole. My solution gave the four of us a total gain of 10 points, while his only gave a gain of 8. I showed him the numbers and he refused to change his mind. He said that his solution valued everyone's happiness equally, whereas mine took away from his happiness to increase ours. And here is how I responded : I told my friend, no, that's not true. If you look at the numbers, my solution only decreases your happiness by one point. However, with that one single point it increases the happiness of us three by one each, a total of three. That's why my solution gives two more total points than yours. You don't value everyone's happiness equally, because if you did then you would be willing to sacrifice one point of your own if it meant that three more were to be gained by others. Instead, you only value the equality of the sums of happiness gained by each individual, even if that means taking away potential happiness points from others.

This is why I think my solution is better. The three of us are all in agreement that it trumps my friend's but what do you think ?

Also here's a " TLDR " for anyone who doesn't want to read that long text : There are four people playing video games together. Three people want to play game one, but one person wants to play game two. Which system is fairer : three matches in game one, then one match in game two -- or two matches in game one, two matches in game two ?

Put down the video games. Everyone just go bowling...

Fine, but of course we'll have to calculate precisely how much happiness each color of bowling ball will generate per roll.

There's quite a lot going on here, economically speaking.  We could go into lots of details (why is it that people don't want to "wait" to play their favorite game, and how much is that worth?  is the "payoff" of playing a game less if you've played a similar game before?   Is it constant in every situation?  Is it certain in every situation. or a little bit random?  Is "group happiness" properly the sum of the "individual happiness" values?   etc, etc) ,  but more broadly speaking....

The sort of thinking you engage in the paragraph "My Data"  is exactly where you start thinking like an economist.   This is a great thing!  If everyone can ratify the models you make, and the things you're trying to maximize  (eg. "the four of us agreed that, while playing your favorite game gives you a positive feeling, playing the other party's game doesn't give you a negative feeling -- just a neutral feeling"), then that's a pretty good place to be in!   The real world never works out quite so neat...

At the end, you fundamental dispute is a centuries old fundamental difference of opinion in economic philosophy - most western / capitalist / global-liberal market democracies would tend to agree with you, holding the maxim "maximize global wealth as a sum of individual "happiness" under a system where every action is voluntary", whereas socialist, social justice, or communist economics either heavily mediate or entirely replace this criterion with some kind of "fairness" goal.

In general, in history, the "fairness" goal added has not been explicit, quantitative, democratically ratified, and logically reasoned out in a mathematical way, when it has been held as a principle of economic mechanism design.

This is a real shame, and I hope one day working economists will rectify this - even ignoring politics it's caused a rift in the field so deep that not everyone is allowed to speak at every conference....  You and your friends might try to rectify it, as well:  try writing down some equations which would describe the "fairness" of a particular "point" distribution, and then decide somehow (with equations) how to maximize both "fairness" and "total points" at the same time (in other words, find a function J(fairness, total points) that you want to maximize!)

If you do it right, there is either a unique answer for determining game choice that everyone likes (or dislikes!) equally - or there are a set of "just as good" answers and no one cares about which one you pick.   Can you "do it right", after some amount of collective soul-searching?

If it is not possible to do it right, you must either find new friends, or conquer the old ones with superior firepower and subjugate them.  (y)   Good Luck.

Yes, this is what me and my friend decided on after some long discussion. We conceded that, regardless of the ' happiness counter ', neither solution was necessarily better than the other because they both favored differing values, and that in order to find an ultimate solution we needed to meet in the middle.

My friend used a lot of money analogies in his arguments, but I don't believe that they always apply because money in real life is different from happiness in a game. In real life, money is not everything, and whether or not you make a lot of money doesn't always matter because there are other ways of finding happiness. But when you're playing a game, happiness is all you can possibly get out of it. Whether or not you leave the game feeling happy is what ultimately decides whether that time was spent well or not.

I'm sure that there's a better analogy than a video game to represent these ideas as they relate to the real world and economy, anyways, because there's obviously something here.

Thank you very much for your input.

🤣 so did bowl yet?

Yeah

A parent's solution - remove item of conflict.

Another possible solution - Everyone agree to play single-player video games, then each person can play the game that he wants to play...