Daily Placebo: Mathematicians Claim To Solve Party Problem; Only Reveal That They Have No Idea What Happens At Parties.

Alright, fine, its just the article that mentions parties, the math guys are talking about cake. They claim to have a new and better way to divide something up. Basically you give everyone half of what they "value most" and continue to value and divide the cake in that fashion. I really hope I'm missing something

First off it relies on numerically quantifying desire, or I spose being able to prioritize your needs. Secondly, what happens if two parties want some mutually inclusive portion? Maybe someone likes to look at cakes cause they're pretty and I like the moist center. Does looking at half a cake still provide half the aesthetic appeal they originally desired?

Someone likes the flowers on top of the cake, while I value the entire cake (lets say for its roundness or weight) do they get half the flowers while I get half the cake? (everything they got and half a cake) And then we go on to divide the remaining flowerless half of the cake, right?

Or if some valuable attribute is intertwined with another? Sometimes its infeasible to separate real elements. I just want the butter from the cake and nothing else, that'll pretty much just ruin it for everyone else, if you could even find a way to appease me.

What if I wanted to be the only one with a flower because I wanted to feel special, or corner the flower market and sell my property at high value because of its small supply? Giving me half the flowers gives me zero bargaining position.

Finally this isn't actually a means for cutting the cake into the necessary portions, who's to say that their flowers won't have some of my frosting on them by mistake? If we could cut perfect pieces, then everyone would get an physical equal share. But we can't and this system is supposed to fix that problem by distributing pieces of varying content; but it doesn't propose any method for ensuring precision of allocation.

What if what I value most is screwing the other people out of their desires? (because it usually is)

Mostly, by the end of all this rigamarole, no one has any interest left in cake.

Alright, the cake is just a metaphor that I'm beating to death. This is supposed to be sued to divide anything up. How about I take the Solomon route and talk about a child custody hearing? Obviously we're not cutting up children; we could divide his time though. But what if a parent's motivation is to provide a stable environment, or to start a new life? Again half of what they want is not valuable to them.

The article mentions that this concept could be used in dividing land or water, but how can we expect this to apply when there are so many reasons it might fail? The premise might succeed when used on parallel concepts, but people can place value in so many things that you might never be comparing apples to apples.