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Game Theory (2007)
31–40 of 45 posts
Re: Game Theory (2007)
#32Is there any real world usage of game theory for ordinary people?
I’m a natural optimist, and game theory gave me a better grounding in thinking through and internalizing why things ARE, not just what they can or should be.
One analogy is shifting from a blame culture — why did that one person do that thing? — to a blameless postmortem: what is it about this system of individual actions that leads to this outcome? How did we get here? What mechanisms and incentives would repeat it? What would change it?
Re: Game Theory (2007)
#33To see Game Theory from a 'cooperation' point of view, check out the landmark book, The Evolution of Cooperation [1] by Robert Axelrod. Axelrod's work was also summarized in The Selfish Gene . (And more recently, in Behave , by Sapolsky.) From the abstract: "We assume that, in a world ruled by natural selection, selfishness pays. So why cooperate? In The Evolution of Cooperation, political scientist Robert Axelrod se…
Is this related in any way to the ideas Ayn Rand laid out with Objectivism?
Re: Game Theory (2007)
#34To see Game Theory from a 'cooperation' point of view, check out the landmark book, The Evolution of Cooperation [1] by Robert Axelrod. Axelrod's work was also summarized in The Selfish Gene . (And more recently, in Behave , by Sapolsky.) From the abstract: "We assume that, in a world ruled by natural selection, selfishness pays. So why cooperate? In The Evolution of Cooperation, political scientist Robert Axelrod se…
I would highly recommend watching the mathematician Hannah Frys documentary called the joy of winning (link below). It has interviews from a wide variety of academics and overall a fun way to understand game theory. The program you mentioned tit for tat is also mentioned in there as the optimal way to get what you want and why pure selfishness dosnt work. It’s a great investment of time. For less than a hour you get a lot and besides test the waters if you want to dive deeper.
https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Winning-Catherine-Gale/dp/B07XHPW...
Re: Game Theory (2007)
#35Is there any real world usage of game theory for ordinary people?
Optimal auctions, and mechanism design in general (ie screening problems) is a very useful application of game theory. But caution: game theory is not about winning games, but finding equilibria. You might be more interested in behavioral game theory (how people learn the games, k-level thinking etc) if you want to get a leg up.
"Game theory is not about winning games, but finding equilibria."
This. However, if you understand the equilibrium for some behaviour, you can understand what would it take to change the behaviour.
I use this in my startup where we create an equilibrium for dentists to provide reliable dental care. And, it actually works.
Re: Game Theory (2007)
#36To see Game Theory from a 'cooperation' point of view, check out the landmark book, The Evolution of Cooperation [1] by Robert Axelrod. Axelrod's work was also summarized in The Selfish Gene . (And more recently, in Behave , by Sapolsky.) From the abstract: "We assume that, in a world ruled by natural selection, selfishness pays. So why cooperate? In The Evolution of Cooperation, political scientist Robert Axelrod se…
Is this related in any way to the ideas Ayn Rand laid out with Objectivism?
Not really. Perhaps if you squint really, really hard?
Re: Game Theory (2007)
#37To see Game Theory from a 'cooperation' point of view, check out the landmark book, The Evolution of Cooperation [1] by Robert Axelrod. Axelrod's work was also summarized in The Selfish Gene . (And more recently, in Behave , by Sapolsky.) From the abstract: "We assume that, in a world ruled by natural selection, selfishness pays. So why cooperate? In The Evolution of Cooperation, political scientist Robert Axelrod se…
I would highly recommend watching the mathematician Hannah Frys documentary called the joy of winning (link below). It has interviews from a wide variety of academics and overall a fun way to understand game theory. The program you mentioned tit for tat is also mentioned in there as the optimal way to get what you want and why pure selfishness dosnt work. It’s a great investment of time. For less than a hour you get…
>The program you mentioned tit for tat is also mentioned in there as the optimal way to get what you want and why pure selfishness dosnt work.
I've never been a fan of this framing. Cooperation can be viewed selfishly when the cooperation occurs because of well informed and strategic parties in the cooperation. A great example of this in real life are cartels. Cartels are only cooperative to the point where it optimizes a stable level/equilibrium of selfishness. Most cartels would happily disband and pull all the gains but the participants realize their minimal cooperation results in the best outcomes for themselves.
I guess the main issue I have with this boils down to the underlying intent and framing of intent. Ultimately, the intent is still driven entirely by selfishness, it's just selfishness with strategy and realizing that sometimes taking everything you can from everyone won't always navigate you to your selfish goal-state.
Perhaps that's what you mean here by "pure" selfishness not working. I'd argue that pure selfishness is the intent to only do what's minimally required for others for self-gain. You can be strategic or instrategic about it.
Something like "altruistic" cooperation on the other hand creates cooperation for the sake of cooperation alone (building trust, social cohesion, stability for more people). There may be little or nothing to gain for the cooperation for some participants, perhaps even some lose by participating (knowingly or unknowingly), but the cooperation as whole benefits and those benefits are worth the costs to the participants. The cooperation may exist to help some other party with no expectation of reciprocation. I think of it like a potluck dinner: everyone brings a dish and everyone gets to eat and have a good time. Some may not bring a dish and that's fine, they still eat and gain and others know that's the case, meanwhile some may fix elaborate dishes, expensive in terms of preparation time/complexity and/or ingredients and they do so knowing they're going over and above and won't necessarily be rewarded (perhaps a compliment) but they do so anyways because they wish to share the dish or experience with others.
Re: Game Theory (2007)
#38Yo that's my hacker news screen name :D
Re: Game Theory (2007)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes! Very much! I took a course of evolutionary game theory, which opened up my eyes and changed the way I think. So much that I'd recommend (evolutionary) game theory for everyone. It's relevant in every day life: human interaction often fits the schema of the prisoner's dilemma, the signalling game or the chicken game. That tit-for-tat is the optimal strategy in iterated prisoner's dilemmata matches intuition about…
> That tit-for-tat is the optimal strategy in iterated prisoner's dilemmata matches intuition about human cooperation. It certainly doesn't match my intuition because it's a quite mechanistic view of things. But speaking in mathematical terms, I have the suspicion that it's a solution for a very specific situation that generalizes with negative side-effects to social life. In any case, I've read that governments use…
I agree, there are plenty of social scenarios that aren't congruent to iterated prisoner's dilemma.
E.g. if you implement tit-for-tat in your marriage, you're gonna have a bad time.
Re: Game Theory (2007)
#40To see Game Theory from a 'cooperation' point of view, check out the landmark book, The Evolution of Cooperation [1] by Robert Axelrod. Axelrod's work was also summarized in The Selfish Gene . (And more recently, in Behave , by Sapolsky.) From the abstract: "We assume that, in a world ruled by natural selection, selfishness pays. So why cooperate? In The Evolution of Cooperation, political scientist Robert Axelrod se…
Is this related in any way to the ideas Ayn Rand laid out with Objectivism?
No, not at all. It's about how it is strategically better for your own goals to work with others.