Game Theory Is Counterintuitive
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Game Theory Is Counterintuitive
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Re: Game Theory Is Counterintuitive
#2One more for your list:
• Shameless self-promotion and "Source" attribution links that all lead to your own YouTube videos will annoy people, but probably get you more traffic.
Re: Game Theory Is Counterintuitive
#3[deleted]
Re: Game Theory Is Counterintuitive
#4These are interesting examples of using game theory to model certain situations but none of these examples show that game theory "tells us" something about the world. In broad strokes, game theory claims to have a descriptive model of human behavior but people very rarely follow the predictions of game theory (and that is even when you're in situations that are simple enough to have a stab at applying game theory). This is particularly true for Nash Equilibrium, which it seems most of your examples rely on.
And I think in the cases where the NE are predictive of actual play, then there's something intuitively obvious about the NE, and that you could have arrived at the same conclusions without using the tools and machinery of game theory. This is the point that Ariel Rubenstein makes (http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/papers/74.pdf) when he says that game theory is useless.
That's not to say that I believe that game theory is never useful (for certain limited settings, like repeated auctions, it works well), nor do I think that it can never be useful (recent work in behavioral game theory is promising in my opinion) but I'm skeptical using these counterintuitive claims as examples of its use.
Re: Game Theory Is Counterintuitive
#5> Closing roads can improve everyone’s commute time.
SimCity is a great way of showing this effect interactively.
In the simulation, citizens always take the shortest path (individuals try to maximize individual gain), but if you connect your entire city like a grid they avoid high-speed roads, deadlocking the traffic (worst game outcome). If you adopt a city plan full of cul-de-sacs and connect it with high-speed roads like a tree the traffic flows better (best game outcome), even though there are less roads and the individual's commutes are longer.
SimCity is an interesting game to explore the concept of game theory since you don't participate as an actor but rather as the rule maker. It shows how you have to adopt counter-intuitive solutions from an actor viewpoint to enforce the desired outcome (backtracking). Once the conditions are met the simulation converges to what you desire.
Re: Game Theory Is Counterintuitive
#6One more for your list: • Shameless self-promotion and "Source" attribution links that all lead to your own YouTube videos will annoy people, but probably get you more traffic.
well, in his defence -
> Every voting system is manipulable
Re: Game Theory Is Counterintuitive
#7> Closing roads can improve everyone’s commute time. SimCity is a great way of showing this effect interactively. In the simulation, citizens always take the shortest path (individuals try to maximize individual gain), but if you connect your entire city like a grid they avoid high-speed roads, deadlocking the traffic (worst game outcome). If you adopt a city plan full of cul-de-sacs and connect it with high-speed ro…
On the other hand, once you can factor road utilisation in your personal preference function, you can take the slightly longer but much less used road, meaning that for certain actors a sub-optimal road grid is better than a tree.
Re: Game Theory Is Counterintuitive
#8These are interesting examples of using game theory to model certain situations but none of these examples show that game theory "tells us" something about the world. In broad strokes, game theory claims to have a descriptive model of human behavior but people very rarely follow the predictions of game theory (and that is even when you're in situations that are simple enough to have a stab at applying game theory). T…
> In broad strokes, game theory claims to have a descriptive model of human behavior
Huh? Game theory is the study of strategy. It's not attempting to describe how people actually behave, but how they should behave if they want to achieve a specific outcome when interacting with other people.
Re: Game Theory Is Counterintuitive
#9"Soccer players should kick toward their weaker side more frequently than their stronger side."
I thought this was an interesting result, so I took a look at the source. It turns out it is a toy problem where the goalie always stops the penelty kick if she guesses right and the kicker always makes the goal if kicking to one side, and misses with some probability when kicking to the other.
This is clearly a toy problem that you can't draw any sort of real world soccer advice from.
Re: Game Theory Is Counterintuitive
#10These are interesting examples of using game theory to model certain situations but none of these examples show that game theory "tells us" something about the world. In broad strokes, game theory claims to have a descriptive model of human behavior but people very rarely follow the predictions of game theory (and that is even when you're in situations that are simple enough to have a stab at applying game theory). T…
> In broad strokes, game theory claims to have a descriptive model of human behavior Huh? Game theory is the study of strategy. It's not attempting to describe how people actually behave, but how they should behave if they want to achieve a specific outcome when interacting with other people.
No, it does not say how people should behave? It analyzes strategic situations using various equilibrium concepts, such as the Nash equilibrium. If you are not sure that your opponent will play the Nash equilibrium strategy, Game theory doesn't tell you what you should do.