Game Theory Calls Cooperation Into Question

Seriously, this is not that hard. If the prey is relatively mobile, for most predators the gig is up if the prey is aware of them. If the prey is alerting it's friends that a predator is around, then that particular animal has seen the predator and is usually therefore relatively safe from it. For example, if an angry dog is barrelling towards your unsuspecting friend, shouting out may draw attention towards you, but you can shout and take countermeasures at the same time. It's not a zero-sum game, and you don't need hundreds of iterations to make it beneficial to yourself. I mean, hell, watch a random Attenborough nature special, and you're likely to hear him talk about the prey spotting the predator, leading to an abandonment of the hunt.

The strange maths continues with the "Bat's Dilemma" example. In the case where both bats do the same thing, share or not share, there are disconcordant outcomes. Same population of bats, same amount of food available, yet somehow there is much more hunger if they don't share. This would only make sense if each bat only occasionally had a meal from a source which was much larger than it could eat by itself, then had a long period without finding food... in which case, sharing the excess really isn't a dilemma, since it's excess. I really don't understand the maths in that example.

Game theory really does seem to be a hammer desperately searching for anything that looks like it might possibly be a nail. It is interesting that the end of the article says it has some suitability for microbe research, where things are much more stimulus/response and much less complex.

Game theory is a modeling tool that assumes all relevant utility is baked into the payoff matrix.

Games (payoff matrices) that capture unique outcomes/behaviors are often given memorable names from human situations that approximate the games. For example the matrix referred to as 'prisoners dilemma' demonstrates a situation where dominant actions give a suboptimal outcome. In describing where this game may apply, economists found simultaneous interrogations to be a colorful and close enough approximation to the idealized game.

It's not the case that game theorists started with the situation of interrogating prisoners and ended up with the game matrix.

Similarly, for anyone saying that 'that wouldn't happen in real life', you're actually saying that the payoffs don't accurately model the outcomes.

There is no moral choice-making for maximizing rational actors, and both actors in the PD have exactly the same information, including the fact that the other individual is a maximizing rational actor. As such the off diagonal elements of the payoff matrix are irrelevant to any rational decision making because any two rational actors with the same goal will always make the same choice in the same situation. To do anything else would be irrational.

So within the frame of the theory both players know with certainty that because the game is being played by maximizing rational actors that the other player will always do exactly what they do. This is true no matter what they do: the other player will always reach the same conclusion. Rationality dictates it, if rationality means anything at all.

It is only when you smuggle in the possibility of an irrational choice on the part of one of the players that the off-diagonal elements become relevant, because one player can for unaccountable reasons choose to do something irrational, which a maximizing rational actor would never do.

Game theory is not about people. It's about rational actors who want to maximize their payoff. For such entities there is no dilemma, since only the diagonal elements of the matrix matter, and cooperation is the obvious maximizing strategy.

Unfortunately, game theory under this constraint becomes very boring. There is probably a salvagable variant of it that remains interesting, but I'm honestly not sure what it's a theory of. "Semi-rational not-very-smart actors"? That would describe humans reasonably well, I guess. It certainly describes me. Or maybe the decision-maker being analyzed could be considered a rational actor and the rest of the players irrational, although that would be equivalent to playing against a random number generator.