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For a contrary view on game theory, I highly recommend watching the excellent BBC documentary series "The Trap" by film maker Alan Curtis. http://en.wikipedia.

For a contrary view on game theory, I highly recommend watching the excellent BBC documentary series "The Trap" by film maker Alan Curtis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(television_documentary_series) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(television_documentar... In the first episode, Curtis examines the rise of game theory during the Cold War. It discusses John Nash's paranoid schizophrenia and shows footage Nash in his later years acknowledging that his paranoid views of other people at the time were false.

DennisP 15y ago
Game theory doesn't require that people be selfish bastards. For example, in the Prisoner's Dilemma, it's perfectly fine to assume that each prisoner places a high value on the other person remaining free. That changes the payoff matrix, and the resulting matrix can still be analyzed by game theory (which will then predict that the prisoners will cooperate, since in game theory terms it won't be the "prisoner's dilemma" anymore).
- Drbble 15y ago
  The common mistake people make on game theory is the assumption that people will always use a hill climbing algorithm to find equibrilium, instead of considering the global optima. Hofstadter discusses this with regard to the "hyperrational" solution of cooperation-cooperation in the Prisoners dilemma.
  - DennisP 15y ago
    I did a little googling, looks interesting but I couldn't find Hofstadter's actual work on this...where do I need to look?
cliffbean 15y ago
There are two sides of Nash's work. One is the actual math, which can be evaluated without considering the credibility of the author. The other is Nash's attempt to use it to describe the real world, which necessarily involves assumptions and simplifications. This second side is where the obvious problems are. Game theory remains popular because people can easily take the underlying math and apply it with their own assumptions. Of course, if you make too many simplifications you risk achieving a near-useless comic-book view of reality (literally, as in the blog post here).
- Natsu 15y ago
  > Of course, if you make too many simplifications you risk achieving a near-useless comic-book view of reality (literally, as in the blog post here). For a moment there, I thought you were going to invoke Rorschach as an example.

DennisP 15y ago

Game theory doesn't require that people be selfish bastards. For example, in the Prisoner's Dilemma, it's perfectly fine to assume that each prisoner places a high value on the other person remaining free. That changes the payoff matrix, and the resulting matrix can still be analyzed by game theory (which will then predict that the prisoners will cooperate, since in game theory terms it won't be the "prisoner's dilemma" anymore).

Drbble 15y ago
The common mistake people make on game theory is the assumption that people will always use a hill climbing algorithm to find equibrilium, instead of considering the global optima. Hofstadter discusses this with regard to the "hyperrational" solution of cooperation-cooperation in the Prisoners dilemma.
- DennisP 15y ago
  I did a little googling, looks interesting but I couldn't find Hofstadter's actual work on this...where do I need to look?

cliffbean 15y ago

There are two sides of Nash's work. One is the actual math, which can be evaluated without considering the credibility of the author. The other is Nash's attempt to use it to describe the real world, which necessarily involves assumptions and simplifications. This second side is where the obvious problems are. Game theory remains popular because people can easily take the underlying math and apply it with their own assumptions. Of course, if you make too many simplifications you risk achieving a near-useless comic-book view of reality (literally, as in the blog post here).

Natsu 15y ago
> Of course, if you make too many simplifications you risk achieving a near-useless comic-book view of reality (literally, as in the blog post here). For a moment there, I thought you were going to invoke Rorschach as an example.