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Game theory is just an explanation; people don't use it explicitly to make decisions, they just follow their gut, and evolution has caused our guts to produce r
by salmonellaeater 12y ago
Game theory is just an explanation; people don't use it explicitly to make decisions, they just follow their gut, and evolution has caused our guts to produce rational decisions most of the time. It's the same as the theories of attractiveness based on symmetry and secondary sex characteristics: you don't look at a potential partner and think, "He/she looks so symmetric, I bet if I were to have kids with him/her they'd have a higher chance of survival." You just intuitively find the person attractive.
- Brakenshire 12y agoLots of people use game theory to rationalize behaving in a selfish way. This rhetoric of such-and-such an idea being natural, and therefore inevitable, is always used as a core justification for any ideology, whether feudalism, monarchy, communism or social darwinism. They are not all correct. It's pretty obvious that humans are not exclusively rational machines designed for 'winning', we have all sorts of other mechanisms which act to make us function well as part of a unit, and these mechanisms have secondary consequences which mean that we are perfectly capable of acting against our own interests, or against the interests of our genes. We should be embracing that, not trying to cut it out. We shouldn't attempt to use the evolutionary process as a moral guide.