That Waldrop book looks interesting...with a 5-star Amazon review from Leo Beranek. Yeah, Von Neumann is not exactly unappreciated, "Von Neumann machine," etc.

That Waldrop book looks interesting...with a 5-star Amazon review from Leo Beranek. Yeah, Von Neumann is not exactly unappreciated, "Von Neumann machine," etc. Pretty good article, he says Nash equilibrium is hard to calculate, not really true, it's one of those things we do automatically, soccer players do it in picking how to shoot penalties, pigs have been found to do it, it's not like you have to think to drive on the right side of the road. If it's a game you haven't seen before you might not get it right the first time, but if you look at what other players do and can figure out best response, people figure it out and converge to a Nash equilibrium pretty quickly. It's one of those things that seems pretty simple and it takes a scientist to formalize it. What's harder is living your life so you create positive-sum games, but that's another story.