Re: Skepticism about Game Theory (was IRAQ sort of: Torching the oil)

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Feb 25 2003 - 03:41:12 MST

  • Next message: Brett Paatsch: "Re: Anyone know the source of this old teaser? (was Skepticism about Game Theory (was IRAQ sort of...)"

    Sure, game theory is often an extreme oversimplification and especially
    in foras like this we tend to overuse it (I'm certainly guilty of that
    quite often). But at the other hand it also represents a well-understood
    formal structure which can derive implications of certain kinds of
    assumptions effectively; it is a modeling tool. The important thing to
    remember whenever one is making a model is whether the assumptions are
    complete enough to both lead to the right behavior and not leave out
    additional small complications that can change the resulting behavior
    qualitatively. The model should be as simple as possible, but not
    simpler.

    On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 06:31:03PM -0800, Lee Corbin wrote:
    >
    > Now sometimes GT could be useful, it seems to me, in helping
    > some people see over their ideological blinders. But even
    > there, I would really like to know of any actual cases. People
    > who simply never could grasp the Cold War in abstract terms
    > would nonetheless excel in understanding a precisely
    > equivalent contest between, say, union and management.

    I seem to recall that a lot of nuclear policy from Rand Corp
    was set using game theory.

    Game theory is an useful tool to abstract situations to make them more
    cognitively manageable. That is extremely important in many
    military/political situations since (as the debate on this list has
    shown) people tend to get rather emotional about them.

    -- 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
    asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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