gintis's Game Theory Evolving

Posted by Nick Thompson on Aug 10, 2006; 4:31am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/gintis-s-Game-Theory-Evolving-tp522394.html

Hi,

Has anybody any thoughts to share about Gintis's new book?  I have like some of Gintis's work as presented at conferences.  But I am struggling with this book because, despite an aura of userfriendliness, the book seems to leave huge steps out.  It seems to be a compilation of dozens and dozens of games with groovy names and silly stories. Is this what game theory IS when one gets close to it?   Is it true that game theory consists of story upon story as counterintuitive as the prisonner's dilemma game story. ( To "cooperate" means to me to be a "cooperative" witness; to defect, would be to renege on an agreement with the DA to cooperate;  teaching students what these words mean to game theorists is like making them drink Jamestown Kookaid;).  I have learned that there are more categories of games I have to worry about, and I suppose that is good.  I have learned that there are simultaneous games in which the players move at the same moment and serial games in which one player moves and then the other.  Also there are symetrical games in which, for instance your payoff playing strategy A with me is the same as my strategy playing Strategy A with you.  So, I have learned that the game I have spent most time thinking about ... Tragedy of the Commons type games lke PD games.are actually a narrow category of games, Simultaneous, symetrical, two player games.  (Please dont hesitate to correct me on any of this)

So, I wondering, within the scope of simultaneous symmetrical  two player games,  are there a zillion games that differ only in subtle changes in their payoff tables AND in their groovy names and silly stories?  Could all of this be collapsed into a 4d space (one dimension for each value in a 2x2 table and the space analysed?  The goal would be to identify interesting regions in this space.  

I understand about the importance of metaphors in science and about the value of "surplus meaning" in models, even  including the stuff which is just plain facetious.  I KNOW that one cannot disprove Darwinism by demonstrating that there is no great FarmerInTheSky called NATURE who is doing the "selecting".  But if this game theory literature is as it appears in Gintis's book, is it not surplus meaning gone wild????  

Feel free to jerk on my chain here:  I just dont  get it.

Nick


Nicholas Thompson
nickthompson at earthlink.net
EarthLink Revolves Around You.
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