Re: Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist

Posted by Steve Smith on Sep 14, 2012; 1:16pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Fwd-America-and-the-Middle-East-Murder-in-Libya-The-Economist-tp7580459p7580477.html

Hussein -

I hear you...   many of us are challenged to defend the name of our God or our Faith or our gender or our cultural or genetic heritage or sexual orientation or hair color or set of our jaw.  Even when  obviously (but superficially?) motivated, these are false challenges and to accept them is a fools game.

The shrill voices against Islam (or even "ahem" Mormons) are not helping, even if some who act in it's name are doing horrific things.  Those who paint with a broad brush can only slop their own paint on themselves...

From much distance at all, everyone else looks like "other".

I'm often disappointed with this list (myself included) that we invoke the terms of Complexity Science but don't often take it anywhere.

Is there a game theoretic model, or more to the point, an agent model based on game theoretic principles that might help to illuminate this phenomenon?  The phenomena of personal vs shared belief, sectarianism, intolerance?   Is there a small subset (in the spirit of the oft-cited MOTH strategy for prisoner's dilemma) of the phenomena that can show a bit of it?

- Steve

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