File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-25.232, message 71


From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu>
Subject: M-I: Rahul on game theory
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 15:22:11 -0500 ()


Rahul,
     Fair enough about your third post.  I should have 
figured.  I agree that the free rider problem is an area 
that game theory might say something about.  Indeed, 
there is a fairly large literature on that, of 
considerably varying quality.
     As for your otherwise condescending remarks about the 
tit-for-tat solution to the extended prisoner's dilemma 
game, I have a question.  Before Axelrod did his tests, was 
it obvious common sense that tit-for-tat would end up doing 
so well?  I think not.  It is rather neat that once that 
was learned, the strategy can be fairly easily explained in 
a common sense way.  I argued that was a virtue of it.  But 
it was not obvious ahead of time on either highly 
mathematical/analytical grounds or on just plain common 
sense grounds that it would be.
     BTW, of course it is appropriate for a physicist to be 
commenting on dismal science.  After all, without 
physicists there would have been no Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Barkley Rosser
-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu




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