Quotes & Sayings About Game Theory

It is the shortcomings of game theory (as originally formulated) which force the consideration of the role of ethics, of the dynamics of social structure, and of social structure and of individual psychology in situations of conflict. — Anatol Rapoport

In 1958, Anne and I returned to Australia, where I got a very attractive research position at the Australian National University in Canberra. But soon I felt very isolated because at that time game theory was virtually unknown in Australia. — John Harsanyi

In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way. — George Leonard

If there's a disaster, do you go over to your neighbor's house with: a) a covered dish or b) a shotgun? It's game theory. If you believe your neighbor is coming over with a shotgun, you'd be an idiot to pick a); if she believes the same thing about you, you can bet she's not going to choose a) either. The way to get to a) is to do a) even if you think your neighbor will pick b). Sometimes she'll point her gun at you and tell you to get off her land, but if she was only holding the gun because she thought you'd have one, then she'll put on the safety and you can have a potluck. — Cory Doctorow

Disruptive technology is a theory. It says this will happen and this is why; it's a statement of cause and effect. In our teaching we have so exalted the virtues of data-driven decision making that in many ways we condemn managers only to be able to take action after the data is clear and the game is over. In many ways a good theory is more accurate than data. It allows you to see into the future more clearly. — Clayton Christensen

I engage in the use of game theory. Game theory is a branch of mathematics, and that means, sorry, that even in the study of politics, math has come into the picture. We can no longer pretend that we just speculate about politics; we need to look at this in a rigorous way. — Bruce Bueno De Mesquita

Free will is an idealization of human beings that makes the ethics game playable. Euclidean geometry requires idealizations like infinite straight lines and perfect circles, and its deductions are sound and useful even though the world does not really have infinite straight lines or perfect circles. The world is close enough to the idealization that the theorems can usefully be applied. Similarly, ethical theory requires idealizations like free, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behavior is uncaused, and its conclusions can be sound and useful even though the world, as seen by science, does not really have uncaused events. As long as there is no outright coercion or gross malfunction of reasoning, the world is close enough to the idealization of free will that moral theory can meaningfully be applied to it. — Steven Pinker

The theory is that if you take interest rates negative, people are going to say, "That's a silly game! I'm not going to lend my money to governments who want me to pay them. I am going to go into the stock market where I can get positive returns!" — Mohamed El-Erian

She had read articles over the years about a man's supposed biological craving for young women: it was all about primeval procreation, in theory, the need to plant seed in fertile soil. Maybe ... She thought of a line from Nabokov: "Because you took advantage of my disadvantage." Lolita. In this case, however, Kristin felt that she was at the disadvantage - not the young thing. The truth was, she feared, all men were Humbert Humbert. Maybe they weren't pedophiles lusting after twelve-year-olds, but didn't Lolita look old for her age? Older, anyway? Sure, there were MILFs in porn, but Kristin had a feeling that considerably more men wanted their porn stars to be students at Duke University than moms from the bleachers at a middle-school soccer game. — Chris Bohjalian

Fair Game Theory: If you are dumb enough to be drained by people then you are fair game. — Frederick Lenz

The point is, if you treat reality like a game, it's going to show in your decisions. — Karl Schroeder

The action of the child inventing a new game with his playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the housewife devising a new sauce for the meat, a young author writing his first novel; all of these are in terms of definition, Creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less Creative. — Carl Rogers

Hugh is now playing a game on his mobile phone. His greasy fat fingers with bitten down nails surprisingly agile on the keys. The concentration on his face is admirable in a way. It was probably with a similar level of concentration that the theory of relativity was formulated. — Glenn Haybittle

A thorough understanding of game theory, should dim these greedy hopes. Knowledge of game theory does not make one a better card player, businessman or military strategist. — Anatol Rapoport

Anthroposophy is not a game, nor just a theory; it is a task that must be faced for the sake of human evolution. — Rudolf Steiner

For years, I've proffered the theory that there aren't "people who don't like hockey," but rather people who have yet to let the light of hockey into their hearts. And the best way to bring these heathens to our religion of choice is to get them to one of our frozen temples and watch a game live. But — Greg Wyshynski

If skeptic can weakly force E, then he can force E. — Glenn Shafer

If it had been up to Von Neumann's purely intellectual reasoning alone, many of the bombs he helped to create would have exploded on the Soviet Union.Thankfully, there was another thinker on hand whose deeper grasp of human foibles added a new dimension to game theory that, among other things, helped save the world from mutually assured destruction. Enter Thomas Schelling. — Tim Harford

Danny: You can be as morally righteous as you want - in a vacuum - but throw in a second entity and you gotta start acting in response to the other. — Angry Zodd

Whether game theory leads to clear-cut solutions, to vague solutions, or to impasses, it does achieve one thing. In bringing techniques of logical and mathematical analysis gives men an opportunity to bring conflicts up from the level of fights, where the intellect is beclouded by passions, to the level of games, where the intellect has a chance to operate. — Anatol Rapoport

The Game gives you a Purpose. The Real Game is, to Find a Purpose. — Vineet Raj Kapoor

My mother was an economics professor. I'm proficient in math, and statistics, game theory, symbolic logic and all of that. — Dave Hickey

Existing political philosophies all developed before evolutionary game theory, so they do not take equilibrium selection into account. Socialism pretends that individuals are not selfish sexual competitors, so it ignores equilibria altogether. Conservatism pretends that there is only one possible equilibrium - a nostalgic version of the status quo - that society could play. Libertarianism ignores the possibility of equilibrium selection at the level of rational social discourse, and assumes that decentralized market dynamics will magically lead to equilibria that yield the highest aggregate social benefits. Far from being a scientific front for a particular set of political views, modern evolutionary psychology makes most standard views look simplistic and unimaginitive. — Geoffrey Miller

Although a large branch of game theory is devoted to the study of expected utility, we generally consider each player's payoffs as a ranking of his most preferred outcome to his least preferred outcome. — William Spaniel

I think almost all strategic problems could at least be improved upon if people would do more careful game-theoretic analysis. The reason game theory works in predicting is because people intuit how to behave game-theoretically. — Bruce Bueno De Mesquita

That is why one day I said my game will be like the Pythagorean Theorem - hard to figure out. A lot of people really don't know the Pythagorean Theory. They don't make them like me anymore. They don't want to make them like that anymore. — Shaquille O'Neal

The ball is round, the game lasts ninety minutes, and everything else is just theory. — Sepp Herberger

In its first 30 years of existence, up to the mid 1970s, the practical applications of game theory were very limited, probably as a result of excessive preoccupation by game theorists with cooperative solution concepts. — John Harsanyi

Interactive Decision Theory would perhaps be a more descriptive name for the discipline usually called Game Theory. — Robert Aumann

I earned my Ph.D. in philosophy, and one of my specializations was the logic and mathematics of game theory. I've also got a degree in drama, so I know about stories, characterizations, plot arcs, and the like. Lots of game designers can do one or the other: I've got the skills for both. — Brendan Myers

Count Ayakura's abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement.
Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura's version of political theory. — Yukio Mishima

Maezr smiled. A hundred years ago, Ender, we found out some things. That when a commander's life is in danger he becomes afraid, and fear slows down his thinking. When a commander knows that he's killing people, he becomes cautious or insane, and neither of those help him do well. And when he's mature, when he has responsibilities and an understanding of the world, he becomes cautious and sluggish and can't do his job. So we trained children, who didn't know anything but the game, and never knew when it would become real. That was the theory, and you proved that the theory worked. — Orson Scott Card

My first contact with game theory was a popular article in 'Fortune Magazine' which I read in my last high school year. I was immediately attracted to the subject matter, and when I studied mathematics, I found the fundamental book by von Neumann and Morgenstern in the library and studied it. — Reinhard Selten

Things happen in baseball, even if, in theory, it's something you don't do. Stats are a tool, but it doesn't mean that's how a game is being played at that moment. There's more than one way to win a game, or have a winning team. — Jon Miller

Characters may lend the action a certain colouring, but it is what happens that comes first. To overlook this while watching a tragedy would be like treating a football game simply as the acts of a set of solitary individuals, or as chance for each of them to display 'personality'. The fact that some players behave as though this is precisely what football games are about should not distract us from this point. — Terry Eagleton

That streetside tree is obscuring the air. Cut it down. Haul it in for questioning. There are secrets within that foliage. You might want to separate the branches in different rooms and apply some elementary game theory."
"Question a plant?"
"Trees have a will too, just like people. We have to know it's purpose. Read Schopenhauer."
"Schopenwho?"
"He was the only authentic German. You might like him. Being a police officer, you're undoubtedly familiar with the need to put an end to the lives of the perverse when sex crimes go too far. Now just generalize that necessity to every human being. — Benson Bruno

Evolutionary game theory is a way of thinking about evolution at the phenotypic level when the fitnesses of particular phenotypes depend on their frequencies in the population. — John Maynard Smith

(Game theory is) essentially a structural theory. It uncovers the logical structure of a great variety of conflict situations and describes this structure in mathematical terms. Sometimes the logical structure of a conflict situation admits rational decisions; sometimes it does not. — Anatol Rapoport

Game theory, however, deals only with the way in which ultrasmart, all knowing people should behave in competitive situations, and has little to say to Mr. X as he confronts the morass of his problem. — Howard Raiffa

Zero-sum games deal with resources that neither increase nor decrease in amount - they only shift from one player to the other. Given your present frame of mind, were you to speak now, I'm afraid you might say something rash. I would feel it incumbent to offer a rejoinder. As a result of this exchange, you would be mortified and humiliated, which - as dictated by the rules of game theory - would increase my influence and status at your expense. — Douglas Preston

Many of us have no grasp of quantum theory, or Einstein's theories of special and general relativity, but this does not in itself lead us to oppose these theories! Darwinism, unlike 'Einsteinism', seems to be regarded as fair game for critics with any degree of ignorance. — Richard Dawkins

Paradoxically, it has turned out that game theory is more readily applied to biology than to the field of economic behavior for which it was originally designed — John Maynard Smith

I developed a theory of salesmanship based on the principle that one must not on any account identify oneself with the merchandise one is selling. Selling is a game where you score when you make a sale. If you allow your ego to be involved, the customer can brush you off and you lose; but if you do not identify yourself with your work you will be able to redouble your efforts when you are rejected, and if you make a sale you come out the winner. — George Soros

After graduate school, I stumbled into teaching mostly by chance. I was lucky and picked up new fields as I taught, expanding from creative writing to composition to graphic novels to editing and publishing to, inevitably, game studies. I devoured the work of Ian Bogost, Janet Murray, and Nathan Altice and slowly began weaving those texts into my courses, beginning with the more mainstream Tom Bissell and working up to MIT's platform studies or dense compendiums like The Video Game Theory Reader and articles collected on Critical Distance, my favorite aggregator of online game theory. After — Salvatore Pane

We do have tendency, now in biology especially to make up stories, to make theoretical biology a kind of game, in fact we have game theory in biology which is meant to use the theory of games to make predictions or explain things. — Richard Lewontin

Forfeit the game
Before somebody else
Takes you out of the frame
And puts your name to shame
Cover up your face
You can't run the race
The pace is too fast
You just won't last — Linkin Park

All sorts of risk-benefit analyses and models of herd immunity tend to produce the conclusion that vaccination benefits the individual as well as the public. When Harvard researchers recently used game theory to build a mathematical model of vaccination behavior during an influenza epidemic, they found that even "a population of self-interested people can defeat an epidemic." No altruism is required. — Eula Biss

Every great master will find it useful to have his own theory on the openings, which only he himself knows, a theory which is closely linked with plans for the middle game. — Mikhail Botvinnik

You believe in the God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world that objectively exists, and which I, in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture ... Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice-game, although I am well aware that our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility. No doubt the day will come when we will see whose instinctive attitude was the correct one. — Albert Einstein

The implication of game theory, which is also the implication of the third image, is, however, that the freedom of choice of any one state is limited by the actions of the others. — Kenneth Waltz

In the early days of the video game business, everybody played. The question is, what happened? My theory - and I think it's pretty well borne out - is that in the '80s, games got gory, and that lost the women. And then they got complex, and that lost the casual gamer. — Nolan Bushnell

For us the chief point of interest is the place where the game is played. Generatly it is a simple circle, dyutamandalam, drawn on the ground. The circle as such, however, has a magic significance. It is drawn with great care, all sorts of precautions being taken against cheating. The players are not allowed to leave the ring until they have discharged their obligations. But, sometimes a special hall is provisionally erected for the game, and this hall is holy ground. The Mahabharata devotes a whole chapter to the erection of the dicing hall - sabha - where the Pandavas are to meet their prtners. Games, of chance, therefore, have their serious side. They are included in ritual. — Johan Huizinga

After the meeting, Guay met with Verville for a debriefing. Guay reports that Verville said that all investors would have to roll to avoid a market collapse. Guay told Verville that on Monday, at the first chance to roll its maturing paper, the Caisse should not be the only investor rolling in a particular trust. If that happened, it would end up in a worse position than not rolling at all. — Paul Halpern

Game theory is a branch of, originally, applied mathematics, used mostly in economics and political science, a little bit in biology, that gives us a mathematical taxonomy of social life, and it predicts what people are likely to do and believe others will do in cases where everyone's actions affect everyone else. — Colin Camerer

It was a game she sometimes played, ever since she learned about the theory of infinite parallels, the idea that a person's path through life wasn't really a line, but a tree, every decision a divergent branch, resulting in a divergent you. — Victoria Schwab

I think game theory creates ideas that are important in solving and approaching conflict in general. — Robert Aumann

After preliminary work by a number of other distinguished mathematicians and economists, game theory as a systematic theory started with von Neumann and Morgenstern's book, 'Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,' published in 1944. — John Harsanyi

People say I don't have great tools. They say that I can't throw like Ellis Valentine or run like Tim Raines or hit with power like Mike Schmidt. Who can? I make up for it in other ways, by putting out a little bit more. That's my theory, to go through life hustling. In the big leagues, hustle usually means being in the right place at the right time. It means backing up a base. It means backing up your teammate. It means taking that headfirst slide. It means doing everything you can do to win a baseball game. — Pete Rose

Consider the problem, "How can I win the game of tick-tack-toe?" It is well known that I cannot, if I assume (in keeping with the conventions of game theory) that my opponent understands the game perfectly. Put another way, there is no "technical solution" to the problem. I can win only by giving a radical meaning to the word "win." I can hit my opponent over the head; or I can drug him; or I can falsify the records. Every way in which I "win" involves, in some sense, an abandonment of the game, as we intuitively understand it. (I can also, of course, openly abandon the game--refuse to play it. This is what most adults do.) — Garrett Hardin

Although the drama of games of strategy is strongly linked with the psychological aspects of the conflict, game theory is not concerned with these aspects. Game theory, so to speak, plays the board. It is concerned only with the logical aspects of strategy. — Anatol Rapoport

To the average mathematician who merely wants to know his work is securely based, the most appealing choice is to avoid difficulties by means of Hilbert's program. Here one regards mathematics as a formal game and one is only concerned with the question of consistency ... The Realist position is probably the one which most mathematicians would prefer to take. It is not until he becomes aware of some of the difficulties in set theory that he would even begin to question it. If these difficulties particularly upset him, he will rush to the shelter of Formalism, while his normal position will be somewhere between the two, trying to enjoy the best of two worlds. — Paul Cohen

no simple mechanism could do the job as well or better. It might simply be that nobody has yet found the simpler alternative. The Ptolemaic system (with the Earth in the center, orbited by the Sun, the Moon, planets, and stars) represented the state of the art in astronomy for over a thousand years, and its predictive accuracy was improved over the centuries by progressively complicating the model: adding epicycles upon epicycles to the postulated celestial motions. Then the entire system was overthrown by the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, which was simpler and - though only after further elaboration by Kepler - more predictively accurate.63 Artificial intelligence methods are now used in more areas than it would make sense to review here, but mentioning a sampling of them will give an idea of the breadth of applications. Aside from the game AIs — Nick Bostrom

And when attacked by a Capitol-aligned soldier in District 2, she tells him that fighting in the Capitol's wars makes them all slaves: "It just goes around and around and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the Capitol. But I'm tired of being a piece in their Games." Game theory is not about games. It's about politics and psychology, war and strategy. For Katniss Everdeen, it is life and death, and in the end, everyone in Panem comes to learn that the only way to truly win the game is not to play at all. — Leah Wilson

It was not chance that brought us together again. I am sure of that. These things are predestined. I have a theory that each man's life is like a pack of cards, and those we meet and sometimes love are shuffled with us. We find ourselves in the same suit, held by the hand of Fate. The game is played, we are discarded, and pass on. — Daphne Du Maurier

People who mock incidents in history such as 9/11 or the Holocaust, referring to it all as a hoax or stirring up crazy conspiracy theories about it, should really stop and think about their words first, both because it shows flaws in logic and rationality to deny the obvious, and because to play pretend with incidents which killed innocent people, well, that's just like laughing in the face of tragedy. It's as if to say, "no, it's not horrible enough that these people were killed, oh no, we have to drag on these incidents by indulging in melodramatic fantasies!" In essence this means that those who lost loved ones not only have to live with these losses forever, they also have to live with the people who deny that any of it ever happened. It does no good to forget history or to deny it. All it does is desensitize people; it tells them that it's all just a game, which then risks the possibility of nobody taking it seriously enough to prevent something similar from happening again. — Rebecca McNutt

In terms of game theory, the opposite of a failed tactic is not necessarily success. — Robert Ferrigno

The shell game that we play ... is technically called 'renormalization'. But no matter how clever the word, it is still what I would call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from proving that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self-consistent. It's surprising that the theory still hasn't been proved self-consistent one way or the other by now; I suspect that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate. — Richard P. Feynman

I love it now that a large minority of people who are handicapped prefer to call themselves crippled. This is all part of the game, like queer theory. — Leslie Fiedler

If you are a leader or someone who works for the interest of a community, first make sure that you understand the interest of the people who make up that community. In this way, you will have a good chance of minimizing, perhaps, avoiding the us versus them mentality. — Duop Chak Wuol

I did several types of work about several investigations of application of game theory to international relations. — Reinhard Selten

Here some one thrust these cards into these old hands of mine, swears that I must play them, and no others. And damn me, Ahab, but thou actest right, live in the game, and die in it. — Herman Melville

Some scientist needs to explain to spectators Einstein's relativity theory. Before his explanation, he says: 'I have to suffer a lot explaining something I don't understand myself.' This relates to my game: I didn't understand anything! — Vassily Ivanchuk

There is much of economic theory which is pursued for no better reason than its intellectual attraction; it is a good game. We have no reason to be ashamed of that, since the same would hold for many branches of mathematics. — Sir John Richard Hicks

I use game theory to help myself understand conflict situations and opportunities. — Thomas Schelling

Technique! The very word is like a shriek of outraged Art. It is the idiot name given to effort by those who are too weak, too weary, or too dull to play the game. The mighty have no theory of technique. — Leonard Bacon

A proven theorem of game theory states that every game with complete information possesses a saddle point and therefore a solution. — Richard Arnold Epstein

My colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands [and I] are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game. I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results. How can it be that writing down a few simple and elegant formulae, like short poems governed by strict rules such as those of the sonnet or the waka, can predict universal regularities of Nature? — Murray Gell-Mann

Finding a single investment that will return 20% per year for 40 years tends to happen only in dreamland. In the real world, you uncover an opportunity, and then you compare other opportunities with that. And you only invest in the most attractive opportunities. That's your opportunity cost. That's what you learn in freshman economics. The game hasn't changed at all. That's why Modern Portfolio Theory is so asinine. — Charlie Munger

The theory of economic shock therapy relies in part on the roleof expectations on feeding an inflationary process. Reining in inflation requires not only changing monetary policy but also changing the behavior of consumers, employers and workers. The role of a sudden, jarring policy shift is that it quickly alters expectations, signaling to the public that the rules of the game have changed dramatically - prices will not keep rising, nor will wages. — Naomi Klein

When you lay down a proposition which is forthwith controverted, it is of course optional with you to take up the cudgels in its defence. If you are deeply convinced of its truth, you will perhaps be content to leave it to take care of itself; or, at all events, you will not go out of your way to push its fortunes; for you will reflect that in the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons. In the long run, we say; it will meanwhile cost you an occasional pang to see your cherished theory turned into a football by the critics. A football is not, as such, a very respectable object, and the more numerous the players, the more ridiculous it becomes. Unless, therefore, you are very confident of your ability to rescue it from the chaos of kicks, you will best consult its interests by not mingling in the game. — Henry James

I worked at a place that followed a system where the quarterback was taught to take the sack rather than force the throw. That's kind of an old-school theory, but it has existed in this game. — Mike McCarthy

It is difficult to play against Einstein's theory -on his first loss to Fischer — Mikhail Tal

Contrary to conventional military and game theory, the most effective offense is sometimes a direct attack against your political opponent's greatest strength - not his weaknesses - to place him immediately on the defensive. — Mark McKinnon

I think voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory always leads to more evil. — Penn Jillette