Game Theory: More Interesting Than Expected!
yesiamapersonplease
Sep 6, 2024 2:54 AM
Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction is exactly what it says on the tin. It was enlightening to me, someone without a substantial background in math, but with vague enthusiasm for games.
In broad strokes, Game Theory goes over the main concepts, applications, and implications of the field. It covers following topics in less than 250 pages:
Two-person, Zero-Sum Games
Two-Person, Non Zero-Sum Games
n-Person Games
The writing is well-paced, and not too technical, but it has enough rigor to get the main points across. Each chapter begins with a set of game problems, which are excellent (and gentle!) introductions to the main text. While it is a mathematical work, the author is most interested in conveying general concepts and teaching intuition.
One of the main features of game theory as it is presented here, which I didn't expect, is how human-focused it is. The introductory chapter points out that Chess (and other perfect information games) are actually trivial cases: a player should always play the best strategy. The most interesting games in game theory are those where tough decision have to be made taking into account the rationality and emotionality of the people you're playing with. Much of the work of game theory is about tracing out optimal decision structures within games without clear solutions. This tracing out of invisible structures is what I find beautiful in math, and it was exciting to find it here, especially in so accessible a package.
5 Comments
normiekillaz69
1 year ago
Yeah that's why people will never be able to beat a perfect computer opponent in chess... it is ultimately a game of pure mathematical logic and memory. It's why I find chess so boring vs. games that can't be solved via pure math/quantification. To be good at chess you basically have to be an autism machine. It is too easy for me to associate this kind of "fun" with Byun-Chul Han's conception of the positivization of society, turning people into "idiot-savants" or "autistic performance-machines" lmao
yesiamapersonplease
1 year ago
I disagree that chess is boring solely on the grounds that it is computationally solvable. I used to agree. It made me really uncomfortable knowing that for any situation there was a (theoretical) best move. Why play at that point? However, I had too narrow a view of chess. The act of /finding/ good moves is itself a human exercise, full of all the interesting stuff I look for in other games. Lots of chess is about cultivating instinct and remembering history; about perception and confidence. Calculation is vital, but even manual calculation is fundamentally a non-trivial bodily project. Saying chess is boring because its solvable in principle is like saying running is useless because we can build machines that are faster than us: it misses the point of the exercise. (obviously we can have differing tastes about what makes something boring, and that's fine)
normiekillaz69
1 year ago
You see the fact that it is solvable doesn't become a temporal time crisis for myself. I think the problem becomes chess is purely concrete and doesn't exist enough in the abstract. As in I find tactically predicting or constructing abstract tactics preferable to predicting or constructing mathematics/memory of mathematics. For example, an abstract tactic would be like choosing my approach to my opponent in fencing. It's calculable but not mathematically (you can only use the mathematics of distance, speed, and geometry as a guide, the body cannot adhere perfectly to these calculations).
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dulla
1 year ago
Yeah, far better to be an Isocratean Athenian citizen just chilling and supporting a normal society, rather than a laconic Spartan helot who is hopped up on psychedelic efficiency drugs and forced to go toil in the fields and coal mines day-after-day only to be summoned to die in war whenever their Minoan Masters require them to. Fuck that. To be a rote mechanized automaton doing slave work, only to be controlled by the whims of others at any time due to an inability to communicate frustration given a lack of understanding of argumentative skills is no life at all. The open forum is where one can draw their power.
yesiamapersonplease
1 year ago
this guy greeks