gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) (03/23/86)
In article <792@harvard.UUCP> greg@harvard.UUCP (Greg) writes: >In article <12481@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> tedrick@ernie.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Tom Tedrick) writes: >>Also, I never took Hofstatder seriously after reading GEB. >>Was that a mistake? >No, it wasn't. If you think GEB is bad, take a look at how Hofstatder handled >the Prisoner's Dilemma (the non-iterative one) in Mathemagical Themas in >Scientific American. Hofstatder apparently decided that his own philosophical >meanderings were mathematically more correct than basic game theory. Also, >a friend of mine read "The Mind's I", and said that it only repeated parts of >GEB. I happened to go to one of his talks freshman year, and he again re- >peated parts of GEB. Many years ago, Anatol Rapoport had a Scientific American article on games such as The Prisoner's Dilemma, in which he too tried to argue against the logical conclusion of basic game theory, primarily on the ground that he didn't like the result. I was so annoyed that I wrote my first letter-to-the-editor, but it wasn't published. "The Mind's I" did more than repeat GEB (for one thing, it was a collection of articles by various writers), but it didn't really lead to any particularly useful conclusions. GEB impressed some people, apparently: it won a Pulitzer prize.
torek@umich.UUCP (Paul V. Torek ) (03/26/86)
In article <2007@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.ARPA writes: >Many years ago, Anatol Rapoport had a Scientific American article >on games such as The Prisoner's Dilemma, in which he too tried to >argue against the logical conclusion of basic game theory, What conclusion is that, and what alternative did he propose? Anticipatory hint: what conclusions you draw depends on what premises you start with... --Paul Torek, really at torek@umich
gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) (03/30/86)
In article <538@umich.UUCP> torek@zippy-de-do-dah.UUCP (Paul V. Torek ) writes: >In article <2007@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.ARPA writes: >>Many years ago, Anatol Rapoport had a Scientific American article >>on games such as The Prisoner's Dilemma, in which he too tried to >>argue against the logical conclusion of basic game theory, > >What conclusion is that, and what alternative did he propose? > >Anticipatory hint: what conclusions you draw depends on what premises >you start with... That's what was so infuriating. Rapoport explicitly formulated a "game" under the standard rules (non-cooperative, etc.), then argued against the standard strategy on psychological grounds. In particular, the existence of a large mutual payoff in one element of the matrix that would in fact not be attained by players following recommended strategies somehow bothered him. It is clear that IF cooperation was allowed (it was prohibited) and IF there was a means of enforcing the cooperation, THEN the best mutual combined strategy would be to select the matrix element that Rapoport wanted. However, he tried to argue for a "higher rationality" that would lead to that result in the absence of cooperation and enforcement. No logical basis for his desired reasoning methods was given; to me, it was a blatant attempt to pretend that there is a rational basis for socialism. P.S. This isn't strictly the same game as Prisoner's Dilemma, but the same sort of pseudo-arguments were being employed.
torek@umich.UUCP (Paul V. Torek ) (04/01/86)
In article <2202@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.ARPA writes: >Rapoport explicitly formulated >a "game" under the standard rules (non-cooperative, etc.), then >argued against the standard strategy on psychological grounds. >In particular, the existence of a large mutual payoff in one >element of the matrix that would in fact not be attained by >players following recommended strategies somehow bothered him. >It is clear that IF cooperation was allowed (it was prohibited) >and IF there was a means of enforcing the cooperation, THEN the >best mutual combined strategy would be to select the matrix >element that Rapoport wanted. However, he tried to argue for a >"higher rationality" that would lead to that result in the >absence of cooperation and enforcement. No logical basis for >his desired reasoning methods was given; to me, it was a blatant >attempt to pretend that there is a rational basis for socialism. > >P.S. This isn't strictly the same game as Prisoner's Dilemma, >but the same sort of pseudo-arguments were being employed. Sounds weird. Maybe Rapoport meant to argue that the payoffs could never in real life be what the PD situation requires; that a person might *think* the payoff was bigger for the noncooperative option, but it really wasn't? (I may be way off, but "on psychological grounds" suggests that maybe Rapoport thinks people would regret that the cooperative outcome wasn't reached, and this regret should be added to the supposed payoff to get the true payoff?) --Paul torek torek@umich
throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) (04/04/86)
>>>, > gwyn@brl.ARPA Doug Gwyn >> torek@umich.UUCP Paul Torek >>>Many years ago, Anatol Rapoport had a Scientific American article >>>on games such as The Prisoner's Dilemma, in which he too tried to >>>argue against the logical conclusion of basic game theory, >>What conclusion is that, and what alternative did he propose? > [...] > It is clear that IF cooperation was allowed (it was prohibited) > and IF there was a means of enforcing the cooperation, THEN the > best mutual combined strategy would be to select the matrix > element that Rapoport wanted. Hmmmmm. Normally, cooperation in such setups is "allowed", it is simply not enforced. In fact, other than one play option often being called "cooperation", most setups don't mention cooperation explicitly at all... they merely state that the goal is to get the highest score (not the highest score for the group, mind you, the highest score for *yourself*). Is this what you mean by "prohibiting" cooperation? Now, if I'm remembering the article in question correctly (it has been *quite* a while), Rappaport was in essence trying to apply results gotten from an "expanded matrix", which looked sort of like he was talking about iterated trials, to the single-shot dilemma. This indeed seems bogus and I agree with Doug on that point, but I have to disagree when he says: > [...] to me, it was a blatant > attempt to pretend that there is a rational basis for socialism. (Not that I'm disagreeing that it seemed that way to you... :-) The iterated variants of PD, given concrete populations of players, *do* give a "rational basis for socialism". I should clarify that I'm taking "socialism" here to mean "choosing the 'cooperate' option in a PD-like scenario"... I'm not talking politics here. More concretely, what iterated PD *really* gives rational basis to is the notion that co-operation can evolve among players of iterated PD-like games, even when each player is *only* trying to maximize the player's own payoff. The point is that iterated PD is much more like the real world than single-shot PD, and thus the "always defect" that results from modeling real-world interaction as single-shot PD is often inappropriate. The bottom line is, Rappaport's analysis of single-shot PD seemed flawed to me also, but that doesn't mean *all* analyses of PD-like scenarios that find problems with the games-theoretic strategy are likewise flawed. In PD-like scenarios, players of the simplistic games-theoretic strategy can, in fact, be reliably and repeated outperformed. -- Wayne Throop at Data General, RTP, NC <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw