BOOK REVIEW – Game Theory and the Humanities, Author: Steven J. Brams; Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Author: John von Neumann
By Brendan Greeley – At the height of the Cold War, the application of game theory convinced leaders of the two nuclear-armed superpowers “that if we’re thinking of using them, we’re in deep s–t.”
This summer’s negotiations over raising the debt ceiling seemed to present Democrats and Republicans with a similar dilemma. Failure to reach a deal threatened to bring on the economic equivalent of a nuclear winter.
For all the collective self-loathing that attended the debt ceiling talks, it’s important to remember that, like just about everything in human behavior, it was still reducible to a game. Looked at through the prism of game theory, it’s hard to see how the outcome could have turned out any other way. more> http://twurl.nl/y5w8zb
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