Game theory

“"Interactive Decision Theory" would perhaps be a more descriptive name for the discipline usually called Game Theory”

“There are quite a number of novel developments intended to meet the needs of a general theory of systems. We may enumerate them in brief survey:”

“An equilibrium is not always an optimum; it might not even be good. This may be the most important discovery of game theory.”

“A proven theorem of game theory states that every game with complete information possesses a saddle point and therefore a solution.”

“Like all of mathematics, game theory is a tautology whose conclusions are true because they are contained in the premises.”

“By the end of the war the new game theoretic methods that had been developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern were added to the toolkit and mathematical techniques that operations research scientists deployed. These proved very valuable, and game theoretic approaches took on great importance after the war.”

“Direct application of the theory of games to the solution of real problems has been rare, and its chief uses have been to offer some insight and understanding into the problems of competition (without actually solving them), and to provide mathematicians with new fields to conquer. Many important real problems involve more than two opponents, are not zero-sum, and exceed the bounds of the most developed versions of game theory.”

“Game theory can be defined as the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers.”

“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.”

“(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.”

“The cybernetics phase of cognitive science produced an amazing array of concrete results, in addition to its long-term (often underground) influence:”

“Game theory brings to the chaos-theory table the idea that generally, societies are not designed, and that most situations don’t come with a rulebook. Instead, people have their own plans and designs on how things should fit together. They want to determine how the game is played, and they see societal designers as myopic busybodies who would imprison them with their theories.”

“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.”