Timeline for How Does Economics Address Society's Major Existential Threats?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
22 events
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| May 19, 2023 at 14:54 | comment | added | Giskard | I accept that you think I should not do this. I on the other hand think people should not make imprecise claims, nor should they feel attacked when people politely question their reasoning. Have a nice weekend! | |
| May 19, 2023 at 14:23 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | @Giskard you said that my answer above grossly misrepresents game theory, I mean what is that supposed to imply? In any case, I don’t want argue about petty things… as I said more power to you if you think most game theory models are bullshit, but I don’t think you should go full attack mode on anybody who even mentions that GT can be used to analyze some important strategic problems | |
| May 19, 2023 at 13:33 | comment | added | Giskard | On your other point: I am most certainly jaded about game theory, but I did spend a decade in academia researching and teaching game theory. Notice that I rarely quarrel with other game theoreticians on the site who mostly make claims like "the math is interesting" or "it is culturally enriching" and write almost nothing about meaningful applications. As you are in academia, you can try consulting game theorists (I have) but do hold their feet to the fire, do not accept broad answers like "it is useful in kidney exchange"; insist on specificity on how the model was necessary and useful. | |
| May 19, 2023 at 13:27 | comment | added | Giskard | "I do not like you attacking me like I am some sort nutter" Can you please quote to me doing this? | |
| May 19, 2023 at 12:20 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | @Giskard 3. For sure people who live by publishing GT papers are not unbiased, but my point is that you might have became to jaded because of your own personal experience... I noticed on multiple occasions you arguing basically that its almost all just bullshit, and I do not think that is fair assessment. In any case, I respect your believes if you want to believe its all bullshit all power to you, but I do not like you attacking me like I am some sort nutter going off the deep end and grossly misrepresenting things when I just argue vanilla position here that most economists would agree on | |
| May 19, 2023 at 12:17 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | @Giskard 1. I am not arguing in bad faith I am seriously puzzled by your response because all I have written is that game theory has tools, yet in your response you seem to argue against argument that the game theory has always the best tools. Which is not part of my argument and why I am puzzled by your response. 2. okay and I am using my example to support the idea that game theory can be useful in this scenario, again you say I argue in bad faith but I have feeling that you are creating bit of a straw man of my argument that game theory can be used for such things | |
| May 19, 2023 at 10:53 | comment | added | Giskard | "Maybe at your past institution there was not much interest in serious research in this area" I see you are living in NL, where I attended my PhD program. My outlook is possibly provincial (eurocentric), but I did have access to the internet and time to look for applications. I think combinatorical auction problems may be useful! I also wrote two Q2 publications, so I have worked with people who were considered serious researchers. Am I biased? I am sure I am. Are people earning their living by publishing GT papers unbiased? | |
| May 19, 2023 at 10:48 | comment | added | Giskard | "2. You are using the napalm example to argue that game theory is completely useless in modeling strategic interaction" This is hyperbole, I did not write this, quote me! I do now write that most claims about the applicability of GT are strong exaggerations. | |
| May 19, 2023 at 10:45 | comment | added | Giskard | "1. My answer does not contain any models so what are you even talking about?" In your previous comment you wrote "All I say that game theory has tools to model such interactions" Is it hard to figure out what I am writing about, or are you arguing in bad faith? | |
| May 19, 2023 at 8:18 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | and other theoretical models are helpful in serious research and even in applied practice. If game theory can be used to successfully improve missile defense systems I don't see any reason why in principle it could not be also used improve our understanding of deterrence. | |
| May 19, 2023 at 8:17 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | but saying that these models are completely useless is another extreme which makes no sense. I frankly think your negative experience just clouds your judgement. Maybe at your past institution there was not much interest in serious research in this area in my country of origin there were also lot of universities where even econometrics is constantly being misapplied just to data mining and churn on papers in predatory journals so people can continue misappropriating research funds. But that does not mean that econometrics is completely useless when properly applied. In the same way game theory | |
| May 19, 2023 at 8:12 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | @Giskard 1. My answer does not contain any models so what are you even talking about? I have some example of broad literature that uses models, but I don't directly use one. 2. You are using the napalm example to argue that game theory is completely useless in modeling strategic interaction, I found an example where people find it useful in strategic interactions. 3. I frankly find your views on modeling in general quite strange... you mentioned sometimes in the past you left economics because you were fed up with the game theory models, look nobody is saying that every single model is useful, | |
| May 19, 2023 at 4:55 | comment | added | Giskard | Some of the other economics stuff you write about on this site seems strange to me at times, but I am not a macroeconomist or a public policy expert, so I accept I might not understand the details. I was however a game theorist for a decade and know what GT cannot do. | |
| May 19, 2023 at 4:50 | comment | added | Giskard | Re: Third comment. I am not at all familiar with these, they might be valid! Not sure why you bring them up though, they have nothing to do with the question and your original claims. You write "such problems" at the end, but how are these papers that you reference in your third comment deal with existential threats? | |
| May 19, 2023 at 4:47 | comment | added | Giskard | Re: Second comment. I provided other example of Schelling doing similar analysis which turned out useless, and led to the rationalization of a lot of human suffering. Not clear why we should accept the $n=1$ occurence of not having nuclear war as a strong validation of his other model. | |
| May 19, 2023 at 4:46 | comment | added | Giskard | Re: first comment. 1. I can model a lot of things too when quality is not an issue. You do not support that any of the models in your answer are of good quality. 2. You are writing that science does not give you a goal function. That is fine, I do not expect it too. I dispute that the analyses in your answer provide accurate numerical trade-offs. 3. See 1. | |
| May 18, 2023 at 16:00 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | In addition there are peer reviewed papers showing that game theory is being used by military, for example in designing AI defence systems ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8838118. So even military clearly believes there is utility in using game theory. Some game theory models are even used to refine Israel's Iron Dome which seems to be working well pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/271700/1-s2.0-S0377221717X00040/… so clearly game theory is not completely useless in analyzing such problems | |
| May 18, 2023 at 15:53 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | provided example of Schelling) do use game theory for such analysis. | |
| May 18, 2023 at 15:51 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | @Giskard how do I misrepresent the abilities of game theory in the post above? 1. All I say that game theory has tools to model such interactions 2. I specifically in preamble mention that science never provides answers to policy questions. 3. Its completely uncontroversial to say game theory can be used to model strategic interactions. We can talk about how well predictions of that or this model matches reality but I can't really see how anyone, except for radical contrarian, can argue that it cannot be used to analyze such situation. That is prima facie wrong since people (and i even | |
| May 18, 2023 at 14:45 | comment | added | Giskard | (-1) I find that the answer above grossly misrepresents the abilities of game theory and choice theory to provide actual analysis/answers (anything beyond mathified punditry) to these problems. Note that all connections to empirical data are tenuous. | |
| May 18, 2023 at 14:40 | comment | added | Giskard | Schelling has indeed modeled nuclear war using game theory, but let us not forget his other influential modelling work, where he calculated that given the utilities napalm bombardment would cause the North Vietnamese to surrender. | |
| May 18, 2023 at 12:16 | history | answered | 1muflon1♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |