Video footage of the legendary Doctor Fox lecture. "The lecture that Myron L. Fox delivered to the assembled experts had an impressive enough title: 'Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education'. Those responsible for running the University of Southern California School of Medicine's psychiatry department's continuing education programme had taken themselves off to Lake Tahoe in northern California for their annual conference and a continuing education program. There, Fox - who was billed as an 'authority on the application of mathematics to human behaviour' - presented the first paper.
His polished performance so impressed the audience of psychiatrists, family doctors and general internists that nobody noticed that the man standing at the lectern wasn't really Myron L. Fox from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine but Michael Fox a movie actor who though having considerable experience in playing doctors in TV shows didn't know the first thing about game theory."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Sep 23, 2011 -
37 comments
The Carol Syndrome "Carol's perception that she scares men away is not a delusion after all. … It is not a matter of bad luck but a collateral effect of interactive rationality. A paradoxical consequence is that Carol's attractiveness acts as a repellent." Game theory (mis?)applied to dating.
[more inside]
posted by Kadin2048
on Jul 22, 2009 -
73 comments
According to the
Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS, by the Institute For the Future) - a simulation based on "the worlds’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game" - by the year 2042 AD there is a potentially terminal combination of five so-called “super-threats” which represent a collision of environmental, economic, and social risks. Acting together, the five super-threats may irreversibly overwhelm homo sapiens ability to survive. Spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General “We are grateful for GEAS’ work, and we treat their latest forecast with seriousness and profound gravity.”
[[press release]]. The game runs from Oct.8 to Nov. 6,
players wanted.
posted by stbalbach
on Oct 8, 2008 -
31 comments
An online auction site called
Swoopo, once called TeleBid, has hit upon an ingenious way to make money. They are an auction site not entirely unlike Ebay - but using a different auction scheme. Where EBay uses a slightly modified
Vickrey auction system, Swoopo uses an auction system based on the "
Dollar Auction" game - with interesting results.
[more inside]
posted by Zarkonnen
on Oct 1, 2008 -
31 comments
The Paisley Underground. From about 1982 to 1985, the Los Angeles club scene featured a bunch of guitar bands on the verge of being the next big thing, including
The Dream Syndicate,
Green on Red, The Long Ryders,
The Rain Parade,
Game Theory (later known as
The Loud Family) and, of course,
The Bangles (the only ones who managed to actually become a big thing).
Michael Quercio of
The Three O'Clock and
Salvation Army inadvertently named the scene "
Paisley underground" when he made an off handed joke during a radio interview. Most of the bands are now, to borrow a phrase from
Game Theory leader
Scott Miller, languishing in national obscurity, as opposed to local obscurity.
posted by Joey Michaels
on Jul 9, 2007 -
30 comments
"He asks each of them to write down...any dollar integer between 2 and 100 without conferring together. If both write the same number...he will pay each of them that amount. But if they write different numbers, he will ... pay both of them the lower number along with a bonus and a penalty--the person who wrote the lower number will get $2 more...and the one who wrote the higher number will get $2 less.... For instance, if Lucy writes 46 and Pete writes 100, Lucy will get $48 and Pete will get $44."
What amount would you choose? And what does your answer tell us about the limits of
Game Theory?
posted by empath
on May 30, 2007 -
245 comments
An evolutionary basis for altruism. These findings suggest that true altruism, far from being a maladaptation, may be the key to our species' success by providing the social glue that allowed our ancestors to form strong, resilient groups. Sharing isn't just caring, it's surviving.
posted by schroedinger
on Mar 21, 2005 -
44 comments
"We plan to put Beauty to sleep by chemical means, and then we’ll flip a fair coin. If the coin lands Heads, we will awaken Beauty on Monday afternoon and interview her. If it lands Tails, we will awaken her Monday afternoon, interview her, put her back to sleep, and then awaken her again on Tuesday afternoon and interview her again. The (each?) interview is to consist of the one question : what is your credence now for the proposition that our coin landed Heads? When awakened (and during the interview) Beauty will not be able to tell which day it is, nor will she remember whether she has been awakened before. She knows about the above details of our experiment. What credence should she state in answer to our question?"
In light of the recent thread on the
Monty Hall problem, here's a probability puzzle that's even more mind-bending: the
Sleeping Beauty problem. Some people say the answer is
1/2. Some people say the answer is
1/3. Some people say there is
no answer.
Papers have been written which can't resolve this one.
posted by salmacis
on Jul 21, 2004 -
40 comments
Problems in infinite decision theory [pdf]. You are in hell and facing an eternity of torment, but the devil offers you a way out, which you can take once and only once at any time from now on. Today, if you ask him to, the devil will toss a fair coin once and if it comes up heads you are free (but if tails then you face eternal torment with no possibility of reprieve). You don’t have to play today, though, because tomorrow the devil will make the deal slightly more favourable to you (and you know this): he’ll toss the coin twice but just one head will free you. The day after, the offer will improve further: 3 tosses with just one head needed. And so on (4 tosses, 5 tosses, ….1000 tosses …) for the rest of time if needed. So, given that the devil will give you better odds on every day after this one, but that you want to escape from hell some time, when should accept his offer? More discussion
here.
posted by monju_bosatsu
on Nov 3, 2003 -
37 comments
The Nash equilibrium
So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health. One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos....from John F. Nash Jr.'s autobiography for the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics.
posted by riley370
on Dec 12, 2001 -
8 comments
