| | Steve,
I suspect that a fair amount of game theory is actually mistaken assertions of what is or isn't part of human nature. That's probably true, but it isn't special. All social sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology, etc.) are guilty of this. There are 2 important issues:
1) Is Game Theory/Decision Theory/Social Choice Theory especially guilty?
2) Are the mistakes great enough to disqualify the empirical evidence?
I don't think that (1) can be affirmed, and as for (2) it's good to mentally separate the empirical evidence from the philosophic explanation of the empirical evidence. Scientists who tell you that they don't have a worldview (a philosophy) but instead are just reporting about their findings are actually part of the problem -- though they picture themselves as being part of the solution. There is the science, and there is the understanding of the science. You can be really good at one of them, without being really good at the other. Let's imagine comical discussion regarding science informed by philosophy:
Larry: I think that matter is composed of tiny, individual atoms.
Curly: Why?
Larry: Because of my political philosophy, libertarianism, where the unit of value is the individual, and society is always to be viewed as merely a geographic collection of individual agents who should be free to experiment with their own lives and make their own personal choices about matters ranging from petty things like fashion up to important things like health care insurance.
Moe: That's stupid, your worldview doesn't tell you what reality is like -- whether it is made of discrete atoms or not -- you have to look at the science first. You have to let the science speak for itself on the matter.
Curly: Moe is right, Larry. It's not that philosophy doesn't matter, you could never understand/communicate scientific findings without philosophy -- and scientists who brag that they are free from such a requirement are actually just wrongheaded blowhards -- it's just that all empirical evidence matters, and all empirical evidence can be retroactively integrated into a coherent and reality-correspondent worldview.
Larry: Does this mean that even the sometimes-shoddy research of scientists, who don't understand the implications of what they are doing, does this mean that even that crappy research has value?
Curly: Yes. Let's say that you prematurely arrived at the conclusion, based on nothing other than your political philosophy of libertarianism, that you prematurely thought that matter was made of atoms -- and you were devising some experiments to test or verify that that is, indeed, the case.
Larry: Well, okay.
Curly: Now, let's say that I'm also interested in the matter and want to look over your research. Considering how you arrived at your conclusion prematurely, is that a fool's bargain for me (would looking over your research necessarily lead me astray from reality)?
Larry: Oh, I get it! So, it's like there are 2 things: (1) the empirical evidence and (2) the philosophic understanding of what that empirical evidence means.
Curly: Right. And your personal philosophy or psychology as a researcher does not disqualify whatever empirical evidence you may find by performing standardized, repeatable tests.
Larry: Cool.
Steve, you also said:
I'm not clear on what the underlying principle of game theory is. It's that the decisions -- and the deliberations behind those decisions -- which are made in social situations, are something which you can study and even come to understand (i.e., that there is a science, however fuzzy and immature, about decision-making in social situations).
That point on the graph where any increase in the tax rate will result in lower total revenues and any decrease in the tax rate will be bring higher (or the same) tax revenues, that apex on the chart, will of course vary to some degree, for different cultures, different economic states, different kinds of taxes, and different beliefs held in the society relative to taxes. I'm not sure how any of this is "game theory." Think of paying taxes as actually being a matter of making a decision to contribute to a common pool of resources, upon which individuals either routinely or sporadically draw. Looked at as a decision, the level of socially-acceptable taxation can then be empirically studied. Different individuals -- having certain personal projects, and personal plans for the future, and financial ups and downs, and whatever -- will make different decisions as to how much taxation they would find acceptable and/or tolerable, but there will be a mean level of taxation, and there will be upper and lower bounds. From watching people play games, it can be surmised that most people would be willing to pay a total tax rate (local + state + federal + sales + corporate + property + estate + etc.) of about 10-20%.
You can discover this by looking at Public Goods Games (which examine the issue directly), or by looking at small (9-person) groups in a large (> 100 people) network, as in the following study:
Social Experiments in the Mesoscale: Humans Playing a Spatial Prisoner's Dilemma
... found that people learn about the behavior of others, and that they learn that there are some people in the world who will cheat or who will try to free-ride on the efforts/contributions of others. Crucially, they discovered that, after finding out that the other people are not all a bunch of immaculate angels, people adjust their willingness to contribute/invest/propose from an initially high and hopeful level ... down to about 20%.
Now, you can argue that the people in the study are Spanish, and that Spanish people are either more altruist-collectivist-statist than Americans, or that altruism-collectivism-statism is "good" for Spanish people -- e.g., Spaniards will and/or should pay a total tax rate of 20% -- but that is another debate. Contrary to intuition, it actually doesn't detract from the findings. All empirical evidence matters, it just needs to be properly understood. All nationalities, denominations, cultures, gangs, cliques, individuals, etc. should be studied. It is the job of the scientists to do the science. It is our job to understand the science. Optimally, the scientists themselves will understand their own research, because then they can tailor and tweak the studies to make the studies themselves produce more ready-made packages of objective data which are already ripened to correspond to reality.
Is "game theory" an attempt to ascertain or measure a fact or principle of human nature? Or does it use an established assumption regarding human nature to predict a behavior or the statistical population distribution of a behavior? Interested parties may attempt either one or the other or both, but that doesn't detract from the fact that all empirical evidence matters. There is the science and there are the scientists. It is often the case that the scientists are wrong but, barring explicit dishonesty, it is never the case that the "science" is wrong -- i.e., that facts found weren't facts (or weren't found).
Is "game theory" relying on a distribution of certain beliefs in the population? And if so, does it say anything about volition, and the fact that beliefs change? Yes and yes. In the linked study above, the learning process was evident as people reduced their willingness to make cooperative offers regarding informal contracts.
Is "game theory" implying that certain beliefs are endemic in humans in genetically determined ratio - not unlike eye color where there are certain ratios of blue eyes to brown eyes? Or that we will act in certain ways, regardless of beliefs or genes? Interested parties may attempt to interpret the empirical evidence as being proof that humans are mindless automatons whose whole lives were preordained by a power beyond their control and who are woefully stuck playing the part of a string puppet in a hallucinogenic, global tragedy -- but that doesn't detract from the empirical evidence. The main point is that the science doesn't take these positions, people do. People who interpret science from the perspective of a wrong worldview will often make grand claims, either to cover up for a personal deficiency or to mask a personal fear.
If I hate responsibility, I may try to interpret scientific findings as being proof that humans have absolutely no responsibility to themselves or to others -- but that is a problem with me, not with the empirical evidence.
There is a mathematical model for predicting the optimum number of "faithful" males to philandering males - among birds. ... You can see how this would NOT be a model that could be used for humans UNLESS you discard the notion of volition, and pickup the view of genetically encoded beliefs. As an aside, some evolutionary biologists may want to believe that philandering males provide a service to society -- in order to justify having cheated on their wives. Even so, I get your point. With animals, it is much easier to ascribe governing factors of behavior as being evidence of employment of the "instruction manual" encoded in genetic material -- but you can't do that with humans! That's because we have culture (an example of volition) and, for humans, culture is more important than heredity. You can take the person with the "healthiest genes" and place him in a culture that makes him unhealthy or dead. Genes cannot save you from culture. One's culture is more important than one's ancestry.
Ed
p.s., We currently have a culture of corruption and entitlement, but not completely so -- we are not completely corrupt, and we do not have a complete sense of 'participation-trophy' entitlement. It's just that powerful figures from the baby-boomer generation -- particularly the young-adult flower-children from the 1960s (rich people who are in their early-to-mid-60s today) are currently pushing for that sort of a thing. It's an across-the-board oligarchy. They are everywhere (sports, politics, universities, etc.), making decisions for everyone -- but that effort cannot last. Caveat: I'm not saying that everyone who is 60-65 years old right now is wrong about how society should be formed, I'm just saying that if someone is between the ages of 60 and 65 AND they went to Woodstock AND they like "Cat Stevens" THEN they are wrong about how society should be formed. At the very least, they should be restricted from obtaining political power.
:-)
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 11/16, 7:40pm)
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