Talk:Game theory

Merged articles

There were articles on Zero sum game, Non-zero sum game, Aumman's agreement theorem, and the Prisoner's dilemma. The first two were basically stubs with few articles linking into them, and Aumman's only had one article link in. I've merged them into the general article on Game theory, and deleted the originals. Since the Prisoner's dilemma article is well developed I've left it alone, but included a section on it in this article, including a link to the complete article in the section on the Prisoner's dilemma and another in the See also section.--Logic and Empricism (talk) 22:00, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

As a note, the article on Aumman's Agreement Theorem has been deleted and redirects here. So, deleting this article's content about the Theorem because it is a duplicate, is kind of missing the point.--Logic and Empricism (talk) 22:00, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't fully see the point of a merge as I can't see how Aumman's Agreement Theorem has anything to do with a general article on game theory. For a start, if the entire point was that the agreement theorem article was a stub and should be merged, it would be about 85,400,386 times more sensible to merge it into anything that discusses Bayes' theorem, not general game theory. Consolidating articles purely for the sake of making them bigger isn't a justification. ^moral 01:49, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it's because literally one article linked into it. I merged it into Game theory because Aumman's Theorem is about what Game theory can and cannot do, and some of the implications of it. If you would like to instead move the content into our already fairly indepth general article on Bayes, go ahead. But, I'd like to make sure you are aware that by deleting the articles content here on this page, you're deleting the content we have about it, since the original article has already been deleted.--Logic and Empricism (talk) 02:41, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

No, it hasn't. Evil fascist^{oh noez} 02:45, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

No, it was redirected and I reverted both. The way the agreement theorem article is written, it is so out of place in an article on game theory it makes no sense at all. It makes no mention of game theory and how it relates to it except to state that Aumann is game theorist. It's like taking the homeopathy article and flooding half the content with herbal tea. ^sshole 02:50, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the merge was a bad idea. Cheers to A for the revert - David Gerard (talk) 12:31, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

So, I'm the only one who's irked by having an article with only one other article linking into it?--Logic and Empricism (talk) 16:25, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I can see it being irritating, but I can't see it reasonably being a sufficient irritation factor to mess up the articles to stop it - David Gerard (talk) 21:10, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Glaring mistake in "Prisoner's Dilemma" example

I read it, and it claims, "the obvious thing to do is not talk, and hope your partner doesn't talk". In reality, though, that's incorrect; the obvious thing to do is to sing like a mockingbird, because if you do, no matter what your "opponent" did, you'll be better off than if you didn't talk. The catch, of course, is that, since both players talking is worse for them than if neither player talked, both players are likely to "lose", by any reasonable definition of the word. But this isn't due to incomplete information. This is just due to the basic setup of the game.

So, in short, the best thing you can do, if you intend to commit a crime, is do it alone, and hold fast to that Fifth Amendment.

Thoughts? Comments? I wanted to explain this before I did anything on the page. Sensual Endeavor, the sexy pony ;) (talk) 13:21, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Zero-sum game straw man

"Rightists" do not believe of life as a zero-sum game. E.g. affirmative action in USA universities for simplicity: 1.Qualified blacks (those who can get degrees without AA) suffer due to AA because other people might suspect their degrees are less worth that it'be if AA didn't exist. 2.Some whites lose degrees. 3.Underqualified blacks can earn a degree, but they wouldn't earn as much due to it as those people whose degree were "true". Poorest blacks do not gain anything because they don't enroll university regardless of there's AA or not. So, it a "rightist" view, total loss of 1 and 2 is greater than benefit has 3 have, and there's loss of society as whole because of less qualified people pushed into their positions.Alliumnsk (talk) 13:18, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

@Alliumnsk That's still a zero-sum game -- with 3 players. However, you do note that right-wingers don't necessarily talk about it in the terms of a zero-sum game, and it's worth mentioning that in the article. It'd be especially good if you could get a citation of a right-winger outlining the points you made above and a citation of a right-winger talking in terms of a zero-sum game, to contrast better and worse logic. FuzzyCatPotato of the Bulbous Muskrats (talk/stalk) 17:16, 19 October 2017 (UTC)