Local man Pramod
Thakur has strongly criticised game theorists for spending a lot of time
agonising over what he calls “just semantics”. A well-known game theory
atheist, Thakur is also believed to worship pagan gods like common sense.
“It’s just a
case of poor problem phrasing. If we didn’t get into these ‘I know that you
know that I know...’ cycles, and simply started with ‘we all know’, the solutions
would be more intuitive and the reasoning less complex. It is rather
unrealistic to assume that everyone knows how to solve a problem and will solve
it exactly as we predict.”
He cites
Prisoner’s Dilemma as a case in point. “Earlier, most people would have chosen
to cooperate, but game theory came along and messed things up for criminals. We
used to understand that we all have to work towards something mutually
beneficial to expect a good outcome. If we deviate, the other guy will beat the
crap out of us when he finds us. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from gangster
movies, it is that there will be revenge.”
“If it’s
somebody else’s problem, leave it alone,” he sums up.
No comments:
Post a Comment