October 8th, 2018 2:11 PM
UM. NO THAT’S CONFLATION. CHOICE vs PROBABILITY
—“Curt: I am currently enrolled in a Chemical engineering course in which the professor is attempting to pair game theory with traditional modeling of chemical reactor plant design. He has conceptually replaced decisions with reactions and choices as atoms with the pains as thermodynamic indicators. As far as I can tell it is an entirely new field but it at least initially seems to be better at actually predicting the behavior of real populations of people better standard Game Theory.”—
Everyone is doing this. I do this (operationalism in economics), some other philosophers do it (See Glennen and Bechtel: Mechanistic Philosophy), mathematicians do it (see the Intuitionistic and Constructivist Movements), the physicists do it (see Operationalism/Operationalist movement in physics), all of computer science does it (this is what distinguishes computer science/programming from mathematics, and more so from formal logic, informal logic, and argument), and most visibly Stephen Wolfram, of Wolfram Alpha calls it ‘the new science’.
The universe consists of layers of complexity each of which produces a limited number of possible operations. whatever the universe consists of > subatomic physics > physics > chemistry > biochemistry > biology > organisms > complex organisms > ecologies > planets > solar systems > The Universe > sentience > consciousness > reason > computation > calculation > Whatever Comes Next.
If you want to call that game theory (which is choice) that’s anthropomorphism. In other words, human, sentient, conscious reason. It’s not choice. It’s probability and necessity. Hydrogen and oxygen can’t wake up in the morning and choose not to make water. Your favorite female recreational sex partner can choose not to service you today.
All error rises from misapplication of analogy.
Operations and probability = physical, Opportunity and Choice = mental.
Don’t conflate them.
—“The expansion of the model beyond traditional matrices solves the problem of increasing the number of players as well as introducing a mechanism for repeated games (recycling decomposed products/made decisions and filtering off unmade possibilities).”—
Again. games in the sense of choice (game theory) vs probabilities in the absence of choice (probability)
These are two different models. Human actions are not open to probabilism for reasons I don’t wanna go into right now at depth, and the universe has fixed options and therefore is not gaming just probabilistic.
Nassim Taleb does a pretty good job of explaining the Ludic Fallacy. Confusing Games (dice , bounded, and probabilistic) with Choices (actions, unbounded and heuristic).