YES, GAME THEORY IS JUST A RUBK’S CUBE – A TOY – BUT…. LET’S LOOK AT THAT A MOMENT…
—“Curt, What are your thoughts on Game Theory? Is it a valuable tool for describing group or individual behavior or just a kind of Rubix Cube for involuntarily celibate economists.”—Vincent Cucchiara
While it is useful as a general principle that layers of prisoner’s dilemmas are always at play and therefore unpredictable, it’s a dead end since only the first, second, and at most third order are perceptible and calculable and demonstrated by man. No real world game (market) is that trivial.
Same with logics. We are all pretty good with first order logic and sometimes second order, but beyond that it’s just a language game for logicians – no one does or can think in those terms. Because no one expresses ideas that trivial.
Causal density is simply too high.
I’d make the same argument about Operationalism, in that it’s only important to understand general rules produced by operational analysis the way we understand norms and laws – we just do (use or repeat) them. The fact that it is incredibly burdensome and requires a great deal of knowledge to speak in operational language lets us make proofs when we need to the way we do with engineering, recipes, programming, and mathematics, but people will continue to speak in norms as a means of limiting the cost of neural economy (computational efficiency). We always and everywhere seek to limit physical, emotional, and intellectual costs – particularly when a norm exists that lets us communicate while avoiding them: (i.e. manners, vocabulary, narratives, traditions.)
We are always battling the problem of neural economy (computational efficiency) and this is why normative concepts are helpful – they function as useful puzzle pieces that eliminate our demand for computation of everything all the time, in real time, which is exhausting. The value of neurons is that they generalize.
Our whole problem boils down to ensuring constant relations between the real world and our generalizations of it. Unfortunately we are ignorant, we err, we bias, and we tell white, grey, and black lies to ‘maintain the peace’ as frequently as we speak in constant relations with the existential universe.
It’s bad enough we have to use prices and bank balances…. lol
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine
Source date (UTC): 2018-10-08 13:56:00 UTC