Sunday, November 01, 2009

Game Theory and National Policy

A friend sent me this link, and I found it to be one of the clearest explanations of The Prisoner's Dilemma I'd ever heard. As the speaker relates this to foreign policy and explains what it has to say about how we should most wisely interact with other nations, it seemed to me to be a piece of crystal clear logic. Who says you don't use math in everyday life?! Click here to go to the video you see pictured below.

2 comments:

strangerland said...

I think cold calculating mathematics dictating National Policy,that the idea as I spin it here, is frightening to many people, the Dr. McCoys of the world (sorry for the nerdy reference). Yet I've been studying and blogging about Graph Theory, Linear Algebra as applied to economic modeling. It looks plausible to me. Could even suggest directions for economic policy. Cheers.

Heidi said...

Wow! You sure have been blogging about Linear Algebra and Graph Theory - cool!

It's too bad it is the case that to many people math is "cold and calculating."

Galileo claimed that mathematics "is the alphabet with which God has written the universe." And if there is an aspect to mathematics that gives rise to clouds and flowers and galaxies, then there must be something warm and beautiful about it too, and I wish more people had opportunity to see that aspect of it.

In terms of national policy we certainly want to be as precise and logical as possible. Simply following warm-fuzzy feelings or a "PC" look could lead us down a road to a conclusion that is not at all good and for which we are not ready because we did not take the time to reason it out.