{"id":5830,"date":"2015-02-19T06:34:46","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T11:34:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5830"},"modified":"2015-02-19T06:34:46","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T11:34:46","slug":"game-theory-and-the-kings-new-clothes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5830","title":{"rendered":"Game theory and the king\u2019s new clothes"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"post-4436\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com\/2015\/02\/19\/game-theory-and-the-kings-new-clothes\/\" target=\"_blank\">Game theory and the king\u2019s new\u00a0clothes<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>I\u2019ll admit to being a bit obsessed with Syriza and the Eurozone at the moment (<a title=\"\u201cLooking and not blinking\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com\/2015\/02\/11\/looking-and-not-blinking\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a title=\"Dicing with death in the Eurozone\" href=\"https:\/\/thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com\/2015\/02\/14\/dicing-with-death-in-the-eurozone\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>): it is by some way the most interesting development at the moment in both politics and economics. And I\u2019m also interested in the idea that Yanis Varoufakis\u2019 background teaching game theory might have some bearing on the outcome of the talks with the Eurozone, especially now that he has gone out his way,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/02\/17\/opinion\/yanis-varoufakis-no-time-for-games-in-europe.html\" target=\"_blank\">in the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0to say that exactly the opposite is true. It\u2019s worth spending a bit of time on this.<br \/>\n<span id=\"more-4436\"><\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Selfish players<\/h3>\n<p>In an op-ed article in the NYT, he spelt this out.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cGame theorists analyze negotiations as if they were split-a-pie games involving selfish players. \u2026 The trouble with game theory, as I used to tell my students, is that it takes for granted the players\u2019 motives. In poker or blackjack this assumption is unproblematic. But in the current deliberations between our European partners and Greece\u2019s new government, the whole point is to forge new motives. To fashion a fresh mind-set that transcends national divides, dissolves the creditor-debtor distinction in favor of a pan-European perspective, and places the common European good above petty politics, dogma that proves toxic if universalized, and an us-versus-them mind-set.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As it happens, Bill O\u2019Grady has\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2015-02-12\/greek-game-theory-risk-negative-outcome-higher-market-thinks\" target=\"_blank\">done a game-theoretical analysis<\/a>\u00a0of the Syriza-Eurozone negotiations, and it\u2019s easy to see why the \u201cnegotiations\u201d are not going well. This is the pay-off table from Syriza\u2019s side of the desk.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Game theory and the king\u2019s new\u00a0clothes I\u2019ll admit to being a bit obsessed with Syriza and the Eurozone at the moment (here\u00a0and\u00a0here): it is by some way the most interesting development at the moment in both politics and economics. And I\u2019m also interested in the idea that Yanis Varoufakis\u2019 background teaching game theory might have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[281,284,285,1967,1167,2236],"class_list":["post-5830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-eurozone","tag-game-theory","tag-greece","tag-syriza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5831,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830\/revisions\/5831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}