Questions tagged [game-theory]
Game theory is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers."
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Have any theorists argued it is undemocratic to try to influence other people’s votes?
I have been exploring a deconstruction of the trope of “democracy” which may possibly have 2 (initially) independent axes:
A statistical computation of the “free will events” of the populace, where a ...
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Why would a state retaliate to a nuclear strike if the consequences could be human extinction?
The entire mutually-assured destruction (MAD) concept is based on game theory and mutual belief.
Suppose we have two states (A and B) with massive nuclear arsenals which together suffice to plunge the ...
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Does strategic ambiguity mean soft response?
Let's consider situations when country A wants to deter country B from doing some action (i.e. the USA wants to deter China from attacking Taiwan).
Such situations can be modeled in the following way. ...
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Would mutually assured destruction help or hinder occupation of minor, non-nuclear countries?
Assume the following hypothetical scenario:
There are only three relevant nations, two large ones (A, B) both with nuclear weapons sufficient to destroy everyone (MAD) and a smaller one without ...
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How can Putin save face?
Former MI6 Chief, Sir Robert John Sawers, says
we need to be a little bit careful about how we do that, we must leave Putin a way out
And Yuval Noah Harari says:
Nobody could say for sure how the ...
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If everyone knows NATO can beat Russia using conventional weapons, doesn’t that force them to rapidly escalate to nuclear to have any chance?
The logic goes like this: since both sides know, and they know that the other side also knows, the game theory conclusion for Russia to have any chance of something other than defeat is to massively ...
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Are there countries where politicians and senior government officials can be forced to be personally invested in their official decisions?
One criticism of the modern day regulatory state is that politicians and various senior government officials promulgating new policies have no "skin in the game"; that is, they have little ...
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Searching for more details regarding a particular story of applied game theory in foreign policy
I recall hearing a story about the use of game theory in the US to predict how power would shift between top members of the government. In this case the predictions were initially disregarded since it ...
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Is the Random Ballot method really strategy-free?
In the Random Ballot voting method, every voter writes down their favorite candidate, the ballots are shuffled, one is drawn, and whoever is on that ballot is the winner.
This is said to be a ...
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Who coined the term "madman theory"?
Madman theory revolves around the idea of appearing more "crazy" than one actually is.
It is actually a signaling game in its simplest form. At least nowadays such games are exemplified with a "...
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What are the alternatives of bluffing as a political tactic?
Let's have two powers in conflict - those could be two persons, two states, two armies, two gangs, whatever. Let's say they are about to meet in a "battle" - that could be a conflict on the workplace, ...
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Can we accurately model history and predict political outcomes in software?
We use computers (and AI) to engineer structures, to simulate car crashes and traffic patterns, and to do predictive meteorology. Is there a serious application of a Sims or a Civilization approach to ...
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Why don't China, Russia, USA and EU establish complete world dominance? [closed]
In theory, if China, Russia, USA and EU were to enter a military alliance, their combined strength would be sufficient to establish complete dominance over the rest of the world. But in practice, ...
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Why does the opposition party always push so hard for impeachment? [closed]
It's pretty common to hear the opposition party stating they are 110% sure the president will get impeached. Trump will get impeached. Obama should have gotten impeached. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, ...
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Game theory: ignorant voting, when to pass, when to guess?
Suppose one is voting to decide some political proposal or elect some office, and there's not enough information, (or the information is contrary), to make a confident decision. Perhaps the proposal ...