The Long Overdue Death of Game Theory

including a few film recommends and a scene from The Maggie

Game theory, and related studies such as economic behavorial choice theory posit “rational actors”, logic models and linear controlled inputs and outputs that simplify reality and attempt to predict behaviors and outcomes in complex interrelations and systems. The theories that result are riddled with paradoxes and cannot model for seemingly rational or irrational behavior because there is no useful definition of rationality that works outside of simplistic logic games.

Most successful speculators and high level decision makers are able to grasp complex dynamics and power relationships but make decisions from gut instinct: they may absorb large amounts of data to help formulate their decisions but at the end they feel their way to decisions and cannot fully account for why they decide on a given course.

This leads to another important point about “game theory” and “rational behavior”. Outside of linear decisions with short timelines, like a short-term stock trade, what in fact makes a decision “good” or “bad” anyway? Much is determined by whatever metrics and timelines we arbitrarily select. Complex decisions are… complex, and should always be subject to revision. Sometimes no decision is the best decision; or a limited decision that leaves other options open as later information arises.

Instinct about when to move and how to move in any given situation, whether it’s an investment or warfare or anything else is always superior regardless of how many algorithmic simulations one runs or whether the instinct-based decision turns out “wrong”. The world is not a game of chess. Complex decision trees can help lay out the terrain, but ultimately no superior computational algorithm will ever exist that will spit out a sentient god-like answer, leaving human instinct and intuition as the best and only option. Watch the excellent film The Gallant Hours if you want to see how a military commander with superior instinct actually makes decisions (or if you just want to see a great film).

If you read game theory scenarios you quickly see the stark limitations. The chain store game or prisoner’s dilemna are fun little puzzles, I guess, but don’t really teach us much about the real world — which is full of incomplete information, power imbalances, complex feedback loops and “irrational” actors that function based off differing perspectives and goals rather than “utility maximizing” behavior.

One example of how game theory was overwhelmed was the election of Donald Trump. The “rational” class of educated elites was sent into frothing rages that the inferior chuds would be so stupid to elect someone clearly unfit for the august office of US president. The assumptions they brought to “the game” were flawed in many ways that blinded them to the realities most Americans are facing. For those who long ago lost any respect for the office of the president — and gave up on the chance of any real reform or concrete relief for their collapsing standards of living and other ills — electing Trump would at the very least throw a wrench in the gears of a corrupt system and maybe even provide some relief. And it did: less war and emotional satisfaction are never to be undervalued. At some point, for the losers in a rigged game, the only option left is to toss the game board over and beat the tar out of their opponent. Their opposition may choose to see them as stupid whiners exhibiting irrational behavior. It is anything but. And curiously enough many arrived at this decision via pure emotion. David Hume posited, correctly in my opinion, that:

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

The pretense to rationality underlying most thought is just that. The story that Einstein’s discovery of relativity occurred while he was shaving, apocryphal or not, underlines the unconsious nature of thought. The feeling comes first, always.

I have a theory that all that bacteria in our guts do most of our thinking for us. It’s a fun theory that I don’t fully believe though there is insight and wisdom in acknowledging how little we know.

Another way of overwhelming the “clever” player in a game is hilariously portrayed in a scene from The Maggie — a film I previously reviewed. In this scene, Calvin B. Marshall (a shrewd shipping magnate) is in a small airplane attempting to locate the Maggie (a small cargo ship, a Clyde Puffer to be precise) that is transporting his expensive personal cargo. He wants his cargo off this dilapidated old boat since the crew tricked Marshall’s agent into carrying it. The Maggie is attempting to complete its journey (and thus get paid) thus its captain, Peter MacTaggart, is trying to avoid interception. Marshall has just spotted the Maggie below — and the Maggie has identified the plane as Marshall’s.

On the airplane:

Marshall:

Where do you figure they're heading for?

Pilot:

It looks like they're putting in for Inverkerran for the night.

Marshall:

If they thought I thought they were going to Inverkerran,

where do you think they'd head for then?

Pilot:

Strathcathaig, maybe.

Marshall:

I know this sounds silly,

but if they thought I'd think they were going to Strathcathaig

because it looks as if they're going to Inverkerran,

where would they head for then?

Pilot:

My guess would be Penymaddy.

Marshall:

If there's such a thing as a triple bluff, I'II bet MacTaggart invented it.

OK, Penymaddy.

On the Maggie:

Captain MacTaggart:

Aye, he'll have guessed we were making for Inverkerran.

Mate:

Will he not go there himself, then?

MacTaggart:

Och, no. He'll know we know he's seen us.

They'd be expecting us to make for Strathcathaig instead.

Mate:

Then shall I set her for Penymaddy?

MacTaggart:

No.

If it should occur to him that it's occurred to us

that he'd be expecting us to make for Strathcathaig,

then he'd think we'd be making for Penymaddy.

Mate:

Then shall I set her for Pinwhinnoich?

MacTaggart:

Och, no.

We'II make for Inverkerran, just as we'd planned.

It's the last thing he's likely to think of.

. . .

The marvelous cadence and line delivery cannot be conveyed of course, but the simple method MacTaggart uses to overwhelm the logic of the game is easy to see.

Curiously the only actual potential explanatory utility of game theory, which may be in its ability to elucidate the mechanisms of corruption and misdirection in and between institutions, is largely ignored. For example law enforcement’s use of parallel reconstruction, which allows illegally obtained information to be smuggled into criminal prosecutions by dissembling about the mechanism of collection, is a method of gaming inter and intra-institutional boundaries. A taxonomy of corruption may benefit from some game theory, though on reflection I doubt it. Human ingenuity, in corruption as in all things, is infinitely subtle and adaptable. Game theory is useless in everything that matters.

I’ve even seen a few weak attempts to use game theory to justify criminal behavior among banksters (not to critique it of course). Tyler Cowen, neoliberal clever-boots asshole economist extraordinaire, has asserted this very thing though I’m having a hard time locating the article where he does so.

Another fascinatingly stupid take is this review of the film Parasite, wherein the virtuous rich who do nothing wrong are victimized by immoral, envious poors. The way the reviewer understands the film says far more about him than the film itself, which is part of what makes it such a great film. It displays the limits of simplistic thinking by way of exposing the varied assumptions we each bring to a given situation; and that the resulting behaviors that might appear irrational from one perspective are eminently rational if viewed from a different, at least equally valid, perspective. And the idiot who wrote this piece preaches “utility maximizing rationality” when he’s not spewing his sad version of hatin’ on the poors. I guess he’s maximizing his utility via venomous stupidity.

Scientism, of which game theory is best considered an example, is everywhere these days. From “climate models” to “covid infection models” these all share one characteristic: they are garbage in/garbage out exercises performed by Mensa-morons whose insect intelligence and careerist characterlessness lead them down a lifetime of dead-end thinking. The neurotic hysteria of large swathes of PMC NPC’s is palpable.

The real problem with these glib and simplistic endeavors is that they lead anywhere the thinker wishes to go and result in idiotic rationalizations that are then used as justifications for destructive behaviors (Justice Dept I’m looking at you). This kind of “thinking” results in corruption of language and understanding through degradation of human endeavor from an aspirational idealism, faith and revelation of the joy of infinite natural complexity to rat-in-a-maze reductionism. It has degraded actual wisdom into sophistry and solopsistic thinking and leads to reliance on fields like public-relations where lying is alchemically converted to “spin” and vile ends are used to justify cruel and vicious means. We are fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian in order to weaken Russia — whatever that means. Weakening how, and in exchange for what? The idiocy and stupid (non-existent?) planning of the enterprise led to the inevitable opposite result.

I blame the Boomer generation for reducing discussion to “sound-bites” and “talking-points” that, even if they were presented in good faith, fail to capture any of the complexity of reality and serve to shrink the window of discourse down to moronic if/else thinking. Oh look, game theory has claimed another victim.

Game theory and “utility maximizing rationality” are foundational to the stupidity and incompetence we see all around us. We must demand good faith discussion and common sense — and vicious ridicule for those who choose this way of interacting with the world — if we’re ever going to fix the ever-expanding disasters in this Groundhog Day nightmare perpetrated by incompetent charlatans.

I’ll leave our “elites” with a line from that great show Justified where the elder brother of two idiots says, upon uncovering the latest of their hare-brained schemes:

I don't want either of you two doing shit or even contemplating doing shit until you run it by someone who can think.