Beneficent Animus?

If there's anything that would seem to require a modicum or more of disrespect in the list of authoritative systemics, it's Game Theory. So here's my latest contribution to that free floating need.

Response to a post at http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/02/too_many_fastballs.php#comments,
self-explanatory as to its purpose::

"The irony here is that game theory, which treats life's strategies as gaming within a set of theoretically presumptive rules, isn't even predictably accurate when compared with our most entertaining varieties of actual games where rules are made to fit. And yet here you seem to be arguing that if strategies were changed, the teams that change them would win more often. Ridiculous. These theories are wrong precisely because they don't account for the innumerable counter strategies that each team can "choose" from within the rules of the particular game.
Then apply this to the game of life where we don't yet know some of the most basic rules, and thus some of the most basic strategies and counter strategies so far devised by biological forms. Game theory which presumes to be operational within those rules can never be more predictively accurate than the accuracy of those presumptions.
(Which I might add, don't even presume there's a significant switch at some point between our short term and long term predictive apparatus.)
Posted by: royniles | February 11, 2010 3:27 PM"

Hope that helps.

Maybe this will help as well, as far as counter strategies are concerned:

"The essence of any effective strategy may be in the options available to reveal or conceal its purposes or intentions. The default position of any strategic move is its openness to view - it's revelatory nature. Our first strategic options of choice may have been in the learned (and later instinctive) concealment of that move, in whole or in part, and before, or during, or even after it's done. Without having such options available, or making use of such, you may perhaps have a choice of optional goals, but have access to extremely limited set of options for obtaining them. Evolution may have taught all surviving strategists that openness in competition is virtually never as effective as strategies with an element of surprise or at least concealment. (Even a shark will conceal as much of its approach and intentions therewith as effectively possible.)"

(From a work in progress.)

10-28-2013:  Actually that last bit was quite silly, as I missed seeing the point that all gaming strategies are by their nature deceptive.   No-one ever tells the other side or sides what their strategies are unless they will be seen as so unbeatable that the game is destined to be won before it starts.

Tinkered Predictions

I wanted to add that I have some problems with game theory as it applies to predicting animal and especially human behavior - and the fault may just be in my own lack of understanding. But if what I understand is correct, game theorists will deliberately ignore aspects of a situation they don't see as relevant to determining the relative payoffs that result from the choice of available strategies, AND they seem to choose only those strategies that offer alternative routes to the end or ultimate "payoff."

But in doing so, they will have assumed that the end payoff is the determinant of all behavior from the outset. And yet that is most often not the case when considering the purposes for which animal (and human) intelligence have actually evolved

For example, they would seem to be completely ignoring long term versus short term payoffs, and the necessity to survive for the short term before concerning oneself at all with long term goals.

Instead, they appear to see short term solutions as ultimately controlled by long term consequences, when in fact the reverse may be more often true.

So why then does game theory seem to work in spite of this apparent error in its general concept? It may be because when the predicted results are inconsistent with other observations, some tinkering occurs - sometimes by adding what are referred to as "equilibrium refinements." Or as at least one adherent has said, one of the most valuable features of game theory is that additional relevant features of the interaction may be integrated into the game-theoretic models.

But when we tinker with the theory of the game in this fashion, is it still the same game? Or are we just applying logical corrections to what must inevitably result from flaws in the initial premise of game theory?