Concluding Remarks

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Suk-Young Chwe
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
African American ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
Music And Mathematics ◽  
Rodgers And Hammerstein ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Brer Rabbit

This chapter shows that folk game theory can be found in many different places other than Jane Austen's novels and African American folktales. The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, for example, demonstrates the strategic advantages of projecting naivety. Ali Hakim, like Brer Rabbit and Emma Woodhouse, illustrates the perils of overstrategicness. Will Parker, like Flossie's Fox and Sir Walter Elliot, reveals how overattention to social status and literal meaning indicates strategic imbecility. Laurey, like Fanny Price, highlights the importance of strategic thinking for a grown woman. Finally, Curly and Laurey, like Austen's couples, show how strategic partnership is a foundation for marriage. The chapter considers some other lessons that we can learn from Austen in terms of economics, the congruence of narrative and social theory, and the connection of human nature and human behavior to music and mathematics.

Folktales and Civil Rights

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Suk-Young Chwe
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Real World ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
The Real ◽  
Real World Applications ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Brer Rabbit

This chapter examines African American folktales that teach the importance of strategic thinking and argues that they informed the tactics of the 1960s civil rights movement. It analyzes a number of stories where characters who do not think strategically are mocked and punished by events while revered figures skillfully anticipate others' future actions. It starts with the tale of a new slave who asks his master why he does nothing while the slave has to work all the time, even as he demonstrates his own strategic understanding. It then considers the tale of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, along with “Malitis,” which tackles the problem of how the slaves could keep the meat and eat it openly. These and other folktales teach how inferiors can exploit the cluelessness of status-obsessed superiors, a strategy that can come in handy. The chapter also discusses the real-world applications of these folktales' insights.

The Argument

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Suk-Young Chwe
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
Practical Advantage ◽  
The Core ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
The U.S

This book examines the connection between Jane Austen's fiction and game theory. It argues that Austen systematically explored the core ideas of game theory in her six novels some two centuries ago. It investigates Austen's basic concepts of choice and preferences as well as her views on strategic thinking. Given the breadth and ambition of her discussion, the book asserts that Austen's explicit intention is to explore strategic thinking, theoretically and not just for practical advantage. It also considers how the strategic legacy of African American folktales influenced the tactics of the U.S. civil rights movement and the ways that “folk game theory” expertly analyzed strategic situations long before game theory became an academic specialty. Finally, it looks at Austen's particular advances in a topic not yet taken up by modern game theory: the conspicuous absence of strategic thinking, or “cluelessness.”

Summary

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Gintis
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Nash Equilibrium ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Unified Model ◽  
Correlated Equilibrium ◽  
Equilibrium Concept ◽  
Correlated Equilibria ◽  
Indispensable Tool

This chapter summarizes the book's main points, covering game theory, the commonality of beliefs, the limits of rationality, social norms as correlated equilibria, and how reason is bounded by sociality, not irrationality. Among the conclusions are that game theory is an indispensable tool in modeling human behavior. Behavioral disciplines that reject or peripheralize game theory are theoretically handicapped. The Nash equilibrium is not the appropriate equilibrium concept for social theory. The correlated equilibrium is the appropriate equilibrium concept for a set of rational individuals having common priors. Social norms are correlated equilibria. The behavioral disciplines today have four incompatible models of human behavior. The behavioral sciences must develop a unified model of choice that eliminates these incompatibilities and that can be specialized in different ways to meet the heterogeneous needs of the various disciplines.

The Bounds of Reason

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Gintis
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Behavioral Sciences ◽  
Behavioral Game Theory ◽  
Text Book ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Behavioral Game ◽  
Innovative Thinking

Game theory is central to understanding human behavior and relevant to all of the behavioral sciences—from biology and economics, to anthropology and political science. However, as this book demonstrates, game theory alone cannot fully explain human behavior and should instead complement other key concepts championed by the behavioral disciplines. The book shows that just as game theory without broader social theory is merely technical bravado, so social theory without game theory is a hindered enterprise. The book is a combination of a text book on game theory and a plea to use behavioral game theory as a unifying tool in all behavioral sciences. This edition has been thoroughly revised and updated. Reinvigorating game theory, the book offers innovative thinking for the behavioral sciences.

Measuring Social Norms in Economics: Why It Is Important and How It Is Done

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-312
Author(s):  
Daniele Nosenzo ◽  
Luise Görges
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Experimental Economics ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Research Projects

Abstract Experimental economics offers new tools for the measurement of social norms. In this article, we argue that these advances have the potential to promote our understanding of human behavior in fundamental ways, by expanding our knowledge beyond what we learn by simply observing human behavior. We highlight how these advancements can inform not only economic and social theory, but also policymaking.We then describe and critically assess three approaches used in economics to measure social norms. We conclude our overview with a list of recommendations to help empirical researchers choose among the different tools, depending on the nature and constraints of their research projects.

Music and mathematics: Theophrastus against the number-theorists

1977 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Andrew Barker
Keyword(s):  
Good Deal ◽  
Subsequent Publication ◽  
Music And Mathematics ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Partial Translation

A long and important fragment of the Περὶ μοψσικῆς of Theophrastus is preserved in Porphyry's commentary on Ptolemy's Harmonics. Both Porphyry and Ptolemy were reedited earlier in this century by Düring, in works which have rightly been taken to supersede the texts of Wallis: and so far as the Theophrastus passage is concerned, we should expect to be able to abandon in Düring's favour the text published by Wimmer, who in effect reprints Wallis, though adopting a few variant readings and emendations from Schneider. But it seems to me that Düring's text is not in all respects an improvement, and that the comments made on it in a subsequent publication by Alexanderson have muddied the waters still further. It is not only a matter of the text: Alexanderson prints also a (partial) translation and an interpretative commentary, and both are open to serious objections. I intend in this paper to deal only with a portion of the fragment, but it is that portion whose argument is the most intricate, and one which ought to shed a good deal of light on central controversies among the musical theoreticians who follow Aristotle. I am not in a position to dispute any of Düring's findings in the manuscripts, but where emendation has in any event proved necessary or where the manuscripts differ among themselves, I hope to show through a study of the content of the argument that the case in favour of Düring is not always closed.

scholarly journals Le Corbusier: architecture, music, mathematics: longing for classicism?

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Germana Gonçalves ◽  
Maria João Dos Reis Moreira Soares
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Le Corbusier ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
The Will ◽  
Music And Mathematics ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Universal Order ◽  
Siglo Xx ◽  
The Universe

Abstract: This paper aims to study the role of the relationships between architecture, music and mathematics in Le Corbusier's thought and work and their relevance in his reinterpretation of classical thinking. It seeks to understand to what extent working with this triad – a foundational and, up until the seventeenth century, dogmatic aspect of architecture in general and of its aesthetics in particular – expresses a will not to break with the fundamental and defining aspects of what could be considered as architectural thought rooted in classical tradition: that which is governed by the will to follow the universal order in the work of art; building a microcosmos according to the macrocosmos; linking, in proportion to one another, the universe, man and architecture. The Modulor presents itself as a manifestation of that will, synthesizing these aspects while proposing itself as an instrument for interdisciplinary thought and practice in which the aforementioned aspects of classical thought are present, clearly and pronouncedly. Le Corbusier’s thought and work presents itself as a twentieth century memory of an ancient and ever present tradition conscious of its struggle for “humanity”. Resumen: Este artículo pretende estudiar el papel de la relación entre arquitectura, música y matemática en el pensamiento y la obra de Le Cobusier y su significado en su reinterpretación del pensamiento clásico. Intenta entender en qué medida con esta triada – aspecto fundacional y hasta el siglo XVII dogmático de la arquitectura, en general, y de su estética, en particular – Le Corbusier expresa su recusa por cortar el vínculo con los aspectos fundamentales y definidores de lo que puede considerarse un pensamiento de tradición clásica en arquitectura: aquel tutelado por la voluntad de seguir el orden universal en la obra de arte – construyendo un microcosmos según un macrocosmos – para así vincular, a través de la proporción, universo, Hombre y arquitectura. El Modulor se presenta como manifestación de esa voluntad, sintetizando estos aspectos y presentándose como un instrumento para un pensamiento y una práctica interdisciplinares en los cuales el pensamiento clásico se encuentra clara y marcadamente presente. El pensamiento de Le Corbusier, través su mirada hacia la relación arquitectura-música-matemática, se presenta, en el siglo XX, como una memoria de una antigua y siempre presente tradición, consciente de su busca por “humanidad”.  Keywords: Le Corbusier; Architecture, music and mathematics; classical thought; Modulor. Palabras clave: Le Corbusier; Arquitectura, música y mathematica; pensamiento clásico; Modulor. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/LC2015.2015.791

scholarly journals Games People Play: And How to Change Them…

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 330-341
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Negotiation Process ◽  
Competitive Sports ◽  
Board Games

“Games” can be very widely defined, and we engage in them all. For this paper, I will be considering at least four kinds of games: first, the purely delightful children’s (and adult) games, from board games to video games to competitive sports, that we play for pleasure. Second, the emotional games in the sense of Eric Berne (see below), i.e. the far less pleasurable psychological patterns that we seem to create and follow in our interactions with others, especially in situations of stress. Third, closely related to this, the games described and prescribed by game theory to analyze human behavior in conflict. And finally, my own more playful exploration of the games of negotiation and the effect these have on negotiation process and results.

The Canterbury Tales and the Arabic Frame Tradition

PMLA ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Slater Gittes
Keyword(s):  
Random Order ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Confessio Amantis ◽  
Individual Unit ◽  
Music And Mathematics ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales is the culmination of a frame tradition that originated and developed in Arabia, not in the West. The Arabic practice of enclosing tales within a frame may be explained by principles of organization peculiar to medieval Arabic literature, art, music, and mathematics: a preference for concreteness, a stress on autonomous elements, and a reliance on external organizing devices. Most Arabic literature emphasizes the individual unit; frames remain open-ended and inconclusive and rarely determine the subject or form of any included part. Although many Western characteristics are present in medieval European frame narratives like the Disciplina Clericalis, the Decameron, and the Confessio Amantis, those works, nonetheless, reveal themselves as continuations of the Arabic tradition. Even the Canterbury Tales, with all its subtle artistry, retains qualities typical of its Arabic ancestors, notably the controlling travelpilgrimage motif, the pointedly random order of tales, and the prominent authorial personality.

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