Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Noooo!
Someone from the Daily Cal tries to talk about something I'm familiar with. This is going to be a trainwreck.
Such a distribution is a result of the strategic nature of terrorists, who seek to attack the most vulnerable site in order to do the most damage, [profdude Robert Powell said. Thus, to "minmax"-minimize the maximum payoff of an attacker-proves to be the best strategy, he said.
The result contradicts with the way game theorists should model terrorism, said Powell. One of game theory's central concepts is the zero-sum game, in which one side's loss is the other's gain.
Wow. Just wow. Normally, I'd immediately blame writer Michael Kay and his editors, but this is coming from a poliski professor, so maybe not.
Anyway, if you're wondering why I'm "Wow"ing, it's this: Zero-sum games are very emphatically not central to game theory. Zero-sum games, in fact, are far more applicable to the "minmax" model. You use game theory when you want to see how people should cooperate and what kind of contracts and auctions they should design and the like. Which is exactly the opposite of "zero-sum."
Someone needs to commit ritual suicide over this.
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