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The “Tragedy of the Commons” Is a Dubious Concept
(jacobin.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Environment
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It's... Not? Applications of it maybe but this is like saying algebra is flawed because it's hard to model rates of change. I don't think you're totally understanding the purpose of game theory as a mathematical model. And believe me, game theory is absolutely verified as mathematically valid. We wouldn't have modern gene theory without it.
Very cool. And exactly what I was talking about. Humans aren't rational actors, to do things exactly line this. Game theory on basic altruisistic systems predicted, as one of the first things that was done with it, that total altruism is more advantageous, but due to the nature of the choices rational actors make, impossible to sustain. If you want to learn more about these systems there are plenty of resources, but as discussed, they are demonstrative, the simple examples are rare and more easily found in genes.
Apologies I meant the application of game theory as an explanation for optimization of behavior or evolution. Not as like, a mathematical model or it's potential applications. To be fair I'm also simplifying to what people think of as game theory which is more aspects of it, namely hypotheticals like the prisoners dilemma being used as an explanation for human behavior on a broad scale rather than on an individual level
What I probably should have said is that many applications of game theory are deeply flawed for the reasons I listen above
It's certainly a functional way to model many many systems in evolution, social sciences, economics, etc. But all models are limited at least by how much complexity you can put in.
The fact that humans actually don't behave rationally itself is a huge discovery of game theory. Evolutionary models fundamentally rely on game theory in a way that is hard to overstate. Genes are inherently rational actors, the system is just complex.
I don't doubt there are plenty of misapplications of it like anything else. But I mean, same with statistics, or calculus, or set theory.