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3. The Presidential Election (political thread, read at your own risk!), Page 3

Jason,
Most interesting. An evolutionary stable strategy (ESS). Can we think of evolution as stable? And if it is a strategy, does that imply intelligence? And does a mathematical game require more than one player? And if it requires more than one player how is the form of the game determined? And is there such a thing as a stable equilibrium in nature?

Certainly. Stabilizing selection is the most common type of natural selection. There are other types, but evolution can certainly be a stabilizing force, favoring the optimal value of some trait and selecting against deviations.



Not at all. Cycling lynx and hare populations follow the predictions of a differential equation better than luck would allow, yet none of them know calculus. Game theory is a way to describe patterns that naturally arise in the competitive and cooperative behaviors of organisms, not because the animals think them through, but because other combinations of behaviors don't last.



Yes, by definition.

That said, a "player" in a mathematical game isn't necessarily a single person or organism. Whatever entities are competing in the game are called the "players." That could certainly include groups competing against other groups, and I would imagine various interactions between cells within an organism might be modeled as games, though I don't know of any examples.



The game is just a mathematical description of some situation in nature that fits the criteria for game theory techniques. The form of the game is dictated by the situation it's modeling.



Go outside and look at the moon tonight.

Tomorrow night, go see if it's still there. :)

The equilibrium between gravity and centripetal force that holds the planets in orbit is just one obvious example. (A real nitpicker could insist that any system involving acceleration, including orbiting planets, must expend energy, which is lost into space, and that eventually the system would bleed out enough energy that the moon very very very slowly spirals down into the Earth and crashes after some untold billions of years. But if we define "stability" that narrowly, there's almost no use for the word in any context.)

Now we're having fun. Thanks Jason; I enjoyed this description of game theory. I'm working with evolutionary theory to explain patterns of characters' behaviors in Chaucer and in Shakespeare's plays, to demonstrate 1. that authors do understand human nature (contrary to the claims of postmodern literary critics), and 2. that theories of social constructivism don't best account for the production of literary artifacts. I haven't gotten into game theory all that much, but it has come up in a few instances. Hmm, one section of a paper I am working on now deals with the formation of alliances. I may bring in game theory there.

Now for another question. Who the devil is Pat McManus?

If you're interested in learning more about game theory, you may want to read John Maynard Smith's book on the topic. I haven't read it myself, but I know it by reputation as probably the best introduction to the subject.



I'll believe just about anything that runs contrary to the claims of postmodern literary critics. :) I've never seen a group of people more unwaveringly full of shit than they are, except perhaps for postmodern art critics. Cornell's "rounded" education gave me a semester of exposure to that sort of thing, which left me shocked that universities would waste money and office space on those frauds. The money would be better spent on a fence to quarantine them from all the big words they abuse.



Someone it's blasphemous that you haven't read! For a lit professor and fly fisherman to not know Pat McManus is like an art professor from Iowa having never seen American Gothic.

Here's a list of his books on Amazon

He's a former English professor writes hilarious short stories about hunting and fishing. I started reading him in the 80s and I've read all his books except the most recent. I suggest that you put a blinking red "URGENT!" next to him on your reading list!

I forget why I designated FF as his heir... I think it was that he wrote a really really funny story here at some point.

McManus is very good...

My view though is that he could write for 500 years and still fall short of the genius of Ed Zern.

But all that may really demonstrate is how ancient I am becoming...:)

Jason, thanks for the recommendation. Having come to fly fishing late in life, I haven't read much fly fishing literature, despite having gone to grad school with Nick Lyons' son, Paul. I'm afraid when I wasn't reading Chaucer, Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and Donne, I wasted too much time doing things like reading Vergil in Latin, Dante in Italian, and Cervantes in Spanish to cover everything, but I'll get on McManus right away. :) By the way, like you I absolutely hate the b.s. some postmodern literary critics have passed off as worthwhile scholarship. It's fun shooting holes in their arguments with solid studies based in empirical methods. Now about that election; today a local precinct leader called me and I agreed to do some canvassing, so, on second thought, McManus may actually have to wait just a bit.

Ok, canvassing for Obama is a worthy reason to postpone McManus. Once you get around to it, I think you'll find he's quite a bit funnier than Chaucer. ;)

Speaking of debunking postmodernist frauds, are you familiar with the Sokal Hoax? It was a beautiful exposure of the fraud in one of those fields.

Yes, the Sokal Hoax was hilarious, but McManus funnier than Chaucer? I'm not sure that's even possible. Have you read the Reeve's Tale recently, or its prequel, the Miller's Tale? In the original, now, no cheating--the Middle English is part of what makes it work. OK, I'm a big old-language nerd. I admit it. Even Latin epigrams get a chuckle out of me.

Just a brief follow up from my first post:

The following comments on Palin from a National Review writer who originally supported Palin are especially interesting:

National Review on Palin

As a recent Newsweek article said, it's hard to swallow McCain's "Country First" claim when one sees who he would put a heartbeat from the presidency in a time of unprecedented challenge to the United States.