Gaming the Game Theory Games, and other shades of 'Economic Thinking'

Gaming the Game Theory Games and other shades of Economic Thinking

"Theories are the creatures of men, which nature seldom mimics."- Thomas Reid

Shall we play a game? Should we? What game to play, how you go about it or what might be accomplished by playing it, I'm less concerned with, than with how some would advise you to decide if you should. Despite 'Economic Thinking' and Game Theory containing valid principles that can be followed to improve your activities in markets and/or your ability to 'play the game', I have concerns about leaping from engaging in principled actions, to using theoretical systems that have been built up around them to govern your life or our society with, as that game risks landing us all in a system that would 'justify' violating everything which those valid principles were derived from.

fauxYuri's game theory:

That was what was on my mind when an anon X account that I often enjoy when it's reflecting the commentary of its namesake, Yuri Bezmenov, and less so when not and is just fauxYuri, spun a thread on the glories of Game Theory, saying that:

"...game theory can be compatible with moral realism. In fact, it can clarify why moral rules and strong institutions matter..."

Compatible? The real Yuri Bezmenov, was the former KGB agent that wrote 'Love letters to America' and lectured in an effort to warn us of dialectical attacks upon what we understand to be real and true, that most people were unaware were already wearing our liberty away before our eyes. This fauxYuri, is writing to lure America into the arms of experts in Game Theory who promise 'improved systems' (?!) that will make things 'better'. One of these Yuri's is not like the other.

As fauxYuri despises my habit of defining terms that aren't being used clearly, it seems as if I should be sure to point out that since a key point of what being 'Compatible' means, is "...Capable of orderly, efficient integration and operation with other elements in a system with no modification or conversion required...", and so no, while moral realism can find theoretical computations to be useful, such computations cannot comprehend the fundamentally different nature of reasoning required by moral realism, and they should not be confused or otherwise equated. I replied that:

"I don't think so. An A.I. or a sociopath might be able to use game theory to blend their actions in with those of society, and it could generate stats to help them get away with that, but it can't clarify why moral rules matter, for the same reason why the A.I. & sociopath would try to use it to blend in - neither they nor it have any comprehension of right & wrong as understood by moral realism. Appearances can be deceiving, but they won't make unlike things, the same."

, not surprisingly that comment, and those of others who expressed concerns over fauxYuri's failure to distinguish between the two, were mostly deflected, minimized, dismissed, and ridiculed, which is itself behavior that you should be cautious of. In a separate thread where another account tried to make sense of that confrontational thread, I commented:

" Is game theory applicable to playing games? Sure. Can using game theory's calculations help you win games? I presume, so. Should you use game theory's calculations to win games of Scrabble? Chess? Poker? If you use game theory to answer that question, then IMHO you've either intentionally or unintentionally misapplied the word 'should', and so have lost the thread."

The order of 'Shoulds' - Don't 'should' all over yourself
If my point in that comment is less than obvious, you should take a closer look at the 'shoulds' here, as the issue is not about whether or not the calculations of game theory could improve your game. If within the context of the rules that you are employing game theory within, the use of those calculations are able to help you to optimize issues such as 'mapping' out corporate policy and business contracts within the bounds of The Law, or just helping you to improve your ability to think strategically within whatever games it is that you are playing, if that's the case and they are ordered to the good, then... good!

But. Whether or not you should use Game Theory where it's permitted, is not the 'should' you should be worrying about.

The more important Should, is that you should not use Game Theory to calculate the decision of whether you 'should' or 'should not' use game theory in your gaming of anything, because then you are no longer engaging in the ethical reasoning that the word 'should' is an expression of.

The concept of Should, rests upon what is (Metaphysics), and upon what we know of it (Causality & Logic), and it's with our understanding of those in mind, that we're able to properly consider what we should or should not do (Ethics). If you substitute a computational calculation for the links of that chain, and allow the output from that to determine what you 'should' do, then you have unplugged yourself from a vital connection to reality, and intentionally or unintentionally, you're no longer simply misapplying the word 'should', you've begun actively transforming your own understanding of what you 'should' do, into just so much output of artificial intelligence, and you are on your way to slipping out of reality and into a very different sort of game altogether.

This isn't new, BTW, it's all happened before, and with every bit as much self-congratulatory smugness and disregard for reasonable warnings as when 'Economic Thinking' was similarly 'sold' to us back in the 1890s, and if that process is not mitigated by us today, the consequences are sure to be at least as bad for those living in our future. If you're unsure what I mean by that, ask a random passerby (and yourself) what's of more concern to their lives, GDP & the state of the Economy, or a sound understanding of moral philosophy, and you'll likely see that for most people, as was warned, the latter has been displaced by the former.

Before the field was taken over by the calculations of economic systems theory, people from Adam Smith to Frederic Bastiat were concerned with discovering those principles of Political Economy that were the source of The Wealth of Nations. What they discovered was that the natural liberty of individual persons being able to make those decisions that they thought they should make, about whether to perform, grow, keep, buy or sell this or that during the course of their lives, was the true source of their, and their nations', wealth. Bastiat in particular showed how those decisions were derived from the nature of what a human being is, as well as how the folly of wrongfully imposing governmental force into what was rightfully an individual person's decision to make, violated natural law, and inevitably led to a cascade of inefficient decisions that not only wasted time and resources, but induced misery and poverty on a national & international scale.

The fact is, that deeper understanding of Natural Liberty which America was formed from, led to the unprecedented explosion of production, wealth, and prosperity across the 19th century, and with momentum enough to carry it into the 20th century, was a consequence of metaphysical realism's respect for orderly Causation. In that classical sense, Causation is understood as having: a Material Cause (“that out of which it is formed”), a Formal Cause ("what it is to be"), an Efficient Cause ("the active agent"), a Final Cause ("the goal"), and the informed and virtuous Exemplary Cause (“what guides their intellect”), which naturally led to those prosperous effects which historically followed.

The fact that particular formulas and calculations about the various aspects of those early ideas of Political Economy, were somewhat crude and inexact in predicting the economic consequences of either impeding or unleashing natural liberty (accurately predicting interest rates, price of gold, etc), were and should be considered to be of little importance. What was important, was the understanding that it is right for a person to be at liberty to make decisions about their own life & property, and so they should be able to do so, and that was and is the reason for, and the purpose of, preserving their Natural Liberty. That such ideas also helped to unleash prosperity to an extent that no one prior to that could have dreamed of, was a welcome consequence of upholding those first principles, but those effects are not why it should be done. A person is justified in being able to do what is rightful for them to think they should do, and though prosperity is a natural result of that, that prosperity is neither its causes or its justification - effects do not precede their causes.

Game Theory and 'Economic Thinking' reverses that process, as its projected results are taken as the justifications for implementing its strategies. That causal reversal ("let's raise interest rates to cool the economy!") is not compatible with moral and metaphysical realism.

These theories also loudly purport to be able to calculate their projections with great precision (just ignore their regular revisions of "...experts were surprised by the latest unemployment figures..."), and as the presuppositions of their calculations are reflexively utilized as if they were 'causes', they are reflexively used to justify imposing their predictions of what the 'data shows', upon local & national regulatory & legislative policies that 'experts' are then given the power to 'manage' production, demand, pricing, and other factors of 'economic growth', translates into their monitoring and regulating every move you make, as has been the case with the regulatory state.

The experts belief in their systems is the exemplary cause of every regulation on trade, finance, property, the 'Quantitative Easing' of printing fiat money, and so on, and on, and on.

But the fact is, that where the promises of such Economic Systems have actually led us to, have been typified by how 'Free Trade' was gamified into complex sets of international agreements and new international agencies to oversee them, all of which serves to bind and require, rather than free any one or any thing. These new systems of 'Economic Thinking' are contrary in nature & purpose to the Free Market of Natural Liberty that Smith & Bastiat described, and they have led to the greatest explosion in the growth of government and its regulatory laws, which tyrannically infringe upon the liberty of individual people to make their own choices about their own lives and property. To the Experts though, what an individual person might prefer or choose to do, is not valued in their calculations of what 'should' be done to promote 'economic growth', because the individual person has no place in their visions for the 'common good'.

That is the nature of their game.

It is what it is, and is not what it isn't
Again, the more important 'should' is not whether or not the calculations of either 'Game Theory' or 'Economic Thinking' (which are different... how?) could be of help in estimating various scores & outputs measured in economic growth, but whether or not individuals are at liberty to make decisions about what they should do based upon their understanding of circumstances, and that that 'input', is more important than any estimates of output.

Speaking of which, the 'Game Theorists' like fauxYuri, while positing their intent to analyze models & agents, will claim that we have no need to worry about their systems being imposed upon us, or to opening a backdoor of revisionary metaphysics, and that it will somehow 'operate' on a level beyond 'should':

"Level 3: formal analysis of strategic interaction. Once aims, motives, incentives, and rules are specified, what patterns of conduct are likely to follow? This is the level at which game theory operates."

Operates... how? On who? By what means? If they have no effects upon our "...aims, motives, incentives, and rules are specified, what patterns of conduct are likely to follow...", then what's the point of your theory's for gaming them?

More to the point, how does such a system utilize power in such a way as to anticipate and manage 'behaviors' which it cannot comprehend, but can only 'model' based upon... operator input (and not-put)? How are wrongs to be addressed 'strategically'? How are ethical wrongs, to be identified in their statistical 'models'?

Is their system going to somehow 'see' how some actions violate the individual rights of others? Spoiler: No.

Is their system somehow going to be used to monitor possible behaviors, which the system should then be empowered to anticipate and to manage? Spoiler: Yes.

fauxYuri likes to state that his game theory is 'Prudence friendly', and that:

"Madison stands in the same line of realism. If men were angels, no government would be necessary"

But James Madison was a prudent human being who understood SCSR (Scottish Common Sense Realism), the nature of man, and the role of government in upholding individual rights and curtailing the abuse of its power, and those 'angels' he spoke of weren't the calculated results of an algorithm dealing with 'models and agents', but with the understanding and identification of what human beings are, what the role of the rule of law is in our lives (more as restraints, than as the paddles & bumpers in a behavioralist pinball game), and the temptations of power in the hands of ambitious people in political life.

What the fauxYuri seems to miss, is that his pet theories are not the same as, or 'compatible' with, Realism, they are only computational models with numerical inputs that stand in for parameters of lust, shame, ambition, glory, and other easily quantified concepts [Ahem].

fauxYuri kant seem to fit it into his modeling mind that Game Theory can only deal with theoretical 'models and agents', and that to employ that application in the governmental administration of power, is to step out of the moral realism of reality, and into the computational realm of his theories, which will then 'somehow' apply those calculations, not to models and agents, but to people, and other people in positions of power, will then have that power to apply them, to still other people who are under their power.

IMHO, we don't we need computers to tell us about the nature of that game.

But again, if you disagree, then answer me: How?

How can a system of laws which are constrained by natural law to uphold and defend the individual rights of all, go about managing 'models' and 'agents' (AKA: you), without actively intruding upon what every 'agent' is doing in its 'model'?

Will that system's power somehow be limited by the understanding that it is derived from, and intended to uphold, individual rights? Who will write that code? Will they remember that its computations are based upon expected results, and not causes - systems management, not individual meting out of justice? Or will they be entranced by the 'beauty' of their theories?

If history is any guide - and it is - it will be managed and applied by experts in Game Theory (fauxYuri?) in newly established agencies which will advise congress and the POTUS's with 500 page studies (ever unread) and the ever vague message of "Better do this, or the game will go badly!", which will soon take the place of the venerable "Gotta keep interest rates low and raise GDP!". But what possible 'strategy' could justify the computational management of a population/human resources?

fauxYuri says that:

Game theory did not invent that terrain. It formalized part of it.

No, Game Theory did not invent the terrain, but Game Theorists like fauxYuri are attempting to terraform that terrain into a morally inert construct, with which they expect their theories will further perfect our cumulative behaviors with, but theses terrains are not compatible. Our great grandparents failed to consider what the results of getting into the habit of 'systems thinking', would be to their children and grandchildren, I hope for the sake of ours, that we won't continue on making the same mistakes today.

fauxYuri sets up what he considers to be the strong objection to his modeling:

So the objection runs: the model may not explicitly deny richer moral reality, but it still trains the mind to see politics through a narrowed lens.

That is a serious objection, and it deserves a direct answer.

, which he never actually answers, only models. Saying that:

"...Every analytic discipline foregrounds some features and backgrounds others. A legal brief does not capture the whole life of the parties...Yet none of these is therefore false or subversive simply because it abstracts."

But again, those analytic disciplines and legal briefs are not computational outputs and only LLM prompting fools (or worse) would confuse the two. Neither do computational models abstract. People do (developers kinda do abstract, but the software they develop does not). Only human beings with knowledge & wisdom in regards to a subject and its ramifications, are able to observe and abstract from that, to better understand and act in accordance with their understanding of the world. People who mistake computational models for abstractions, and confuse selective Input for informed observation and understanding, are the kinds of people who are a danger to every person that comes under the power of those they advise with their models.

fauxYuri somehow expects 'moral realism' to continue unabated, as their grasp of the underlying reality is increasingly replaced with Game Theory's models of it, because like most people enraptured by their own notions, they imagine their brilliance to be a cause, rather than a fleeting effect.

As it was the case with 'economic thinking', the proponents and practitioners of these theories come to use their impressive calculations ("...experts were surprised by the latest rise in interest rates!..."), to convince people to begin to subordinate principled thinking, to those calculations (promises) output by their theories. What then will soon come to guide our thoughts and actions, will be the always promised appearances of utility, and under which, what actually should be done, and why, will recede from our awareness, as what most serves the interests of those who're interested in acquiring the power to manage every aspect of your life, will be what is used to calculate what 'should' be done to you for the 'common good'.

A quantitative measurement or calculation cannot provide either understanding, strategy, or even a single 'should', not even when that data is shaped to appear as if it does. Calculative tools, even when named as a theory, can only supply data which a person can make use of in understanding how to support a 'Why', but that is a very different thing from what a model abstracts, and when you confuse the two, you're outsourcing your judgement to quantitive comparisons, and as the reality behind them recedes from your thinking, you sever your ability to be prudent.

It's the same game
But Van, why do you keep equating Economic Thinking, with Game Theory? Because in many respects they are the same kind of thinking, and there have been developed by the same people, and for the similar purposes. I've had those who've doubted my concerns about Game Theory, point me to links such as this one from Britanica, which explains that Game Theory is simply a tool to better model the reasoning of how 'agents' behave towards each other:

"game theory, branch of applied mathematics that provides tools for analyzing situations in which parties, called players, make decisions that are interdependent...."

, and my 1st reaction is that the last thing that we need those in power to do, is to take an even less personable and more 'abstract' view of our lives, rights, and property, to see us as computational models of agents and players, as elaborately automated calculators 'reason' about how people should respond to each other, or in their words 'play'. I'm also curious about what kinds of interactions they think we would be unable to determine the nature of for ourselves? Have we no schools to spread knowledge & wisdom? Oh... yeah... that's right... our great-grandparents converted them into more pragmatic, economically minded, institutions. Huh.

Another question is, are we even talking about actual person to person interactions... or something more like abstract scenarios where individual people and circumstances aren't actually examined, but only those probabilities that can be utilized in systemic schemes to develop more efficient aspects of population management?

That sounds a lot like 'Economic Thinking' to me... how about you? If you're doubtful, you should take a look further down the Britanica link, where it helpfully notes that:

"...In fact, game theory was originally developed by the Hungarian-born American mathematician John von Neumann and his Princeton University colleague Oskar Morgenstern, a German-born American economist, to solve problems in economics. ..."

The purpose of Game Theory, in the end, as is the case with 'Economic Thinking', is to model (meaning to substitute theory for reality) how best to escape from the 'restrictions' (AKA: the nature of your individual rights), which those in power feel are interfering with their desire to manage society more efficiently, so that experts can calculate the optimal utility of how best to serve the 'common good', through ever more efficient calculations of every move that you 'should' be made to make.

Personally, what I oppose is not 'economic growth', but justifying the abuses of our natural liberty on the basis of what either systems calculates they will have on economic & societal growth. I am not opposed to what can be learned from the data of Game Theory, but I am opposed to using such systems to target not just material decisions, but chipping away at more fundamental political, legal, ethical issues, along with our grasp of the metaphysical realism which they all ultimately rest upon (and cannot long continue as such without).

Those like fauxYuri deny that such a technocracy is their telos. I think that their denials ring hollow. Courtenay Turner summed up the issue of such denials on that first thread, with:

" Courtenay Turner @CourtenayTurner If that’s true then why are the game theorists so invested in hollowing out realist metaphysics? Because they explicitly say metaphysics must be redesigned to create a “scaffolding” that serves (science) their model! They need to erode the foundation so they can build models without the pesky confines of reality!! That’s constructivism!"

Those advancing 'Game Theory', are, knowingly or not, intent upon transforming that understanding of what is (Metaphysics) and what we know of it (Causality & Logic), which is the basis for Ethical Reasoning, into an artificially constructed tool for quantitative calculations which they need for more efficiently managing our 'input' (everything you think, say, and do, or as they like to refer to that as: 'The Economy'), as the means for using technology to reformulate the ends of our society, and to justify whatever means their calculations tell them 'should' be imposed upon us, for the 'common good'.

That is why those 'tech bros' that Courtenay notes, are proponents of technocracy, and of Game B (Nick Land, Brett Weinstein, etc.), who very much use (all) theory, towards their constructivist ends.

I want to see that growth and prosperity and winning, but I want it to be real, and not a pragmatic facsimile of it that is sure to precede total defeat.

I see no 'winning' in that 'game' for any of us.