Gambling laws There seems to be a universal consensus that gambling is something people should be wary about. Through gambling, you can lose a lot of money in a short amount of time; you can also become addicted…

gametheory.life/2026/01/07/g...

Innovative Strategies in Warfare In C. S. Forester’s The Commodore, the main character Horatio Hornblower is in charge of a small squadron of ships of the (British) Royal Navy in the Baltic Sea. We are in the year 1812 and in the …

gametheory.life/2025/07/26/i...

Predictable and Predictably Unpredictable Warfare [Photo by Rafael Garcin on Unsplash] In C. S. Forester’s Hornblower and the Hotspur, Horatio Hornblower is a captain of a three-masted sloop (one of the smaller ships at the time), the Hotspu…

gametheory.life/2025/07/22/p...

I will be presenting the updated draft of my paper "Renegotiation-Proof Cheap Talk" (with @ckuzmics.bsky.social) at SAET next week. (Link to paper below.)

One thing you always wanted to know about corals (they are optimizers in a stochastic environment)
rdcu.be/enEba

Electing the pope A new pope will be chosen in the papal conclave starting Wednesday 7 May 2025. Omitting some (I believe irrelevant) details, the procedure is roughly as follows: All cardinals under 80, who are wel…

gametheory.life/2025/05/05/e...

A book club choosing the next book to read Some little time ago, my mother-in-law asked me if I knew of a good way for her book club to decide which book to read next. The problem is this. Usually, various members make suggestions and so th…

gametheory.life/2025/03/30/a...

optimized for readability

Let's see what people say ;)

True!

But maybe it should be called the fundamental theorem of Bayesian Statistics.

I like Abraham Wald's Complete Class Theorem, now sometimes known as Pearce's Lemma: a strategy is undominated (in the set of mixed strategies) iff it is Bayesian (a best reply to some belief about the opponent's strategies). So I guess this is your last point, but I like the uniterated version.

Right. Like Biometrika just with Econ. Am not falling for that!

This is not what you first think it is.

you can underline everything :)

Our answer should have been "Game theory is not one hammer but a large toolkit. Moreover, it is exactly the toolkit developed for modelling (consciously or unconsciously) strategic interaction."

Our answer to this jury question at our grant hearing was not as good as it could have been. It was essentially "modelling a real life interaction with game theory requires more skill than hitting sthg with a hammer."

I would ideally like more reflection after seeing the model than I usually see. Why certain modelling choices were made or not made. This would require 60mins. But it depends a bit on the content of the paper.

Our answer was of course that mother nature gives plants intentions.

Our slightly unwilling answer here was that yes agent based simulation is also part of the game theory plus toolkit, but we would always prefer provable conclusions (or even closed form solutions).

i think you can do both here too

I can come up with an intuition only after doing the math. And yes, I can then explain it without math.

It does!

Q3: What I see is that you have this hammer called game theory and you are desperately (ok this is my addition) trying to find something to hit it with.

Q2: How can plants have intentions?

Q1: When you same game theory you really mean game theory plus, right? For instance, agent based simulation models?

We had 45 mins. 20 mins presentation and 25 mins questions and answers. I am simplifying here.

My grant application "Strategies of Life" for funding 5 PhD students using game theory to study strategic interaction of humans, animals, plants, fungi, and microbes passed the referee stage. Last Thursday we had the final hearing. I want to share some of the questions we got.

Agree. As in "I believe in universal healthcare" or "I believe in you."