Hi Brian, >Hi Keith, >John Holt, who wrote "How Children Fail" and many other books, wrote about >simulations in one of them. Basically what he said was that you do not >learn how to play poker with monopoly money. It appears that you do but >until YOUR OWN REAL MONEY is on the line no real understanding can be >ascertained.
I'm sure that using monopoly money to learn poker is adequate. I'd like to see the proof of Holt's assertion. Several thousand papers on game theory must have been peer reviewed and published in the scientific journals in the past 20-30 years. If they were not applicable to reality, don't you think someone else would have rumbled? American nuclear defence strategy from about the 60s has been based on the game simulations of von Neumann, Nash and, in more recent years, Axelrod. (And, what's more, the same game theory was also the basis of Soviet strategy. As I wrote before, you can't generalise from game theory. Precise conditions must be specified. Given these limitations, game theory is being found useful in explaining many niches not covered by the broader economic theories. Here's a little fun experiment that might persuade you about the verisimilitude of games. Play a game of chess when fitted up with a skin resistance meter or an electronic blood-pressure device -- and watch your (real!) stress levels when contemplating moves. Keith At 12:19 16/02/02 -0500, you wrote: >At 03:40 PM 2/16/2002 +0000, Keith Hudson shared: >>Daniel Zizzo of Oxford University and andrew oswalkd of Warwick University >>crafted a series of experiemtns in which groups of four people were given >>nearly equal sums of money. The four had to gamble with their new wealth in >>random, computerised bets; two came out each time with more cash, and two >>with less. > > >Hi Keith, >John Holt, who wrote "How Children Fail" and many other books, wrote about >simulations in one of them. Basically what he said was that you do not >learn how to play poker with monopoly money. It appears that you do but >until YOUR OWN REAL MONEY is on the line no real understanding can be >ascertained. The same can be said for the infamous life raft simulation >that was used to teach stages of moral development. Who really knows what >they would do in life or death situations until you find yourself in such a >situation. Think of the fireman and police going up the stairs of the world >trade centre on 09/11/02 as most of the money traders ran down. >Victor Frankl in "Man's Search for Meaning" witnessed many heroes at >Auschwitz take the place of many who were picked to go to the ovens. > >Brian McAndrews > > > > __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
