Game Theory And Human Nature

This Wired News article highlights remarks by Martin Shubik, an eminent economist and game theorist, who is advocating pushing the use of game theory in economics beyond its grounding in rationality and strategy, to incorporate such human traits as emotion and error.

Last Wednesday, Shubik told the audience of game theorists with mathematics backgrounds that the next theories have to be hammered out “in concert” with other disciplines. The next theories, he said, have to consider emotions and their consequences, the culture and the context.

“Our simple models are no longer sufficient to answer many of the questions we have raised. The very successes of game theory are forcing us to move on,” said Shubik, an economics professor at the Yale University School of Management and a consultant to major corporations and agencies of foreign governments.

Very interesting. Perhaps the technocratic mathematization of my profession is in retreat? I’m not holding my breath, but as more prominent scholars recognize the need for interdisciplinary study of human action, I get more sanguine.