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Mother Nature Refuses To Play By The Rules
Apr. 9th, 2007 12:32 amOne of my Game Theory books includes an "often-cited concrete application of game-theoretic reasoning."
It's involving Fishermen trying to decide how to fish on two banks. "We shall imagine that Nature is the opponent of the villagers and that Nature has two strategies: currents and no currents."
After all the calculations were done and real-life data gathered (read: two pages of math mumbo-jumbo), the fishermen were pretty damn close to what the math said they should be doing.
Mother Nature, on the other hand wasn't, and her strategy was obviously set to the fuck-you-fishermen mode, because it meant that both the math and what the fishermen were doing was wrong for maximum gains.
The best part is the summary line used in the book: "This casts doubt on the advisability of considering Nature as a player in a game."
No shit, Sherlock.
It's involving Fishermen trying to decide how to fish on two banks. "We shall imagine that Nature is the opponent of the villagers and that Nature has two strategies: currents and no currents."
After all the calculations were done and real-life data gathered (read: two pages of math mumbo-jumbo), the fishermen were pretty damn close to what the math said they should be doing.
Mother Nature, on the other hand wasn't, and her strategy was obviously set to the fuck-you-fishermen mode, because it meant that both the math and what the fishermen were doing was wrong for maximum gains.
The best part is the summary line used in the book: "This casts doubt on the advisability of considering Nature as a player in a game."
No shit, Sherlock.
