Discover, access and organize your educational content. Virulent Word of Mouse. Marginal Revolution — Small steps toward a much better world. The Leisure of the Theory Class. A Fine Theorem. Stephen Williamson: New Monetarist Economics. Cheap Talk. Stumbling and Mumbling. Nobody will thank me for saying so, but I have a bit of a mancrush on Ed Smith. Yet again, he has raised a profound point in the social sciences: Nakedly ambitious people rarely achieve their ambitions...Simplistic self-interest is not just bad PR, it is often bad strategy.
It suffers from a fatal flaw: it is predictable. This draws our attention to the fact that, in some domains, randomness is the best policy. This is most clear - and has been formalized by game theorists - in the case of games such as rock-paper-scissors where predictability leads to defeat. In such circumstances, the optimal strategy is to randomize. To what extent do such games exist in the real world? I suspect they exist in other fields. However, randomness doesn't just work when the other player is trying to anticipate our actions. Take a simple example. But it doesn't follow that it is the optimum strategy. To maximize the chances of survival, a mixed strategy is needed.
NfA.