from David Ruccio

source*

Back when I taught Principles of Microeconomics, I offered a lecture or two on game theory. Given how terrible most textbook presentations are, I used to borrowed heavily from the work of Judith Mehta and Shaun Hargreaves-Heap and Yanis Varoufakis to explain the key assumptions behind and the tensions generated within game theory.

Now, Varoufakis is back—in a very different capacity, of course—to explain the lesson he learned from his studies of game theory:

The trouble with game theory, as I used to tell my students, is that it takes for granted the players’ motives. In poker or blackjack this assumption is unproblematic. But in the current deliberations between our European partners and Greece’s new government, the whole point is to forge new motives. To fashion a fresh mind-set that transcends national divides, dissolves the creditor-debtor distinction in favor of a pan-European perspective, and places the common European good above petty politics, dogma that proves toxic if universalized, and an us-versus-them mind-set.

And the payoff?

One may think that this retreat from game theory is motivated by some radical-left agenda. Not so. The major influence here is Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher who taught us that the rational and the free escape the empire of expediency by doing what is right.
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