If there was something I was looking forward in the European Conference on Complex Systems it was today’s workshop on Evolution and game theory.
The workshop was organised by J. Claussen (Kiel), C. Hauert (Harvard) and G. Szabo (Budapest) and allowed me to to have an overview of recent research in game theory. Of course this view will be biased, first by the fact that not every game theoretician is interested in complex systems (and thus won’t attend a conference like this) and also because the organisers probably have their own preferences too. Thus, although my view until now is the GT is more popular among economists and evolutionary biologists, a good proportion of the speakers today were physicists.
That may (or may not) have influenced much their topic of research. In general the talks focused on the classical games used to study the evolution of co-operation: prisoners dilemma and public goods game (I mentioned an introduction to these games in an old post). With this games in mind people try all kinds of variations: spatial models, games with stochastic payoffs, stochastic strategies, games with more than two players interacting, games in which players interact via graphs (or networks). Although not much was shown in terms of applications it was quite helpful to listen about things I could use to improve my glycolysis game.
The workshop also allowed me to introduce my model to some people like Jacek Miękisz (Warsaw) so I got a few hints of what I could use in the next version.
Your post reminded me that I must buy Prisoner’s Dilemma. I remember reading this as a student and thinking that it was fantastic!
The “game” that I find myself in the most frequently is the dollar auction. The dilemma is usually whether to use public transport or to walk!
Hi Bronwen,
Thanks for your comment and especially for your suggestion of the book. I still have not found any popular book on game theory worth reading.