Game Theory, Nash equilibrium and Nygren equilibrium

in gametheory •  6 years ago  (edited)

I will use a meme that I saw on the internet to illustrate how slave mentality tends to form idealized world views, a form of repression. It suggested that since humans in the past lived in non-ideal worlds, they have inherited a suite of psychological mechanisms that cause them to perceive the present, ideal world, as non-ideal,

"We propose that people possess a functionally integrated mental system to detect conspiracies that in all likelihood has been shaped in an ancestral human environment in which hostile coalitions—that is, conspiracies that truly existed—were a frequent cause of misery, death, and reproductive loss. "

That proposition is great, except it misses that it is based on a false assumption: the present is not ideal. Basic game theory shows that society at this day is based on similar hostile coalitions—that is, conspiracies that truly exist—a frequent cause of misery, death, and reproductive loss, game of thrones more or less. The use of a monopoly on violence for social coordination enforces behaviour by threat of violence (then violence when not compliant), and this acts on lower level brain systems, that have been inherited evolutionarily. All very very primitive.

There are formal frameworks that study how social coordination games inform behaviour, and to this date there have not been any ideal games, and so people continue to conspire back and forth, of course. There are game theoretical equilibriums like the Nash equilibrium where people would not be out to get one another, that has been debated, theoretically, for half a century, there is some work around systems that are based on non-conspiring strategies, making progress.

So as much as it is nice that people express ideas, the idea that humans have inherited a suite of psychological mechanisms that cause them to perceive the present as a world with hostile coalitions, that proposition falls on that the present is a world with hostile coalitions.

Why then do people choose to idealize their world and double-think? There are simple memetic drives, the memes that are loudest in ordering genes to replicate them have a survival advantage, and simple genetic imperatives like to approach pleasure and avoid pain, selecting for an "opium for the people" that "feels" good. That is why you had state religion in the middle ages, and today as well.

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