POL 314 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: John Harsanyi, Sequential Game, Strategic Thinking
20 May 2020
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Document Summary
Instrumental rationality is applicable but the players must take into account how other rational players set their goals, and how they intend to achieve them: this kind of strategic thinking is as old as warfare, of course. Military leaders have acted strategically since antiquity (napoleon, hannibal, etc. : the first game theorists, strategic thinking is not new. The mathematician ernest zermelo (1871-1953) proved that any game of chess must (theoretically) always have one solution anticipating the notion of equilibrium (i. e. , in pure theory white cannot lose): the big bang: j. Von neumann & o. morgenstern"s the theory of games & economic behavior (1944): jvn had already formulated the maximin theorem in 1928 (i. e. , solution to zero-sum games). A few definitions: incomplete info means that the players do not know the strategy set of their opponents (i. e. , the rules of the game are not fully known).
