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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: net.sci,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Prisoner's Dilemma
Message-ID: <2007@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 22-Mar-86 23:07:01 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.2007
Posted: Sat Mar 22 23:07:01 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Mar-86 03:31:55 EST
References: <899@decwrl.DEC.COM> <402@aoa.UUCP> <192@ulowell.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.ARPA
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL)
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Xref: watmath net.sci:642 net.philosophy:4643

In article <792@harvard.UUCP> greg@harvard.UUCP (Greg) writes:
>In article <12481@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> tedrick@ernie.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Tom Tedrick) writes:
>>Also, I never took Hofstatder seriously after reading GEB.
>>Was that a mistake?
>No, it wasn't.  If you think GEB is bad, take a look at how Hofstatder handled
>the Prisoner's Dilemma (the non-iterative one) in Mathemagical Themas in
>Scientific American.  Hofstatder apparently decided that his own philosophical
>meanderings were mathematically more correct than basic game theory.  Also,
>a friend of mine read "The Mind's I", and said that it only repeated parts of
>GEB.  I happened to go to one of his talks freshman year, and he again re-
>peated parts of GEB.

Many years ago, Anatol Rapoport had a Scientific American article
on games such as The Prisoner's Dilemma, in which he too tried to
argue against the logical conclusion of basic game theory,
primarily on the ground that he didn't like the result.  I was so
annoyed that I wrote my first letter-to-the-editor, but it wasn't
published.

"The Mind's I" did more than repeat GEB (for one thing, it was a
collection of articles by various writers), but it didn't really
lead to any particularly useful conclusions.

GEB impressed some people, apparently: it won a Pulitzer prize.