Link Dump Monday

A collection of WWII Political cartoons by Dr. Seuss

I'm sure you've all heard about the guy who sails around stalking and harassing whaling fleets by now.

10 important social psychology studies on why people do dumb stuff.

Stuck

So I was reading about Nash Equilibrium the other day. I'm sure there's lots of complexities that aren't covered in the wikipedia article, but there was one thought that stuck out for me. It's in the introduction paragraph, so I can't really claim it's a great insight, though I think their example is non-ideal. "However, Nash equilibrium does not necessarily mean the best cumulative payoff for all the players involved; in many cases all the players might improve their payoffs if they could somehow agree on strategies different from the Nash equilibrium (e.g. competing businesses forming a cartel in order to increase their profits)."

It's entirely about local equilibria. Which is an important and valuable tool, in the way that a photograph is an important and valuable tool, but it you draw all your conclusions just from either, you miss an important axis, the changes over time.

It also doesn't work when one or more of the participants aren't aiming at maximizing their whatever. Which is also covered in the article

So, I guess I'm not really adding anything about it, but it's still an interesting article and concept, so yeah.