#michael chwe

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A friend put me on to this super awesome book and also the cover art was done by Sonny Liew!

[linpeijyun]

Ayear of books今年第七本書：Rational Ritual by Michael Chwe.

也有中文版：理性的儀式

[universaltruthsrevealed-blog]

Michael Chwe on Austen

"The discussion here introduces many topics analyzed more systematically..such as the distinction between strategicness and selfishness, strategic partnership as the best foundation for marriage, making good choices even when overpowered by emotion, the necessity of understanding others' minds as different from your own, and the risk that status consciousness can make you strategically stupid (Chwe, 50).

Resources:

Chwe, Michael. Jane Austen, Game Theorist. New Jersey: Princeton University, 1965. Print.

After the Chwe lecture and the particular emphasis he placed on socially inferior people being better strategists, I thought this quotation really highlighted the importance of understanding your opponent's mind when trying to strategically outplay them.

[ucresearch]

Jane Austen, Game Theorist

Although whiffs of game theory have been discerned in writings as old as Plato, its conventional history begins with the 1944 publication of von Neumann's seminal "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior." The techniques gained prominence as a means of anticipating attacks and counterattacks among superpowers during the Cold War, and they played a role in determining the quantity and positioning of U.S. nuclear warheads.

"Austen's novels are game theory textbooks.  She's trying to get readers to use their higher thinking skills and to think strategically."

In many cases, by making tough choices and predicting how others will respond, Austen's young (often financially deprived) heroines triumph over seemingly stronger forces, including well-to-do men and older women of higher status, he argues. In so doing, they find happiness and — just as importantly in an era with limited employment and inheritance possibilities for women — financial security.

"They build a theory of strategic thinking, not to better chase a Soviet submarine, but to survive."

Read the first chapter →

[psionotic]

Michael Chwe, Author, Sees Jane Austen as Game Theorist

Jane Austen was a seminal thinker in the as-yet-unnamed science of game theory, the author Michael Chwe maintains in his new book.

Jane Austen, game theorist? When I first saw this, I thought it said, 'Jane Austen, genre terrorist,' which would also have been good.

[kcinpa]

Jane got game theory.

[pejmanyousefzadeh]

Jane Austen: Game Theorist

No, seriously:

It’s not every day that someone stumbles upon a major new strategic thinker during family movie night. But that’s what happened to Michael Chwe, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, when he sat down with his children some eight years ago to watch “Clueless,” the 1995 romantic comedy based on Jane Austen’s “Emma."

Mr. Chwe (pronounced CHEH), the author of papers like “Farsighted Coalitional Stability” and “Anonymous Procedures for Condorcet’s Model: Robustness, Nonmonotonicity and Optimality,” had never cracked “Emma” or “Pride and Prejudice.” But on screen, he saw glimmers of a strategic intelligence that would make Henry Kissinger blush.

“This movie was all about manipulation,” Mr. Chwe, a practitioner of the hard-nosed science of game theory, said recently by telephone. “I had always been taught that game theory was a mathematical thing. But when you think about it, people have been thinking about strategic action for a long time.”

Mr. Chwe set to doing his English homework, and now his assignment is in. “Jane Austen, Game Theorist,” just published by Princeton University Press, is more than the larky scholarly equivalent of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” In 230 diagram-heavy pages, Mr. Chwe argues that Austen isn’t merely fodder for game-theoretical analysis, but an unacknowledged founder of the discipline itself: a kind of Empire-waisted version of the mathematician and cold war thinker John von Neumann, ruthlessly breaking down the stratagems of 18th-century social warfare.

Or, as Mr. Chwe puts it in the book, “Anyone interested in human behavior should read Austen because her research program has results.”

Modern game theory is generally dated to 1944, with the publication of von Neumann’s “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,” which imagined human interactions as a series of moves and countermoves aimed at maximizing “payoff.” Since then the discipline has thrived, often dominating political science, economics and biology departments with densely mathematical analyses of phenomena as diverse as nuclear brinkmanship, the fate of protest movements, stock trading and predator behavior.

But a century and a half earlier, Mr. Chwe argues, Austen was very deliberately trying to lay philosophical groundwork for a new theory of strategic action, sometimes charting territory that today’s theoreticians have themselves failed to reach.

[. . .]

Most game theory, he noted, treats players as equally “rational” parties sitting across a chessboard. But many situations, Mr. Chwe points out, involve parties with unequal levels of strategic thinking. Sometimes a party may simply lack ability. But sometimes a powerful party faced with a weaker one may not realize it even needs to think strategically.

Take the scene in “Pride and Prejudice” where Lady Catherine de Bourgh demands that Elizabeth Bennet promise not to marry Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth refuses to promise, and Lady Catherine repeats this to Mr. Darcy as an example of her insolence — not realizing that she is helping Elizabeth indirectly signal to Mr. Darcy that she is still interested.

It’s a classic case of cluelessness, which is distinct from garden-variety stupidity, Mr. Chwe argues. “Lady Catherine doesn’t even think that Elizabeth” — her social inferior — “could be manipulating her,” he said. (Ditto for Mr. Darcy: gender differences can also “cause cluelessness,” he noted, though Austen was generally more tolerant of the male variety.)

Thanks to Tyler Cowen for the link.