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Quote by Anatol Rapoport

“The usefulness of the models in constructing a testable theory of the process is severely limited by the quickly increasing number of parameters which must be estimated in order to compare the predictions of the models with empirical results.”

Quote by Anatol Rapoport

Book:Prisoner's Dilemma: A Study in Conflict and Cooperation

Work

Prisoner's Dilemma: A Study in Conflict and Cooperation

This book delves into the prisoner's dilemma, a foundational concept in game theory, analyzing the strategic choices and outcomes when individuals or groups must decide whether to cooperate or compete. It examines the implications of these decisions in various contexts, including economics, politics, and social interactions. more

Author

Anatol Rapoport

Anatol Rapoport was a renowned psychologist, born on May 22, 1911, and passed away on January 20, 2007. He made significant contributions to the fields of cognitive psychology, game theory, and conflict resolution. more

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“(Game theory is) essentially a structural theory. It uncovers the logical structure of a great variety of conflict situations and describes this structure in mathematical terms. Sometimes the logical structure of a conflict situation admits rational decisions; sometimes it does not.”

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Author:Anatol Rapoport

“Centralization of society's vital services in giant computer centers, reservoirs, nuclear power plants, air- traffic control centers, 100-story skyscrapers, and government compounds increases its vulnerability. ... choosing his targets, today's saboteur could pollute a city's water supply, dynamite power transmission towers, cripple an airport control center, destroy a corporate or government computer center.”

“The outcome of a non-constant-sum game may be dictated by the individual rationality of the respective players without satisfying a criterion of collective rationality.”

May Games Individual Player Constant Outcomes Collectives Satisfying Rationality Criteria

Author:Anatol Rapoport

“The purpose of formulating [a] conflict as a game is not that of resolving the conflict by 'solving the game.' It is that of displaying the structure of the conflict and thereby exposing features of it that may be concealed by rhetoric. In particular, appreciation of the peculiar structure of some of the so-called mixed - motive conflicts represented nonzero-sum games may change the conflicting parties' perception of their situation.”

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Author:Anatol Rapoport

“In the US. Infantry Manual published during World War II, the soldier was told what to do if a live grenade fell into the trench where he and others were sitting: to wrap himself around the grenade so as to at least save the others. (If no one "volunteered," all would be killed, and there were only a few seconds to decide who would be the hero.)”

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“We are now considering legislation based on statistics that include name-calling at public rallies as crimes. Are we going on to the school yards of this country and when two kids get angry with each other and call each other names -- what are we going to do, cart them over to the reformatory or add them to the list of 'hate crimes' perpetrators? This is ridiculous.”

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“No one believes for a moment the embargo will prompt the Iraqi people to rise against Saddam Hussein.”

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“There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend.”

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“No chord in populism reverberates more strongly than the notion that the robust common sense of an unstained outsider is the best medicine for an ailing polity. Caligula doubtless got big cheers from the plebs when he installed his horse as proconsul.”

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“Cockburn's personal history links him to the politics of the Communist Party, and there are still moments in his writing - debating the number of people estimated to have perished in Stalin's gulags, claiming that 'the Brezhnev years were a Golden Age for the Soviet working class', when aspects of his father's convictions can be glimpsed.”