Review of Stirling's Theory of Conditional Games

摘要

Our preferences do not exist in a vacuum. When we are discussing where to go to dinner with friends, for instance, we may advocate for our own favorite places, but we may also be quite happy to accommodate what our friends want, even if we don't yet know what that is. Sociality is also a desirable feature for groups of artificial agents that need to coordinate or negotiate without a central controller. Unfortunately, classical game theory's assumption of unconditional individual rationality often yields solution concepts that require sacrificing efficiency for safety from exploitation (e.g., the low-utility Prisoner's Dilemma equilibrium) or give little guidance as to the best action (e.g., the opposite equilibria in a coordination game), and don't shed much light on human behavior. In his book Theory of Conditional Games, Wynn C. Stirling introduces an extended model of game theory that is fully capable of expressing classical games but also allows for agents to concern themselves with each other's preferences rather than strictly maximizing their own payoffs.