Well in that case classical game theory doesn’t seem up to the task, since in order to make optimal decisions you’d need a probability distribution over the opponent’s strategies, no?
Right, vanilla game theory is mostly not a tool for making decisions.
It’s about studying the structure of strategic interactions, with the idea that some kind of equilibrium concept should have predictive power about what you’ll see in practice. On the one hand, if you get two humans together and tell them the rules of a matrix game, Nash equilibrium has relatively little predictive power. But there are many situations across biology, computer science, economics and more where various equilibrium concepts have plenty of predictive power.
Well in that case classical game theory doesn’t seem up to the task, since in order to make optimal decisions you’d need a probability distribution over the opponent’s strategies, no?
Right, vanilla game theory is mostly not a tool for making decisions.
It’s about studying the structure of strategic interactions, with the idea that some kind of equilibrium concept should have predictive power about what you’ll see in practice. On the one hand, if you get two humans together and tell them the rules of a matrix game, Nash equilibrium has relatively little predictive power. But there are many situations across biology, computer science, economics and more where various equilibrium concepts have plenty of predictive power.
But doesn’t the calculation of those equilibria require making an assumption about the opponent’s strategy?