Today someone asked me my thoughts on the utility of game theory for national security #wargaming. My thoughts are that there is none. Also, anyone who conflates the two is a danger to themself and others. [1/8]
#Wargaming is valuable for policy making because it surfaces important real-world context and organizational difficulties. Game theory abstracts too much context away to help with actual policy problems. [2/8]
Thomas Schelling, a pioneering wargamer and Nobel Laureate in game theory, argued in The Strategy of Conflict (1960) that formal game theory was pitched at too abstract a level to help thinking on topics such as deterrence. [3/8]
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“The mathematical structure of the payoff function should not be permitted to dominate the analysis.” Schelling (1960). He also warned against too much abstraction, as drastically altering the amount of context or removing complications could change the nature of the game. [4/8]
I even got to ask Schelling in 2014: what was the connection between his crisis gaming and his work on cooperative game theory? He said there was none. It stunned me at the time. [5/8]
This points to a significant intellectual weakness in political science. Commonly taught methods (game theory and regression) have little value for national security problems. Game theory because it removes too much context, regression because there’s usually no data. [6/8]
But when all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.
Game theory + no organizational context = math with no relevance. [7/8]
Game theory + no organizational context = math with no relevance. [7/8]
And before you mansplain game theory math to me: I was in calculus at age 14, an MIT undergrad, a statistics TA in grad school, and took game theory with Schelling. Tell me what you did at age 14 and who taught you game theory first. [8/8]
