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Peiyuan Zhu (Aug 30 2021 at 20:45):Is there any good reference to unify game theory/decision theory with theoretical computer science? I looked at this book that draws connection between expressing game properties with program verification and model checking, but I wonder if there's a better reference that discusses this problem.
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/#Games
[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logics-for-games/#LogiGameTheo
[3] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-10575-8
Alex Gryzlov (Sep 01 2021 at 14:26):@Jules Hedges has a paper on that:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.11287 Hedges, [2020] "The game semantics of game theory"
Alex Gryzlov (Sep 01 2021 at 15:09):I think most of @Jules Hedges work on open games is in that direction actually
Jules Hedges (Sep 01 2021 at 17:11):In fact it didn't start out as what I was trying to do, I was as surprised as anybody that the game semantic perspective was useful to what I was working on
Jules Hedges (Sep 01 2021 at 17:12):The half-joke-half-serious thing is that I wrote that paper after getting annoyed at having to explain one time too many that no, I'm not working on game semantics, game theory is different
John Baez (Sep 01 2021 at 17:19):Only in a category theory crowd would people think "game theory" referred to "game semantics". The number of people who know what game semantics is must be 1% of the number who know about game theory.
Jules Hedges (Sep 01 2021 at 17:28):Yeah, this was while I was in the Oxford Quantum group, with Samson Abramsky
Jules Hedges (Sep 01 2021 at 17:29):And just generally hanging around with a whole lot of theoretical computer scientists
John Baez (Sep 01 2021 at 17:42):Right. Around there if you say "anyone up for a game of tennis?" they'll say "you mean game semantics?"
Henry Story (Sep 01 2021 at 17:59):I was reading a bit about game semantics a few years ago when I was lot richer but had a lot less knowledge, and had trouble understanding linear logic. If I remember there are two players in the game: one the environement and the other the program or something like that. It seems very relevant for explaining how HTTP works. But as @Jules Hedges shows that his games are related to Lenses, and web servers can be thought of as lenses...
The Web does have another relation to game theory though, in so far as the representationas exchanged (e.g. HTML) is a language that follows a convention - the meaning of <a href="...">link</a> is arbitrary) and conventions were given a Game Theoretical analysis by David K. Lewis in his 1969 thesis "Convention".
dusko (Sep 02 2021 at 03:47):John Baez said:
Only in a category theory crowd would people think "game theory" referred to "game semantics". The number of people who know what game semantics is must be 1% of the number who know about game theory.
to be fair, the 99% of people who would understand "game theory" as a reference to the theory of equilibria, would also miss the entire theory of combinatorial games, a la conway-guy-berlekamp, which perhaps has more to do with actual gaming. or not.
the fact that large groups of people use a word like "game", or "democracy", or "security", in a certain sense does not necessarily mean that their sense is better, or less misleading, than another sense. game semantics was also such a movement, and jules is honestly saying in which context he used his metaphor of games.
Peiyuan Zhu asked for a CS / game theory link. there was a book "Algorithmic Game Theory" edited by noam nIsan and eva tardos a couple of years back, trying to summarize what came out of the computational uses of the gaming metaphor.
Henry Story (Sep 02 2021 at 05:46):Seems to be about 10 years back Algorithmic Game Theory, CUP 2011. Img
Henry Story (Sep 02 2021 at 05:53):@dusko The reason I mentioned the web above is that we are building an access control system for it. And so having a model of the web is very important for that. I would be very interested in your feedback on that.
Jules Hedges (Sep 02 2021 at 09:36):Right, the way I see it, "game" is an extremely flexible metaphor and, like "number", it's reasonable to use it for several loosely related fields
Nick Hu (Sep 02 2021 at 09:51):Is this like how sometimes people say 'category theory' when they mean 'petri nets', or 'ZX calculus', etc.?
John Baez (Sep 02 2021 at 14:54):the fact that large groups of people use a word like "game", or "democracy", or "security", in a certain sense does not necessarily mean that their sense is better, or less misleading, than another sense.
Right. Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting any such thing. I was just finding it hilarious that Jules had to keep telling people that his work on game theory was not about game semantics, since that misunderstanding would only happen in a very specialized environment. I imagine the reverse misunderstanding happens more often! Jules was like an island in a lake in an island.
dusko (Sep 07 2021 at 19:31):John Baez said:
the fact that large groups of people use a word like "game", or "democracy", or "security", in a certain sense does not necessarily mean that their sense is better, or less misleading, than another sense.
Right. Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting any such thing. I was just finding it hilarious that Jules had to keep telling people that his work on game theory was not about game semantics, since that misunderstanding would only happen in a very specialized environment. I imagine the reverse misunderstanding happens more often! Jules was like an island in a lake in an island.
yes, that is a wonderful metaphor!
but now jules has 6666 followers on twitter. and you probably have 666666. the world of communities in networks of networks seems to generate as much complexity in metadata and form as in data and content. it's not just lakes and islands. it's not just that there are boats in the lakes on islands. there are probably islands with lakes with oil platforms, and there are cruisers in the middle of burning oil spills. and there are swimming pool communities on the cruisers in oil in lake on the island in the ocean. maybe there are islands within the swimming pool communities. the web has been really great for lakes on islands. and for distributing the CERN preprints of course.