β Scribed by Marshall Jevons
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Veblen, whose books often were the subject of critical review, only once engaged himself in writing a reply. He did so when he deemed it necessary to correct 'misdirected criticisms' of his The Theory of the Leisure Class by the book's reviewer. In like fashion, this endeavor is to correct certain technical and factual errors made by David Friedman in his review of Murder at the Margin (Public Choice 34 (1979): 233-236). I shall not comment on that portion of his review which is subjective, but I shall take the opportunity to remedy a misperception Friedman has about economic methodology as well.
Friedman's main criticism is his claim that when the book's protagonist, Professor Henry Spearman, moves away from non-trivial applications of economics, he makes mistakes. The only example of this shortcoming that Friedman spells out is in his discussion of Spearman's use of the minimax strategy to solve the prisoner's dilemma. Friedman says that ' . . . minimax or saddle point is the solution concept appropriate to two-person fixed-sum games, of which Prisoner's Dilemma is not o n e . . . ' Friedman's argument that Spearman commits a technical mistake ultimately rests on a semantic quibble.
Mathematicians typically do not use the term 'minimax' strategy to apply to cases involving dominances, but eliminating dominated strategy always 'maximizes' your minimum and there is no reason why the term 'minimax' should not be used in such cases. Friedman's view that saddlepoints occur only in zero sum games is also incorrect although it is true that most of the examples given in the texts involve zero sum games. The presumed reason for this is that mixed strategies can always be computed for zero sum games and hence they are of more interest to most game theorists than the non-zero sum games.
The novel makes clear exactly what the payoff matrix is. Once the options facing the prisoners are known, confession must follow. Knowing this, Spearman rejected those confessions as proof of guilt. What is involved here is a special form of what in the book is called 'a prisoner's dilemma.' Friedman refers to 'Prisoner's Dilemma' (the capital letters are his) giving
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
Many invertebrates have supplementary extraocular photoreceptors that often are implicated in circadian rhythms. An extraretinal group of candidate photoreceptors in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has been revealed previously at the posterior margin of the compound eye by using a photorecep
Mr. Jay, a third grade teacher has a lot to be thankful for as the Thanksgiving Holiday approaches. Could it be that his small stuffed lamb moved from the shelf to save him? Join Mr. Jay to find out as each chapter unfolds the mystery of this fictional thriller written for children. ABC : 1 Nu
Mr. Jay, a third grade teacher has a lot to be thankful for as the Thanksgiving Holiday approaches. Could it be that his small stuffed lamb moved from the shelf to save him? Join Mr. Jay to find out as each chapter unfolds the mystery of this fictional thriller written for children.