Game Theory and Signalling in the Natural World

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Games in the philosophy of biology, i start basiclly. I mean, do we talk about sort of the robustness of how certain signals develop, and it's useful? And then you can start saying, well, but what if someone starts lying or being deceitful somehow? Ye. Well, i mean, so usually you want to break up this literature on game theory and signalling approximately into two big camps. One is common interest signalling signals when the two individuals involved kind of want the same thing. So that would be like a common interest type of scenario. A conflict of interest type scenario is the sort of other area that you want to separate off where a the sender and the receiver of

You can’t always get what you want, as a wise person once said. But we do try, even when someone else wants the same thing. Our lives as people, and the evolution of other animals over time, are shaped by competition for scarce resources of various kinds. Game theory provides a natural framework for understanding strategies and behaviors in these competitive settings, and thus provides a lens with which to analyze evolution and human behavior, up to and including why racial or gender groups are consistently discriminated against in society. Cailin O’Connor is the author or two recent books on these issues: Games in the Philosophy of Biology and The Origins of Unfairness: Social Categories and Cultural Evolution.

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Cailin O’Connor received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine. She is currently Associate Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science at UCI. Her works involves questions in the philosophy of biology and behavioral science, game theory, agent-based modeling, social epistemology, decision theory, rational choice, and the spread of misinformation.

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