40,333 research outputs found

    Underdogs and superheroes: Designing for new players in public space

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    We are exploring methods for participatory and public involvement of new 'players' in the design space. Underdogs & Superheroes involves a game-based methodology – a series of creative activities or games – in order to engage people experientially, creatively, and personally throughout the design process. We have found that games help engage users’ imaginations by representing reality without limiting expectations to what's possible here and now; engaging experiential and personal perspectives (the 'whole' person); and opening the creative process to hands-on user participation through low/no-tech materials and a widely-understood approach. The methods are currently being applied in the project Underdogs & Superheroes, which aims to evolve technological interventions for personal and community presence in local public spaces

    Lowest Unique Bid Auctions

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    We consider a class of auctions (Lowest Unique Bid Auctions) that have achieved a considerable success on the Internet. Bids are made in cents (of euro) and every bidder can bid as many numbers as she wants. The lowest unique bid wins the auction. Every bid has a fixed cost, and once a participant makes a bid, she gets to know whether her bid was unique and whether it was the lowest unique. Information is updated in real time, but every bidder sees only what's relevant to the bids she made. We show that the observed behavior in these auctions differs considerably from what theory would prescribe if all bidders were fully rational. We show that the seller makes money, which would not be the case with rational bidders, and some bidders win the auctions quite often. We describe a possible strategy for these bidders

    What's a face worth: Noneconomic factors in game playing

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    Where behavior defies economic analysis, one explanation is that individuals consider more than the immediate payoff. We present evidence that noneconomic factors influence behavior. Attractiveness influences offers in the Ultimatum and Dictator Games. Facial resemblance, a cue of relatedness, increases trusting in a two-node trust game. Only by considering the range of possible influences will game-playing behavior be explained

    On the Truly Noncooperative Game of Island Life: Introducing a Unified Theory of Value & Evolutionarily Stable Island Economic Development Strategy

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    This discourse offers a solution to The Problem of Sustainable Economic Development on islands. This hypothesis offers a foundational, sub-game solution to The Island Survival Game, a counterintuitive, dominant economic development strategy for ‘islands’ (and relatively insular states). This discourse also tables conceptual building blocks, prerequisite analytical tools, and a guiding principle for The Earth Island Survival Game, a bounded delay supergame which models The Problem of Sustainable Economic Development at the global level. We begin our exploration with an introduction to The Principle of Relative Insularity, a postulate which informs ESS for ‘island’ and ‘continental’ players alike. Next, we model ‘island’ economic development with two bio-geo-politico-economic models and respective strategies: The Mustique Co. Development Plan, and The Prince Edward Island Federal-Provincial Program for Social and Economic Advancement. These diametrically opposed strategies offer an extraordinary comparative study. One island serves as a highly descriptive model for The Problem of Sustainable Economic Development; the other model informs ESS. The Island Survival Game serves as a remarkable learning tool, offering lessons which promote Darwinian fitness, resource holding power, self-sufficiency, and cooperative behaviour, by illuminating the illusive path toward sustainable economic development.Non-cooperative games, evolutionary game theory, relative insularity, islands, tragedy of the commons, sustainable economic development, resource holding power, evolutionarily stable strategy, long distance dispersal

    What's the matter with realism?

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    International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheim—a lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of ‘the international’

    Behavioral game theory: Plausible formal models that predict accurately

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    Many weaknesses of game theory are cured by new models that embody simple cognitive principles, while maintaining the formalism and generality that makes game theory useful. Social preference models can generate team reasoning by combining reciprocation and correlated equilibrium. Models of limited iterated thinking explain data better than equilibrium models do; and they self-repair problems of implausibility and multiplicity of equilibria

    What's the matter with realism?

    Get PDF
    International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheim—a lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of ‘the international’
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