I liked how the end of the article addresses how humans are not necessarily reasonable. It is great to discuss all kinds of game theory, however in the moment it is really impossible to predict how people will act. This reminds me of a game we played with Dr. Harwell in my 102 class. In the game, everyone put a certain amount of their money into a pool, the pool was divided by three and then split evenly among the participants. The more everyone donated, the more was multiplied by three, and then was given back to everyone. However, some people could choose to be selfish. I know that I went in with the mindset that yes, rationally it does make sense to give the most amount of money, and if everyone does that, then we will get the most amount back. However, when it actually came time to play the game, I found myself questioning whether or not my classmates would play fairly. Because I was skeptical of my classmates, I myself got greedy and did not donate the most amount of money. Thus, I threw reason out and acted irrationally. This just goes to show that even if a person understands what is best for the common good, they may act not act reasonably in the moment. This is what makes game theory so fascinating.
Critical Thinking
I agree, I had the same thoughts because I played a similar game in my justice class, where we all were business owners using water from a lake that had limited water. I found that even though it was in everyone’s best interest to cooperate, people were being selfish and it ended up making the people who cooperated loose out. We would add or take people out of the group and this reminded me of the three person game of rock paper scissors.
I think that the idea that people are not reasonable being presented in the article was interesting also. I feel like a lot of theories depend on the assumption that people will act rationally. However, as this article and you pointed out, people are not reasonable. They act in their own self interest which leads them to not make rational decisions.
I agree that as much as we want to deny it, the simple truth still stands that humans are unpredictable. It is unreliable to think that they will act rationally.
I think at this point it is pretty clear that humans in general are not rational predictable actors. In fact, it very well can be argued that we really are irrational unpredictable and emotional actors.