The Bounds of Reason: Game Theory and the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences - Revised Edition Paperback – April 20, 2014

This book is an easy-to-understand survey of modern game theory with no more (and no less) mathematics than is necessary for that. It is not comprehensive. It covers only material that is logically consistent and grounded in observation. But it argues convincingly that that subset is all you should care about. Defining the boundary sometimes gets close to splitting hairs, an occupational hazard of game theory and any field trying to distill rigorous foundations from complex evidence and competing research traditions. Overall, however, the author lays down clear and sensible rules that exclude a lot of nonsense and organize the remaining material in simple and satisfying ways. Few specialists will agree exactly with the treatment, but I think almost everyone will find it reasonably good.Therefore, if you want to learn modern game theory with a few days work, buy this book. Read it with pencil and paper to work out examples and exercises (it's not a text with problems at the end of each chapter but the author does occasionally leave proofs to be supplied by the reader). Use the Internet for some key references. It does not demand any special training in mathematics, nothing beyond eighth grade techniques, but the logic and set arguments can be very intricate. It requires attention and a precise mind to follow, but not calculus or any other form of complex computation.On top of this, the author offers his own thoughts on how central concepts in game theory drawn from biology, anthropology, sociology, psychology and economics can be combined in a consistent framework, that can serve as a foundation for all five fields. Each field studies emergent properties that cannot be derived from the foundation, so each will need its own applied game theory. But there is value in building each on a foundation that is both logically consistent and consistent with observation. The rigor from that will reduce errors and illuminate cross-disciplinary insights. I think he's probably right here, but even if he isn't, it's a valuable way to compare insights across fields.Any researcher concerned with behavior of living things who does not already know all the material in this book should read it.

I'm interested in Game Theory to model questions about human behavior and altruism. Someone on Reddit recommended that I read this book. I added it to my stack of books to look at and when I finally got around to it I was amazed. This is the only book I've seen that extends game theory to include a mathematical model of human beliefs and knowledge. I think such a model is essential to understand how humans really make decisions. Such a model also addresses many apparent paradoxes in the social science literature that seem to indicate humans are not rational in some fundamental cases where we would expect them to be. When one factors in questions of knowledge and uncertainty, many of these paradoxes are no longer paradoxes. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in making true sciences of the social sciences. Game theory is IMO the best tool we have right now and this book extends it in a way that is as important as the work of Nash.

This book aims at investigating whether some assumptions behind decision making models are valid. In order to do that Professor Gintis introduces several assumptions that support mainstream game theory and analyzes the bounds of these assumptions.It is worth mentioning that it is not necessary to know game theory or decision theory to read the book. However, I believe that if one is acquainted with them, then the reading is more pleasant.One interesting point is that the book calls a special attention to the so-called correlated equilibriums that is not very popular in economic theory and the justification for that is very suitable. The main idea is that the equilibrium correlation concept is able to provide a mechanism (a kind of convention or social norm) to coordinate different players who are indifferent among some strategies.In fact, this book presents so many interesting issues that it is difficult to present all of them here. Among them, one may find well posed critiques to some assumptions used in mainstream economics, recent results of experimental economics, an interesting view of the above mentioned correlated equilibrium, an introduction to game theory, several examples of game theory, an agenda for unifying behavioral sciences (such as economics, biology, anthropology, sociology, psychology and political science) and so on....

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Good quality, would repeat

Excellent introduction to the formal modelling of Bounded Rationality in Behavioral Economics. It is a paladin of game theory in all social sciences.