Game Theory & You
The Brexit Minister for Food Security
The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery is my favourite annual indulgence, where I meet many old friends from the foodie world and let fly with my thoughts and opinions on the theme of the meeting. The theme for 2019 was Food and Power, which gave me the opportunity...
World octopus day: What the octopus can teach us about hunting for bargains
October 9th is World Octopus Day, believe it or not. Even more unbelievable, the octopus can teach us quite a bit about the best decision strategies when it comes to hunting for bargains, as I reveal in this blog that was first published in Psychology Today in 2014....
127. How can we cooperate? A new lesson from the bees
The world is rapidly going down the road of competition rather than cooperation. In doing so, as I have shown in previous posts and in my book Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life, its citizens face the deadly dilemmas exposed by game theory – in...
126. The ethics of game theory: Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby & Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid
I avoid political commentary on this website , but in the current climate (31st January, 2017) I believe that it is very important for as many of us as possible to look dispassionately at what is happening and try to understand what is going on below the surface...
124. Trump, Russia and Lysenko: A cautionary tale
Submitted to Washington Post just before Christmas 2016. Nearly made it, but eventually missed out, The message for science is sadly stark. The U.S. should learn from Russian history “Are you now, or have you ever been, a climate scientist?” Donald Trump’s recent...
On the Fat-Headedness of Crowds
July 25th, 2016 The result of the recent UK referendum on whether to stay in or to leave Europe has come as a shock to many of us. More than one correspondent has asked me “I thought there was this thing called group intelligence which said that, the larger the group,...
Where did “Rock-Paper-Scissors” originate? Well, Nature started it all.
I recently had an inquiry from a Russian website wanting to know where the game "Rock, Paper, Scissors" originated. Probably they asked me because I had written a best-selling book "Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life," which was in fact not about the...
107. Terrorism and the refugee crisis
The journal Nature has been taking a strong interest in terrorism and the refugee crisis, even publishing an article of mine on the latter (see https://lenfisherscience.com/avoid-major-disasters-by-welcoming-minor-change/). As a leading scientific journal, Nature has...
The secrets of cooperation
Several years ago (well, OK, in 2012) I did an interview for “Nature and Health” on the subject of cooperation (http://www.natureandhealth.com.au/news/create-cooperation). Looking back, I am very impressed by how the interviewer paraphrased what I had to say, and I...
93. Kurt Gödel and the hole in the U.S. constitution
The Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel upset the world of mathematics, and came close to upsetting the world of U.S. politics. In mathematics, he took the final step in a long line of upsetters of apple carts that stretched right back to Euclid, who came up with the...
The Problem of Trust
Notes for Talk at Granada seminar “Physics meets the Social Sciences: Emergent Cooperative Phenomena, from Bacterial to Human Group Behaviour” (Wednesday, June 17 (2005)). This has been a staggeringly interesting meeting from my point of view, because I’m in the...
91. Our beautiful minds
Scientists at the University of Virginia have found a previously unsuspected network of lymphatic vessels connecting the brain directly to the immune system (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14432.html). Why is this so important? For a...
John Nash obituary
26.5.15 I have just written an obituary of John Nash and his wife Alicia for the U.K. Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/25/john-nash It describes Nash's contributions, not only to game theory, but also to mathematics. Here is the original draft:...
Game theory and our future: The Glugs of Gosh
Few people outside Australia will have heard of the Australian poet C.J. Dennis, creator of that wonderful rough diamond “The Sentimental Bloke”. But Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis wrote one of the great social parodies in his set of poems “The Glugs of...
Game theory is about people, not just mathematics. It needs a new name to reflect this
Game theory is all around us. Despite its innocuous-sounding name, it is not just a theory, and it deals with far more than traditional games. It is, in fact, about the real-life strategies that we use in our interactions with other people. Originally proposed by John...
Radio Interview with John Petrozzi on Game Theory in Real Life
89.7FM Eastside Radio, Sydney, Australia and www.livingiseasy.com.au In this interview John Petrozzi's speaks to game theorist Len Fisher who describes life as ‘One Big Game’ and he teaches how you can break down any decision you ever have to make in life by applying...
How can I Trust You? Encounters with Carl Rogers and Game Theory
Chapter in Jeffrey Cornelius-White et al (eds) "Interdisciplinary Handbook of the Person-Centered Approach" (Springer, 2013) On how game theory can provide new insights into the processes of personal counseling, and how Carl Roger's "person-centred" approach may...
Game Theory in Real Life
Regensburg, Germany, 29–30 September 2011 Introductory Talk at Interdisciplinary Symposium “Ultimate and proximate determinants of aggression in man (and other primates)”