"In Conversation" Series
Lecturer:
Prof. Yisrael Aumann (Hebrew University)
Title:
Who are the players -- the collectives or the individuals?
Discussants:
Ori Heffetz, Ariel Knafo, Carl Posy
Abstract:
In most applications of Game Theory, a “player” is a collective – team, country, corporation, and so on. Usually, this is understood as an idealization; in games where, say, countries are modeled as players, the “real” players are the individual citizens, with their individual goals, individual decisions and individual free will. It’s only because this “true” game is too big and unwieldy to analyze that, it is held, game theorists model players as they do. This talk explores the opposite idea – that the players really ARE the collectives: that in large part, collectives are like individual people, and may be thought of as such. And perhaps, not only in Game Theory.
Short Bio:
Born in Germany in 1930, Yisrael Aumann fled with his family to the US in 1938. He studied at the City College of New York and at MIT; in graduate school he met John Nash, which led to a life-long interest in Game Theory. In 1956 he made Aliyah and joined the math department of the Hebrew University; and in 1990, was among the founders of the University's Center for the Study of Rationality.
Location:
Eilan Hall, Feldman Building, Second Floor, Edmond Safra Campus.