Since independence, at least 28 African countries have legalized some form of gambling. Yet a range of informal gambling activities have also flourished, often provoking widespread public concern about the negative social and economic impact of unregulated gambling on poor communities. This article addresses an illegal South African numbers game called fahfee. Drawing on interviews with players, operators, and regulatory officials, this article explores two aspects of this game. First, it explores the lives of both players and runners, (...) as well as the clandestine world of the Chinese operators who control the game. Second, the article examines the subjective motivations and aspirations of players, and asks why they continue to play, despite the fact that their aggregate losses easily outstrip their aggregate gains. In contrast with those who reduce its appeal simply to the pursuit of wealth, I conclude that, for the (mostly) black, elderly, working class women who play fahfee several times a week, the associated trade-off—regular, small losses, versus the social enjoyment of playing and the prospect of occasional but realistic windfalls—takes on a whole new meaning, and preferences for relatively lumpy rather than steady consumption streams help explain the continued attraction of fahfee. This reinforces the need to understand players’ own accounts of gambling utility rather than simply to moralistically condemn gambling or to dismiss gamblers behaviour as irrational. (shrink)

Failed expectations about “bringing in the Kingdom” may lie at the root of the decline in the missionary force of mainline denominations. Is a missiological motivation based on “evangelising the world to bring back the King” giving rise to similar unrealistic expectations? Optimistic statistics on aspects of church growth are vulnerable to question. Reports of the numbers of missionaries forget the aspect of proportionality to size of population, reports of church growth include the effect of babies born to Christians of (...) all denominational groups, and increases in the numbers of missionaries include short-termers. The growth of the new category of Great Commission Christians and the reduction in number of unreached people groups are based on faulty descriptive bases. If the world remains unevangelised by 2001, these attempts to motivate Christians to evangelism on the basis of current optimistic statistical improvements will undermine a proper basis for motivating people for evangelism which is based on faith and not on sight. (shrink)

The subtitle of this paper could have been, “Big Data meets Education to advance Cognitive Science.” In it, the authors analyze 20 million answers to 1700 simple arithmetic problems in an educational number game to determine “what makes some problems harder than others.” The results contribute to the cognitive science of arithmetic skill acquisition and have the potential to change how math is taught.

We analyze the cognitive strategies underlying performance in the Number task, a Math game that requires both arithmetic fluency and mathematical creativity. In this game all elements in a set of numbers have to be used precisely once to create a target number with basic arithmetic operations. We argue that some instances of this game are NP complete, by showing its relation to the well-known Partition problem. We propose heuristics based on the distinction in forward (...) and backward reasoning. The Number Game is part of Math Garden, a popular online educational platform for practicing and monitoring math skills using innovations in computerized adaptive testing. These educational games generate enormous amounts of rich data on children's cognitive development. We found converging evidence for the use of forward proximity heuristics in the data of Math Garden, consisting of more than 20 million answers to 1,700 items. Item difficulties and the structure of correct answers were analyzed. (shrink)

In this paper I introduce an objection to normative evidentialism about reasons for belief. The objection arises from difficulties that evidentialism has with explaining our reasons for belief in unstable belief contexts with a single fixed point. I consider what other kinds of reasons for belief are relevant in such cases.

This paper examines how board gender diversity affects corporate risk disclosure. We exploit an exogenous shock on firms’ risk environment created by the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union and analyze related risk disclosure in annual reports of public firms in the UK. Using this unique setting, we mitigate concerns about omitted variables in concurrent studies. The findings suggest that board gender diversity is positively related to corporate risk disclosure. However, our results also indicate that the proportion of (...) female directors needs to reach a critical mass to impact the risk disclosure decision. Moreover, we find lower bid–ask spreads immediately after the referendum date for those firms that disclosed Brexit-related risks in their annual reports prior to the vote. Collectively, our results are consistent with board gender diversity promoting the disclosure of decision-relevant information through improved board group dynamics. (shrink)

Mitochondrial dysfunction has long been considered a key mechanism in the ageing process but surprisingly little attention has been paid to the impact of mitochondrial number or density within cells. Recent reports suggest a positive association between mitochondrial density, energy homeostasis and longevity. However, mitochondrial number also determines the number of sites generating reactive oxygen species (ROS) and we suggest that the links between mitochondrial density and ageing are more complex, potentially acting in both directions. The idea (...) that increased density, especially when combined with mitochondrial dysfunction, might accelerate ageing is supported by a negative correlation between mitochondrial density and maximum longevity in an interspecies comparison in mammals, and by evidence for an intimate interconnection between cellular ROS levels, mitochondrial density and cellular ageing. Recent data suggest that retrograde response, which activates mitochondrial biogenesis, accompanies cellular ageing processes. We hypothesise that increased mitochondrial biogenesis, and possibly also impaired degradation and segregation of mitochondria, if occurring as adaptation to pre‐existing mitochondrial dysfunction, might aggravate ROS production and thus actively contribute to ageing. BioEssays 29:908–917, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We prove a number of results on the determinacy of σ-projective sets of reals, i.e., those belonging to the smallest pointclass containing the open sets and closed under complements, countable unions, and projections. We first prove the equivalence between σ-projective determinacy and the determinacy of certain classes of games of variable length <ω^2 (Theorem 2.4). We then give an elementary proof of the determinacy of σ-projective sets from optimal large-cardinal hypotheses (Theorem 4.4). Finally, we show how to generalize the (...) proof to obtain proofs of the determinacy of σ-projective games of a given countable length and of games with payoff in the smallest σ-algebra containing the projective sets, from corresponding assumptions (Theorem 5.1, Theorem 5.4). (shrink)

Game theory based on rational choice is compared with game theory based on evolutionary, or other adaptive, dynamics. The Nash equilibrium concept has a central role to play in both theories, even though one makes extremely strong assumptions about cognitive capacities and common knowledge of the players, and the other does not. Nevertheless, there are also important differences between the two theories. These differences are illustrated in a number of games that model types of interaction that are (...) key ingredients for any theory of the social contract. (shrink)

In this article, I critically respond to Herbert Gintis's criticisms of the behavioral-economic foundations of Ken Binmore 's game-theoretic theory of justice. Gintis, I argue, fails to take full account of the normative requirements Binmore sets for his account, and also ignores what I call the ‘scale-relativity’ considerations built into Binmore 's approach to modeling human evolution. Paul Seabright's criticism of Binmore, I note, repeats these oversights. In the course of answering Gintis's and Seabright's objections, I clarify and extend (...) Binmore 's theory in a number of respects, integrating it with Kim Sterelny's and Don Ross's recent work on the evolution of people as cultural entities. The account also yields a novel basis for choosing between socialism and what Binmore calls ‘whiggery’ as normative political programs. Key Words: theory of justice • bargaining theory • evolutionary game theory • human evolution • Ken Binmore • Herbert Gintis • Kim Sterelny. (shrink)

Inquisitive first-order logic, InqBQ, is a system which extends classical first-order logic with formulas expressing questions. From a mathematical point of view, formulas in this logic express properties of sets of relational structures. This paper makes two contributions to the study of this logic. First, we describe an Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé game for InqBQ and show that it characterizes the distinguishing power of the logic. Second, we use the game to study cardinality quantifiers in the inquisitive setting. That is, we (...) study what statements and questions can be expressed in InqBQ about the number of individuals satisfying a given predicate. As special cases, we show that several variants of the question how many individuals satisfy α(x) are not expressible in InqBQ, both in the general case and in restriction to finite models. (shrink)

Journal of Mathematical Logic, Volume 22, Issue 03, December 2022. Hirschfeldt and Jockusch (2016) introduced a two-player game in which winning strategies for one or the other player precisely correspond to implications and non-implications between [math] principles over [math]-models of [math]. They also introduced a version of this game that similarly captures provability over [math]. We generalize and extend this game-theoretic framework to other formal systems, and establish a certain compactness result that shows that if an implication (...) [math] between two principles holds, then there exists a winning strategy that achieves victory in a number of moves bounded by a number independent of the specific run of the game. This compactness result generalizes an old proof-theoretic fact noted by H. Wang (1981), and has applications to the reverse mathematics of combinatorial principles. We also demonstrate how this framework leads to a new kind of analysis of the logical strength of mathematical problems that refines both that of reverse mathematics and that of computability-theoretic notions such as Weihrauch reducibility, allowing for a kind of fine-structural comparison between [math] principles that has both computability-theoretic and proof-theoretic aspects, and can help us distinguish between these, for example by showing that a certain use of a principle in a proof is “purely proof-theoretic”, as opposed to relying on its computability-theoretic strength. We give examples of this analysis to a number of principles at the level of [math], uncovering new differences between their logical strengths. (shrink)

The paper reports experimental data on the behavior in the first-price sealed-bid auction for a varying number of bidders when values and bids are private information. This feedback-free design is proposed for the experimental test of the one-shot game situation. We consider both within-subjects and between-subjects variations. In line with the qualitative risk neutral Nash equilibrium prediction, the data show that bids increase in the number of bidders. However, in auctions involving a small number of bidders, (...) average bids are above, and in auctions involving a larger number of bidders, average bids are below the risk neutral equilibrium prediction. The quartile analysis reveals that bidding behavior is not constant across the full value range for a given number of bidders. On the high value quartiles, however, the average bid–value ratio is not different from the risk neutral prediction. The behavior is different when the winning bid is revealed after each repetition. (shrink)

A feature of David Lewis's account of conventions in his book "Convention" which has received admiring notices from philosophers is his use of the mathematical theory of games. In this paper I point out a number of serious flaws in Lewis's use of game theory. Lewis's basic claim is that conventions cover 'coordination problems'. I show that game-Theoretical analysis tends to establish that coordination problems in Lewis's sense need not underlie conventions.

Sacred Games, Death, and Renewal in the Ancient Eastern Woodlands Content Type Journal Article Category Review Pages 507-509 DOI 10.1558/jcr.v11i4.507 Authors Sandra Wallace, Artefact Heritage, Po Box 772 Rose Bay, NSW 2029 Journal Journal of Critical Realism Online ISSN 1572-5138 Print ISSN 1476-7430 Journal Volume Volume 11 Journal Issue Volume 11, Number 4 / 2012.

A number of authors claim that Western European modern romantic love has been ‘gamified’ by digital apps and platforms, resulting in a ludic market logic that is increasingly compulsive and even addictive. This paper will suggest that modern romantic love was, in fact, predicated on games, particularly games of chance and competition. These games are seen to provide a number of functions, including homosocial bonding, the vindication of personal responsibility, and bringing about the probability of the improbable. The (...) paper examines changing attitudes to chance at several key historical moments in Western Europe, changes which we can discern in romantic codification, as well as in the modern economy. We trace these tendencies to digital corporations, where gathered behavioural data accelerates the capacity to economize and determine futures. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a conceptual analysis of blood-sport as a concept. Through utilising a generalised notion of sport as well as the concept of fair-play, the objective will be to examine whether blood-sports are games and analyse to what extent, if any, blood-sports can be properly called ‘sports’. For the purposes of application and because of the sheer numbers of birds used in the sports-shooting industry, the paper will focus on a discussion of game-birding, but the findings (...) will apply to the practice of ‘blood-sport’ more generally. Work by Sam P. Morris (IJAP, 2014) argues that ‘fair-chase hunting’ can be classified as a game, as well as a sport, although Morris stresses that answers to questions concerning the sport status of hunting do not provide answers to questions regarding the ethics of blood-sports. The author of this paper agrees with Morris regarding the latter point, but pace Morris, she argues that it is doubtful that blood-sport is a game let alone a sport, and that even if one assumes for argument's sake that it is indeed a game, it cannot be properly classed as sport, and that a fair-chase code undermines itself in the context of so called ‘blood-sports’.Footnote1. (shrink)

Action video game (AVG) has attracted increasing attention from both the public and from researchers. More and more studies found video game training improved a variety of cognitive functions. However, it remains controversial whether healthy adults can benefit from AVG training, and whether young and older adults benefit similarly from AVG training. In the present study, we aimed to quantitatively assess the AVG training effect on the cognitive ability of adults and to compare the training effects on young (...) and older adults by conducting a meta-analysis on previous findings. We systematically searched video game training studies published between January 1986 and July 2015. Twenty studies were included in the present meta-analysis, for a total of 313 participants included in the training group and 323 participants in the control group. The results demonstrate that healthy adults achieve moderate benefit from AVG training in overall cognitive ability and moderate to small benefit in specific cognitive domains. In contrast, young adults gain more benefits from AVG training than older adults in both overall cognition and specific cognitive domains. Age, education, and some methodological factors, such as the session duration, session number, total training duration, and control group type, modulated the training effects. These meta-analytic findings provide evidence that AVG training may serve as an efficient way to improve the cognitive performance of healthy adults. We also discussed several directions for future AVG training studies. (shrink)

The most successful games today do not use a pay-for-product model, but involve complex and aggressive modes of monetizing their content (downloadable content, skins, in game currencies and markets, seasonal passes, etc.). While this has already been scrutinized, there are further consequences for games themselves and the economization of play. In my paper, I show how this strategy creates a conceptually novel situation, where playing can be considered to constitute reproductive labor-power and behavioral capital. In other words, playing here (...) represents not only consumption but also the very production of such consumption, insofar as the main reason behind the massive success of these games is precisely their massive pool of players and data concerning their activity. Firstly, I analyse PUBG: Battlegrounds as an example of the most successful model of monetizing games and maintaining a large number of players and interaction. I focus both on the economic incentives as well as on the gameplay that is generated or tailored towards aggressive monetization. Later, I set a theoretical context for my analysis stemming from ludocapitalist discourse (itself combining Marx with poststructuralism) and the concept of surveillance capitalism. I conclude my text with a systematization and definition of my original concept of behavioral capital and an attempt to formulate art critique and usage of games as a form of cultural production exposing several examples from contemporary art. (shrink)

In his Philosophical Investigations , Wittgenstein introduces the notion of a ‘family resemblance’ to deal with certain problems. Talking of games and what they seem to have in common, he points out that there are no common features in virtue of which we call all games ‘games’. Instead there are, he claims, many different similarities and relationships; he says ‘we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail’. He then goes on to (...) add: ‘I can think of no better expression to characterise these similarities than “family resemblances”; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way,—And I shall say: “games form a family”.’ Wittgenstein also instances numbers as forming a ‘family’ in the same manner. This notion of a ‘family resemblance’ has come to be used by many philosophers to deal with a range of situations where there appears to be a difficulty in finding a single definite common property and yet there exists a desire to call some set of things by the same name. I myself have succumbed to this temptation. Perhaps the widest claim for the use of this device is that made by Mr Bambrough in an article entitled ‘Universals and Family Resemblances’ . This begins with the words ‘I believe that Wittgenstein solved what is known as “the problem of universals”’. (shrink)

Our power of guessing corresponds to a bird's musical and aeronautical powers.There still remains one more economic consideration in reference to a hypothesis; namely, that it may give a good "leave," as the billiard players say.There is a game called "Twenty Questions," in which one party thinks of something well known to the other, who may then ask at most twenty questions answerable by yes or no, after which he has a right to make three guesses. … The principle (...) of pragmatism is applicable here.One of the more intriguing lines of thought in the writings of Peirce stems from a number of brief statements that seem to be game-theoretic in nature. Often they appear to be constructed to support or illustrate a broader... (shrink)

In this paper, after outlining the methodological role Wittgenstein's appeal to language-games is supposed to play, I examine the picture of language which his discussion of such games and their relations to what Wittgenstein calls forms of life suggests. It is a picture according to which language and its employment are inextricably connected to wider contexts—they are embedded in specific natural and social environments, they are tied to purposive activities serving provincial needs, and caught up in distinctive ways of life (...) which creatures of a certain sort enjoy. In the remainder of the paper, I consider whether Wittgenstein's emphasis on the link between language and the circumstances surrounding its use points in the direction of an influential view widespread in contemporary philosophy of language, namely, semantic contextualism. I examine carefully a number of passages which scholars have appealed to in support of the claim that Wittgenstein advances contextualism and argue that they in fact provide no such support. The connection which Wittgenstein sees between what is expressed in the use of words and the circumstances in which they are used is not the connection the contextualist insists on. (shrink)

The game theoretic notion of best-response reasoning is sometimes criticized when its application produces multiple solutions of games, some of which seem less compelling than others. The recent development of the theory of team reasoning addresses this by suggesting that interacting players in games may sometimes reason as members of a team – a group of individuals who act together in the attainment of some common goal. A number of properties have been suggested for team-reasoning decision-makers’ goals to (...) satisfy, but a few formal representations have been discussed. In this paper we suggest a possible representation of these goals based on the notion of mutual advantage. We propose a method for measuring extents of individual and mutual advantage to the interacting decision-makers, and define team interests as the attainment of outcomes associated with maximum mutual advantage in the games they play. (shrink)

Solomon’s article and Binmore’s response exemplify a standard exchange between the game theorist and those critical of applying game theory to ethics. The critic of game theory lists a number of problems with game theory and the game theorist responds by arguing that the critic’s objections are based on a misrepresentation of the theory. Binmore claims that the game theorist is in the position of the innocent man who, when asked why he beats (...) his wife, must explain that he doesn’t beat his wife at all (Binmore, 2). However, even if we agree that the denial is true, we might still like to know why, if you are not beating your wife, do others consistently accuse you of doing so? Or, to get away from this rather sexist metaphor, why are critics of game theory like Solomon (according to game theorists) consistently getting game theory wrong?While, as I argue in the first section, critics of game theory such as Solomon may misrepresent game theory, this misrepresentation is not entirely their own fault. The way in which game theory is traditionally presented is misleading. For example, students are usually first introduced to game theory through the prisoner’s dilemma. It is compelling drama, but lousy PR for the use of ethics in game theory. (You want to know what to do? Let’s see how two thieves reason.) However, while Binmore is right to argue that game theory neither assumes nor entails the theory of human nature that Solomon finds objectionable, Solomon is also right to argue that game theory is promulgated and applied with what appear to be a robust set of assumptions about human motivation. I argue in the second section, however, that in fact neither these applications of game theory, nor game theory itself, is committed to a particular theory of human motivation. Thus, while game theory is not able to provide a complete ethical theory (assuming that a theory of human motivation is essential to such a theory), it is not contrary to ethics. In the final section I note that Aristotle, rather than being the alternative to using game theory in business ethics, as Solomon suggests, actually points the way to an ethical theory that can combine a discussion of both game theory and “those nagging and controversial questions about what it is that people do and ought to care about” (Solomon, 7). (shrink)

Fundamental aspects of human use of the environment can be explained by game theory. Game theory explains aggregate behaviour of the human species driven by perceived costs and benefits. In the ‘game’ of global environmental protection and conservation, the stakes are the living conditions of all species including the human race, and the playing field is our planet. The question is can we control humanity's hitherto endless appetite for resources before we irreparably harm the global ecosystem and (...) cause extinction of even more species? The central problem is that some proportion of the individuals or groups will behave selfishly. The inducement for using more than a fair share, or ‘cheating’, increases as that resource becomes rarer, thus the benefits of cheating increase. In addition, the total number of people is increasing, so the proportion of cheaters must decrease to even keep total resource use constant. Cost benefit analysis of the effect of regulation and incentives on potential cheaters may provide a rational approach to controlling environmental problems. While it is debatable that environmental values are constant across cultures, communal use of resources seems to follow global rules. Cooperative use and punishment of those who use more than their share appear to be ubiquitous in human societies. Schemes for controlling human impact on the global environment must take into consideration basic behaviours including development of social norms and the positive feedback created because resources become more valuable with increasing rarity leading to more incentive for consumption. (shrink)

By means of a critical examination of a number of theses as to the nature of game-playing, the following definition is advanced: To play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation (...) is to make possible such activity. (shrink)

The main purpose of this study was to analyze the presence and current situation of the game of skittles throughout the northern route of the Camino de Santiago. Thus, we considered its current practice, modalities, where it is played, and its different manifestations as an informal and formal game, comparing it with other traditional games on this pilgrimage route. To do this, a mixed qualitative-quantitative study was designed with 89 participants, constituting an informant for each municipality through which (...) the Northern Way passes. An ad hoc questionnaire was used for the data collection, which was processed through content analysis by expert judges and by using the IBM-SPSS statistical package. The results of the study show notable skittles activity on the Northern Camino, reflected in the number of skittles alleys, the number of clubs, associations, and peñas participating in federated leagues, and the wide range of varieties of skittles currently active on the Camino. The relationship between skittles and local culture, both symbols of identity in these northern Spanish regions, made it possible to preserve the traditional heritage in these places, keeping it alive today, despite the push toward new and more attractive leisure and sport trends. (shrink)

Banach introduced the following two-person, perfect information, infinite game on the real numbers and asked the question: For which sets $A \subseteq \mathbf{R}$ is the game determined????? Rules: The two players alternate moves starting with player I. Each move a n is legal iff it is a real number and $0 , and for $n > 1, a_n . The first player to make an illegal move loses. Otherwise all moves are legal and I wins iff ∑ (...) a n exists and ∑ a n ∈ A. We will look at this game and some variations of it, called Banach games. In each case we attempt to find the relationship between Banach determinancy and the determinancy of other well-known and much-studied games. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wittgenstein’s Reflection in Lewis Carroll’s Looking-GlassLeila S. MayAccording to one tradition in the theory of fiction, there is a kind of fantasy whose function is to invite the reader to "acknowledge the possibility of a different reality."1 In this essay I want to ask whether Lewis Carroll's Alice books fit into this category; that is, I want to explore the possibility that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the (...) Looking-Glass are not the pure nonsense that many readers take them to be. In considering the Alice books as fantasy offering a view of a "different reality" I do not deny that there are in these stories some mimetic elements alongside the fantastic—representations of things going on somewhere, somehow, in Victorian society—in which case the "different reality" presented will not be so terribly different as to be unrecognizable. For example, the Mad Tea Party in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is not only an act of fantasy but also an act of mimesis. It certainly imitates the real tea parties often held throughout Victorian England—if caricature is a form of imitation—but it may also mime those mock tea parties held in English asylums whose goal was to model sane-like behavior to the inmates.2 An analogous question can be asked about Carroll's books in general: In addition to the component of fantasy, are they mimetic of Victorian culture itself, or merely of the Victorian conception of madness? Michel Foucault has argued that, while the very idea of la folie is an historical construct, the dialectical relationship between reason and unreason, with each pole parasitic on the other, is a structural constant. Carroll's Alice books produce images that are discharged in the confused nineteenth-century landscape where these two opposites meet. In that respect, his books are not so different from many of the more standard novels written in mid-century England. In this essay I [End Page 79] will explore features of this landscape, using a theoretical framework that has been synthesized from a number of related claims in the work of the linguistic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. In addition to my long-range aim of urging further study of Wittgenstein's work by literary critics, one of my specific goals is to show that the application of Wittgensteinian methods to the works of Lewis Carroll reveals something about the hidden logic of Carroll's stories, and conversely that this procedure tests some of Wittgenstein's intuitions concerning language. Yet another goal is to suggest that the structure of the discourse of domesticity as reflected in many mid-nineteenth-century novels is curiously similar to the structure of discourse in Wonderland and Looking-Glass Land—that the language-games played at these sites are at the same time functional and dysfunctional in much the same way. That may seem like a lot to attempt in a few pages,... but to paraphrase Humpty-Dumpty, when I ask words to do that much extra work, I pay them overtime.In 1965 the philosopher George Pitcher published an essay, "Wittgenstein, Nonsense, and Lewis Carroll," in which he sought to demonstrate "the remarkable extent and depth of affinity between these two great writers with respect to nonsense." In addition, he showed that "the very same confusions with which Wittgenstein charged philosophers were deliberately employed by Carroll for comic effect," and that many of the examples that Wittgenstein used to illustrate his points "resemble, in varying degrees, examples that are found in the works of Carroll."3 While I agree with Pitcher's observation that the examples of nonsense that Wittgenstein offers are very similar to a primary strain of nonsense that runs through the Alice books, in the first section I intend to go beyond that observation and to apply some of Wittgenstein's tools to Carroll's work and show that Wittgenstein's work can be used to reveal features of literary narrative that might otherwise be obscured, and in the second section, to apply these tools to the works of fiction this side of the Looking-Glass.IWittgenstein says that a language is a "language-game." He... (shrink)

It is shown that the determinacy of $G_{\delta \sigma }$ games of length $\omega ^2$ is equivalent to the existence of a transitive model of ${\mathsf {KP}} + {\mathsf {AD}} + \Pi _1\textrm {-MI}_{\mathbb {R}}$ containing $\mathbb {R}$. Here, $\Pi _1\textrm {-MI}_{\mathbb {R}}$ is the axiom asserting that every monotone $\Pi _1$ operator on the real numbers has an inductive fixpoint.

David Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature famously fell `deadborn from the press’ because it was too far ahead of its time. Basu’s book is one of a number published in recent years that suggest we are at last ready to put its precepts into action.1 Modern game theory provides a framework that makes Hume’s insights genuinely applicable, and I totally agree with Basu that this is not only the right way forward, but that it now looks increasingly likely (...) that this is the road that wil actualy be folowed ± not only in political economy, but across the board in the social sciences. (shrink)

Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2009. 320pp. pbk. $19.95 ISBN-13: 978-0816666119. In Games of Empire , Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter expand an earlier study of “the video game industry as an aspect of an emerging postindustrial, post-Fordist capitalism” (xxix) to argue that videogames are “exemplary media of Empire” (xxix). Their notion of “Empire” is based on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire (2000), (...) which characterizes the contemporary world order as a decentralized system of global economic, political, and economic power that transcends national boundaries. In the view of the authors, Hardt and Negri’s account sets itself apart from other analyses of international politics by offering a “comprehensive account of conditions of work, forms of subjectivity, and types of struggle in contemporary capital” (xx). Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter thus divide Games of Empire into three sections to reflect each of these aspects of Empire ’s argument, seeing their work as the first account to explore “virtual games within a system of global ownership, privatized property, coercive class relations, military operations, and radical struggle” (xxix). Books in the University of Minnesota Press’s Electronic Mediations series “explore the humanistic and social implications” of new technologies that spark “significant changes in society and culture, politics and economics, thinking and being.” That’s an abstract goal, and one that Games of Empire surely meets. Yet at times it can be difficult to understand exactly which specific intervention this book seeks to make. It is unclear whether the authors of Games of Empire see their work as an indictment of game scholars’ lack of attention to political economy, or whether it’s a work of political theory hoping to show that other disciplines should be paying more attention to the production and play of videogames. Because Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter don’t directly criticize previous political critiques of gaming—such as Edward Castronova’s exploration of the “porous membrane” allowing two-way traffic between virtual economies and those of the real world, or Alexander Galloway’s unraveling of control protocols in algorithmic design, or Ian Bogost’s idea of political procedural rhetoric—they sometimes leave the reader wondering how to situate the book in the broader discourse on games and politics, either separately or together. Thus, Games of Empire might best be seen as an introduction to the writings of Hardt and Negri for game players and designers, rather than as a text for communicating the basic concepts of game studies and design. It is neither a truly new theory of games or digital media, nor is it a new theory of Empire—and that’s not a criticism. It is instead an introduction to Empire through popular culture, as Zizek does for Lacan in Looking Awry . If one were teaching an introductory course on contemporary political theory, this book would offer obvious inroads into Negri and Hardt’s thinking for a number of reasons. Despite its radical ideological bent, the book isn’t off-putting to readers who don’t necessarily share the authors’ politics. It synthesizes complex ideas from difficult thinkers like Marx, Foucault, and Guattari while integrating modifications and critiques of Empire theory itself. And although the book is dense, sometimes feeling longer than it actually is (just over 200 pages), Games of Empire maintains a breezy readability by tightly coupling core concepts of Empire theory to well-known games and widely-publicized conflicts within the videogame industry. The first section of the book focuses on immaterial labor, the accumulation of “cognitive capital,” and the global process of manufacturing videogame consoles. It is significant for the authors that videogames began as hacker experiments within research institutes of the military industrial complex, programmed on stolen time, before becoming a commodity (7). This is the first in a string of examples showing how creative dissidence and conflict fuel the continuing evolution of Empire’s control. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter explain that the videogame industry now constitutes an international production apparatus dominating both creative work in developed nations and manual labor in developing ones. Because game industries in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan are predominately non-unionized, they serve as an exemplary system for analyzing how global capital exploits contemporary intellectual work—including an excellent analysis of the “EA Spouse” scandal of 2004. On the side of the consumer, the authors argue that rabid “console races” that drive the industry forward from a technological perspective serve to structure gamer identity and combat piracy; later in the book, these machines offer a window into the worlds of Congolese coltan mining and electronic waste (222-224). In the second section, Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter move on to deep case studies of individual games to show how the most popular game genres embed imperial assumptions about conflict, exchange, and urban life. First they argue that military training games such as Full Spectrum Warrior —co-developed by university researchers, industry developers, and military contractors—contribute to the “banalization” of war, a subjective state wherein perpetual preparedness for war is accepted as a part of everyday life (100). Chapter five covers Michel Foucalt’s notion of “biopower,” the extension of capital accumulation to life itself. The authors argue that virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft , which take market capitalism as a given and force players into essentialist roles and racial antagonisms, are organized to maximize control and profit (often on the backs of virtual currency “farmers” in China and southeast Asia). Finally, they criticize the naïve assumption that humor and cynicism in the popular sandbox game franchise Grand Theft Auto offer any remedy to its racialized, violent content. Instead, such games indulge and normalize the fantasy of getting rich at any cost by keeping the realities of contemporary urban life and corporate greed at a safe distance (181). Part three of Games of Empire focuses on “games of multitude,” a preliminary attempt to escape from Empire’s order through alternate modes of videogame development and play. Multitude is defined dialectically, as “the engine and the enemy” of Empire (187). This is the most important, yet also most contradictory section of the text. It lays bare the process by which Empire and its media feed our creative and intellectual development to overabundance. At a certain point, the force of the multitude reaches such a level that it threatens the stability of Empire; however, instead of following Hardt and Negri’s utopian assumptions about the radical potential of the multitude, the authors here follow Paolo Virno’s warning that Empire is “very good at adopting apparently iconoclastic practices and utopian ideas as management techniques and revenue sources” (188). At every turn, advances in player configurative power provide new sources of revenue and advertising angles for the game industry. A disappointing shortcoming of these latter pages is the lack of truly new examples for radical resistance within game development. Instead, it turns out that the radical left seems satisfied with the same mild successes that the left-of-center also has celebrated: artist’s mods, virtual world activism, and critical counterplay within strategy- and wargames. Having been frequently cited by many authors before Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, this idea of subversion or resistance through play feels tired and unpersuasive. It is unclear if the authors believe it is possible to embrace game design itself as a way of pursuing what they call “exodus” from Empire, or if an all-too-fashionable subversion is the only workable strategy. While the book does explore how the earliest independent game studios were eventually subverted and incorporated into the game industry proper, it doesn’t affirm or critique more recent non-commercial, DIY game development projects such as Klik-of-the-Month Club and Ludum Dare. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter’s analysis of so-called “tactical games,” including the editorial works of La Molleindustria, leads to an even more ambivalent take on the contemporary design ecology. At the conclusion of his essay on “Countergaming,” Galloway asserts that avant-garde videogame artists “should create new grammars of action […] should create alternative algorithms” (Galloway 125). Yet Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter characterize works such as McDonald’s Video Game and Oiligarchy as didactic, suggesting that the role of radical political games might be “limited to that of agitprop” (199). They are concerned that games like those of Molleindustria rigidly structure the activities of their players in order to prove a point. Yet, despite their repeated assertion that the equation of greater interactivity with democratic digital liberation is flawed, the authors see potential in policy simulators that “allow players to edit or tweak” (202) their parameters in response to what Bogost has called simulation fever , the simultaneous drive toward and fear of simulation (Bogost 108). The possibility of practicing radical design is bucked, and early attempts at critical game development like those of Molleindustria’s seem to be relegated to the status of exceptions that prove the rule for player-centered exodus. Overall, there is one glaring question Games of Empire leaves unanswered: how exactly are videogames the “exemplary media” of Empire, and what are the implications of videogames being exemplary in this way? Presumably Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter want to avoid essentialist claims, so they’re not keen on following Wark’s desire to mark “the game’s difference from [legacy media] as something that speaks to changes in the overall structure of social and technical relations” (Wark 225). It is also unclear how the production apparatuses, labor standards, and subjectivizing processes involved in the creation and use of other any other kind of digital media would fail to justify their equally exemplary status. Even the book’s concluding paragraph holds that virtual games “are one molecular component of this undecidable collective mutation” (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter 229) of intellect, labor, and daily life. In the end, the authors seem to back away from their focus on games as exemplary to bring their work in line with broader theories of the gradual digitization of the everyday, in line with Galloway and Manovich. Despite these flaws, there is an undeniable elegance to Games of Empire ’s contrasting of gaming’s overwhelmingly imperial content with its multitudinous form . And its ambivalence about the potential of independent or political game development might be seen by scholars of Empire as a strength rather than a weakness, an acceptance that every new expression of multitude offers another opportunity for the expansion of Empire. The book also functions as a strong, all-encompassing call to greater responsibility on the part of mainstream game developers to be more conscious of the ideologies they embed in their work, of the way their intellectual property is used and manipulated by those who employ them, and of the material impact their industry has on the world at large. For players it offers a toolbox of concepts for radical examinations of their own play activities, asking them to be more cognizant of the consequences of their consumption of digital media and the ways in which their virtual lives interface with the real. REFERENCES Bogost, Ian. Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. Castranova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games . Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Dyer-Witheford, Nick and de Peuter, Greig. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Galloway, Alexander. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Wark, McKenzie. Gamer Theory . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. (shrink)

We study a class of two-player normal-form games with cyclical payoff structures. A game is called circulant if both players’ payoff matrices fulfill a rotational symmetry condition. The class of circulant games contains well-known examples such as Matching Pennies, Rock-Paper-Scissors, as well as subclasses of coordination and common interest games. The best response correspondences in circulant games induce a partition on each player’s set of pure strategies into equivalence classes. In any Nash Equilibrium, all strategies within one class are (...) either played with strictly positive or with zero probability. We further show that, strikingly, a single parameter fully determines the exact number and the structure of all Nash equilibria in these games. The parameter itself only depends on the position of the largest payoff in the first row of one of the player’s payoff matrix. (shrink)

We consider a class of games, which we call “groups’ games”, in which players are partitioned into classes within which players may be considered indistinguishable. We compute explicit formulas for some of the principal values restricted to these games. This is particularly useful for dealing with games with a large number of players where the usual formulas would be impractical to compute. We give several examples that illustrate how this idea may be applied to concrete situations.

INTRODUCTION It was Eric Berne's Games People Play () which first alerted the world to the large number of 'games' which are played by individuals in ...

We describe a fully abstract semantics for a simple functional language with locally declared names which may be used as pointers to names. It is based on a category of dialogue games acted upon by the group of natural number automorphisms. This allows a formal, semantic characterization of the key properties of names such as freshness and locality.We describe a model of the call-by-value λ-calculus based on these games, and show that it can be used to interpret the nu-calculus (...) of Pitts and Stark. We then construct a model of our pointer-language by extending our category of games with an explicit representation of the store, using a notion of semantic garbage-collection to erase inaccessible pointers. Using factorization and decomposition techniques, we show that the compact elements of our model are definable as terms, and hence it is fully abstract. (shrink)

UNESCO in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development establishes respect for the environment and sustainability education as key elements for the challenges of society in the coming years. In the educational context, physical education can have a vital role in sustainability education, through Traditional Sporting Games. The aim of this research was to study from an ethnomotor perspective the different characteristics of two different groups of TSG in the Canary Islands, Spain. The corpus of this investigation was made up of (...) 513 TSG, identified by two analysis techniques and collected in a database. The categories corresponding to the variables of the internal logic of the game were the type of motor interaction, related to space, relationships with time, and relationships with objects. The study also examined the variables of external logic or sociocultural conditions such as the protagonists, playing areas, and game moments. The data analysis was carried out using descriptive and inferential statistics: cross-tables, effect sizes, classification trees, and the identification of frequency areas. Of the total number of playful activities identified, most were physical activities. These activities were Quasi-games without rules and TSG as well as activities with Objects and without material. This research confirms that the TSG in the Canary Islands is a mirror of traditional culture and, from a pedagogical approach, shows great potential for material and social sustainability. (shrink)

The aim of the series of the three articles entitled “Name game…” is to present the historical information about nomenclature history of every known chemical element. The process of naming each chemical element is analyzed, with particular emphasis on the first publication with a given name. It turned out that in many cases this information is not obvious and unambiguous, and the published data are even contradictory. In a few cases, the names of the elements were changed even several (...) times. Moreover, even when the author of a given element name is known, it is sometimes not entirely clear in which publication he/she first used it. Therefore, the series of three articles are an attempt to sort out the issue of first publishing of the names of all 118 chemical elements known so far, based on original source texts, available thanks to the digitization of a number of collections of scientific literature. The articles are divided according to the time of discoveries: (1) research till the end of the 18th century, (2) discoveries in the 19th century, (3) discoveries and syntheses of elements in the 20th and 21st centuries. This particular article presents the history of naming of the first 37 elements: known from antiquity, discovered in nature and named in 17th and 18th century. (shrink)

The order of stages in a multistage game is often interpreted by looking at earlier stages as involving more long term decisions. For the purpose of making this interpretation precise, the notion of a delay supergame of a bounded multistage game is introduced. A multistage game is bounded if the length of play has an upper bound. A delay supergame is played over many periods. Decisions on all stages are made simultaneously, but with different delays until they (...) become effective. The earlier the stage the longer the delay. A subgame perfect equilibrium of a bounded multistage game generates a subgame perfect equilibrium in every one of its delay supergames. This is the first main conclusion of the paper. A subgame perfect equilibrium set is a set of subgame perfect equilibria all of which yield the same payoffs, not only in the game as a whole, but also in each of its subgames. The second xmain conclusion concerns multistage games with a unique subgame perfect equilibrium set and their delay supergames which are bounded in the sense that the number of periods is finite. If a bounded multistage game has a unique subgame perfect equilibrium set, then the same is true for every one of its bounded delay supergames. Finally the descriptive relevance of multistage game models and their subgame perfect equilibria is discussed in the light of the results obtained. (shrink)

We provide some examples showing how game-theoretic arguments can be used in computability theory and algorithmic information theory: unique numbering theorem (Friedberg), the gap between conditional complexity and total conditional complexity, Epstein–Levin theorem and some (yet unpublished) result of Muchnik and Vyugin.

As a primary symptom defining Internet gaming disorder, preoccupation indicates a mind state in which gamers think about a gaming activity so much that other things appear less important and/or interesting to them. Previous studies have examined the negative impacts of IGD on both cognitive and affective functions, yet no study has investigated the influence of IGD on daily mind state changes that interfere with ongoing tasks. The current study hypothesized that more IGD symptoms lead to a higher frequency of (...) mind state shift in terms of mind-wandering. As social anxiety is related to both IGD and mind-wandering, we further hypothesized that social anxiety would partially contribute to the relationship. Survey data were collected from 632 young adults who were divided into two groups based on whether they reported playing games or not. In the player group, the number of IGD symptoms present was positively related to mind-wandering and social anxiety, with the latter two showing a positive correlation in both players and non-players. A mediation analysis for the players showed a partial mediation effect of social anxiety on the relationship between IGD and mind-wandering, and the model was replicated in an independent sample. This study suggests that excessive gaming behavior may increase mind-wandering and a shift towards such a non-productive mind state could exert long-term detrimental effects in adolescents and young adults. (shrink)

Schmidt’s game and other similar intersection games have played an important role in recent years in applications to number theory, dynamics, and Diophantine approximation theory. These games are real games, that is, games in which the players make moves from a complete separable metric space. The determinacy of these games trivially follows from the axiom of determinacy for real games, $\mathsf {AD}_{\mathbb R}$, which is a much stronger axiom than that asserting all integer games are determined, $\mathsf {AD}$. (...) One of our main results is a general theorem which under the hypothesis $\mathsf {AD}$ implies the determinacy of intersection games which have a property allowing strategies to be simplified. In particular, we show that Schmidt’s $(\alpha,\beta,\rho )$ game on $\mathbb R$ is determined from $\mathsf {AD}$ alone, but on $\mathbb R^n$ for $n \geq 3$ we show that $\mathsf {AD}$ does not imply the determinacy of this game. We then give an application of simple strategies and prove that the winning player in Schmidt’s $(\alpha, \beta, \rho )$ game on $\mathbb {R}$ has a winning positional strategy, without appealing to the axiom of choice. We also prove several other results specifically related to the determinacy of Schmidt’s game. These results highlight the obstacles in obtaining the determinacy of Schmidt’s game from $\mathsf {AD}$. (shrink)

The level of enjoyment in participating in sports activities is one component that causes young athletes to decide to stop or become more motivated to pursue sports activities. Practicing and participating in competitions are the main activities in sports coaching interactions towards optimal performance. This study aims to determine the effect of modifying the match rules implemented in youth soccer competitions on the level of enjoyment of players. Using an experimental method with 20 soccer schools participating in a competition with (...) modified game rules. Players registered by his team amounted to an average of 13.8 players aged 9-12 years. The number of players who are willing to fill out the pleasure level questionnaire is 238 players. Each player was asked to fill out a questionnaire before and after the competition, the questionnaire was analyzed using the mean and percentage test technique. The results of data analysis showed the average score before participating in the competition was 4.10 while after participating in the competition it was 4.47, which means an increase of 8.88%. The results showed that the level of enjoyment of the players increased after participating in the competition. Modification of the rule of the game in competition affects the level of enjoyment of players in the interaction of youth soccer coaching. Coaches, administrators, and match organizers are expected to have a positive paradigm of thinking and policy making towards the organization of competitions for young soccer players. (shrink)

We study repeated normal form games where the number of players is large. We argue that it is interesting to look at such games as being divided into subgames, each of which we call a neighbourhood. The structure of such a game is given by a graph G whose nodes are players and edges denote visibility. The neighbourhoods are maximal cliques in G. The game proceeds in rounds where in each round the players of every clique X (...) of G play a strategic form game among each other. A player at a node v strategises based on what she can observe, i.e., the strategies and the outcomes in the previous round of the players at vertices adjacent to v. Based on this, the player may switch strategies in the same neighbourhood, or migrate to another neighbourhood.We are interested in addressing questions regarding the eventual stability of such games. We incrementally impose constraints on the ‘types’ of the players. First, we look at players who are unconstrained in their strategising abilities, in that, players who may use unbounded memory. We then consider the case of memoryless players. We show that in both these cases the eventual stability of the game can be characterised in terms of potentials. We then introduce a simple modal logic in which the types of the players can be specified. We show that when the players play according to these specified types, it can be effectively decided whether the game stabilises. Finally, we look at the important heuristic of imitation. Simple imitative strategies can be specified in the logic introduced by us. We show that in a population of optimisers and imitators, we can decide how ‘worse-off’ the imitators are by playing imitative strategies rather than optimal ones. (shrink)