About Game Theory

In a recent release of Scientific American, Prof. Kaushik Basu wrote under the title: "The traveler's dilemma" some notes about the application of the 'Game Theory' of J.F. Nash in real life.
He noticed that during the application of the theory, people do choose results that is quite far from the expected "Nash Equilibrium", and he interpreted this phenomena by one of the following results:

• Maybe people make their decisions just by luck.
• Others took their decisions regarding a superficial or quick thinking.
• Or by their spontaneous emotional sense.

And the majority were in the region that he grouped under those driven, in his opinion, by the third influence.

I totally disagree with this interpretation. As applying the Game Theory in real life; implies several different circumstances than those supposed in his experiments.

Simply; in these experiments, the majority of people who chose higher numbers with high deviations from "Nash Equilibrium", have made their choice most expectedly by creative thinking and with taking the risk assessment in their mind.

They made these choices because they either will win/earn more if the other person also chose a high deviation -if so luck the other will choose a higher number or the same-.

Or, the other prospect, that the other person will choose a low/minute deviation from the 'Nash Equilibrium', and in this case, he will NOT lose a lot.

Maybe in real life or in the economic model, the loss is high, and thus drives the investor closer to the equilibrium, but this is not the case in the experiments demonstrated.

Also, in any case, it's so obvious that those who made low deviations from the equilibrium in these experiment were expected to take longer time. Not because they have thought well. But because they went through a long wrong way!.