Transcriber: Joseph Geni
Reviewer: Thu-Huong Ha
I'm going to talk about
the strategizing brain.
We're going to use an unusual
combination of tools
from game theory and neuroscience
to understand how people interact socially
when value is on the line.
So game theory is a branch of,
originally, applied mathematics,
used mostly in economics and political
science, a little bit in biology,
that gives us a mathematical
taxonomy of social life,
and it predicts what people
are likely to do
and believe others will do
in cases where everyone's actions
affect everyone else.
That's a lot of things: competition,
cooperation, bargaining,
games like hide-and-seek and poker.
Here's a simple game to get us started.
Everyone chooses a number
from zero to 100.
We're going to compute
the average of those numbers,
and whoever's closest to two-thirds
of the average wins a fixed prize.
So you want to be a little bit
below the average number
but not too far below,
and everyone else wants to be a little bit
below the average number as well.
Think about what you might pick.