Ken Binmore > Quotes

“Cooperation and conflict are two sides of the same coin, neither of which can be understood properly without taking account of the other.”
― Ken Binmore, Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“Mechanism design takes up Hume's challenge by designing games in which the knaves to whom power is delegated are treated as players. The checks in the constitution are the rules of the game. These are used to prevent a player going off the rails in situations that the designer can effectively monitor and evaluate. However, it is the controls that are more important, since these apply to decisions that the designer can't monitor, or doesn't know how to evaluate. To get the players to act in accordance with the designer's aims rather than their own in such situations, it is necessary that the payoffs of the game be carefully chosen to provide the right incentives.”
― Ken Binmore, Natural Justice

“A fair social contract is then taken to be an equilibrium in the game of life that calls for the use of strategies which, if used in the game of morals, would never leave a player with an incentive to exercise his right of appeal to the device of the original position. So a fair social contract is an equilibrium in the game of morals, but it must never be forgotten that it is also an equilibrium in the game of life; otherwise evolution will sweep it away. Indeed, the game of morals is nothing more than a coordination device for selecting one of the equilibria in the game of life.”
― Ken Binmore, Natural Justice

“When playing an outer-circle game as though it were an inner-circle game, the players will sometimes happen to coordinate on an equilibrium of the outer-circle game. The group will then have stumbled upon an equilibrium selection device for the outer circle game. This device consists of the players behaving as though they were constrained by the rules of the inner-circle game, when the rules by which they are actually constrained are those of the outer circle game.”
― Ken Binmore, Natural Justice

“Institutions that do not recognize that their officers' incentives are not consistent with the goals of the institution will necessarily be corrupted in the long run.”
― Ken Binmore