“Like all of mathematics, game theory is a tautology whose conclusions are true because they are contained in the premises.”
Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 10, What Have We Learned?, p. 164.
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Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)16
author, academic, and political activist 1944Related quotes
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
"The Regressive Method of Discovering the Premises of Mathematics" (1907), in Essays in Analysis (1973), pp. 273–274
1900s
“Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.”
Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist
Life, ix
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part I - Lord, What is Man?
Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher
General System Theory (1968), 4. Advances in General Systems Theory
“Auschwitz was contained in the principles of Nazi racist theory like the seed in the fruit.”
Ernst Nolte (1923–2016) German historian and philosopher
As quoted in Rethinking the Holocaust, Yehuda Bauer, New Haven: Yale University Press (2001) p. 104
Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist
There is an abstract rationale of all conduct which is rational at alt, and a rationale of all social relations arising through the organization of rational activity.
Source: "The limitations of scientific method in economics", 1924, p. 127 (2009 edition)
Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist
Source: 1960s, Prisoner's dilemma: A study in conflict and cooperation (1965), p. 196