HEY AUSTEN NERDS AND/OR GAME THEORY NERDS!

[rmd]

Jane Austen as the mother of game theory.

“Jane Austen, Game Theorist,” just published by Princeton University Press, is more than the larky scholarly equivalent of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” In 230 diagram-heavy pages, Mr. Chwe argues that Austen isn’t merely fodder for game-theoretical analysis, but an unacknowledged founder of the discipline itself: a kind of Empire-waisted version of the mathematician and cold war thinker John von Neumann, ruthlessly breaking down the stratagems of 18th-century social warfare.

Or, as Mr. Chwe puts it in the book, “Anyone interested in human behavior should read Austen because her research program has results.”

Comments

[irilyth]

Interesting, but I wonder about this example:

> But sometimes a powerful party faced with a weaker one may not realize
> it even needs to think strategically.
>
> Take the scene in "Pride and Prejudice" where Lady Catherine de Bourgh
> demands that Elizabeth Bennet promise not to marry Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth
> refuses to promise, and Lady Catherine repeats this to Mr. Darcy as an
> example of her insolence -- not realizing that she is helping Elizabeth
> indirectly signal to Mr. Darcy that she is still interested.
>
> It's a classic case of cluelessness, which is distinct from
> garden-variety stupidity, Mr. Chwe argues. "Lady Catherine doesn't even
> think that Elizabeth" -- her social inferior -- "could be manipulating
> her," he said.

I haven't read the book (or seen (one of) the movie(s)) in a while, but is it at all clear that Elizabeth is manipulating Lady Catherine in this scene? It sounds to me more like an unintended-consequences thing than a powerful-player-underestimates-a-weaker-player thing.

Still, pretty cool.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Having just recently re-read the book and re-watched two of the movies, Elizabeth isn't manipulating Lady Catherine in that scene, IMHO. To my reading, Elizabeth is completely floored by Lady Catherine's accusations and demands, and refuses to promise any such thing primarily as a matter of pride, and perhaps secondarily as a matter of hope. But even so, I don't think there's anything in it that implies she's manipulating Lady Catherine into a position of going home and telling Darcy that Lizzy is still interested.

I mean, I suppose you can read it that way if you really want to, because it's fairly witless of Lady Catherine to go home and tell Darcy that, just as it's fairly witless of her to come accuse Elizabeth of being secretly engaged to Darcy and thus sparking any hope in Elizabeth in the first place. But eh, I don't agree with the reading, and Austen can't be reached for commentary. :)

[flit.livejournal.com]

I agree with that; I felt Elizabeth was refusing out of moral principle, and would have done it regardless of her projected outcome.

[dfjdejulio.livejournal.com]

Sure, but from the point of view of Lady Catherine, Elizabeth's internal states are unknowable and in fact mostly irrelevant. Her own interests would have been better served by considering the possibility of manipulation and being careful not to let Elizabeth's behavior modify Lady Catherine's behavior in unintended ways.

This whole discussion is reminding me of Bruce Schneier's "Liars and Outliers". There's discussion of a class of security errors... there's this model of compliance versus defection, and you can be sure someone tends to compliance rather than defection, but if you're not sure about their affiliations, the behavior they think of as compliance, you think of as defection. I think a chunk of what's going on in that scene is Lady Catherine not allowing for the possibility that Darcy might have stronger affiliations than to her, and that's a consequence of blindness that comes from her privilege.

I think?

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I think a chunk of what's going on in that scene is Lady Catherine not allowing for the possibility that Darcy might have stronger affiliations than to her, and that's a consequence of blindness that comes from her privilege.

I think you're absolutely right about that, but I don't see it as evidential that either of them are attempting to manipulate the other in discreet ways. *Clearly* Lady Catherine is trying to manipulate (where 'manipulate' means 'tells her flat out to do something and expects to be obeyed') Elizabeth into promising she'll never marry Darcy, but there's no subterfuge about it. I don't think Elizabeth's hopes or expectations of the confrontation are to send Lady Catherine back home to tell Darcy that she's still in love with him, as she is surprised and relieved rather than, hm, smug and confident? when Darcy reappears to propose for the, er, what, second or third time.

Or possibly what you're saying and that I'm having a hard time grasping is that Lady Catherine has been unwittingly manipulated, which I think is arguably true, but I don't think Elizabeth did that manipulating. Lady Catherine kinda did it to herself, due to, as you say, not imagining Darcy might have stronger affiliations than to her. :)

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

The only certain way to distinguish Motive A from Motive B in a person's behavior is if the motives would cause different behaviors. Even if the narrator gives us certain information regarding Elizabeth's motives, the author may be subtly pointing out to the reader that Elizabeth's behaviors are also optimal from a financial point of view.