Home › Authors › Robert Aumann
Robert Aumann Quotes
born 1930 Israel
Robert Aumann (born 1930, in Frankfurt, Germany) is an Israeli mathematician, Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who won the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Israel Academics Economists Mathematicians Nobel laureates Random Robert Aumann quote
11 quotes
"Interactive Decision Theory" would perhaps be a more descriptive name for the discipline usually called Game Theory.
Robert Aumann (2000)
A person’s behavior is rational if it is in his best interests, given his information.
War and peace (2005)
I think game theory creates ideas that are important in solving and approaching conflict in general.
War has been with us ever since the dawn of civilization. Nothing has been more constant in history than war.
War and peace (2005)
Capitulation, sycophancy, and cowardice will only undermine us... Sometimes, you have to courageously follow your own path and not try to curry favor with anyone.
Repetition acts as an enforcement mechanism: It makes cooperation achievable when it is not achievable in the one-shot game, even when one replaces strategic equilibrium as the criterion for achievability by the more stringent requirement of perfect equilibrium.
War and peace (2005)
The players in a game are said to be in strategic equilibrium (or simply equilibrium) when their play is mutually optimal: when the actions and plans of each player are rational in the given strategic environment – i.e., when each knows the actions and plans of the others.
War and peace (2005)
The strong equilibrium point f just described is one of "unrelenting ferocity" against offenders. It exhibits a zeal for meting out justice that is entirely oblivious to the sometimes dire consequences to oneself or to the other faitheful——i.e., those who have not deviated.
It turns out that the Romans were champs in making peace. Their motto was that if you want to make peace, you need to prepare for war. They knew game theory.
The theory of repeated games is able to account for phenomena such as altruism, cooperation, trust, loyalty, revenge, threats (self-destructive or otherwise) – phenomena that may at first seem irrational – in terms of the “selfish” utility-maximizing paradigm of game theory and neoclassical economics.
War and peace (2005)
All these cries for peace we hear in Israel, especially from our side, do not bring peace any closer -- they only push it away. If you chase peace it only eludes you. That's not game theory; that's history.
Topics Robert Aumann is quoted on
Works