…you’re subscribing to a very broad concept of rationality, whereas mine is narrow. You’re using “rationality” the way some enthusiasts use “information.”

I’m not sure I know what an information “enthusiast” is. But in the appropriate context, I would use “information” in the way information theorists use it. (Only, I don’t know enough to do it right.)

But to say natural selection is implicitly rational in conforming to game-theoretic predictions is either to use “game” and “rational” as loose metaphors out of zeal for a scientistic fad of hyperrationality or (less likely) it’s to indulge in a cryptotheistic design argument.

I am certainly using “game” metaphorically, because game theory likens things to games. Game theory is a good predictor to the extent that an observed phenomenon reflects competitive pressure. If we assume that economics entails competition at some level with respect to some things, then we should expect economic strategies to emerge that are effective and, ipso facto, consistent with game-theoretical prediction and amenable to some game-theoretical prescription in the way polar coordinates might be substituted for Cartesian to get to the same place.

Let’s cut to the chase. If the natural order is rational, Heraclitus’s Logos or Hegel’s zeitgeist might as well be organizing and optimizing reality.

I’m not going to pretend to understand those references.

But in that case the game theorist would face this test: if she’s only employing a fiction and a metaphor for pragmatic purposes, not to prescribe an ideal world based on a religious vision or anything like that, I’d expect this theorist to exhibit no emotional tie to this particular fiction. There are lots of fictions in the sea of human imagination. Why not try another if there’s no cult or fad afoot?

Because it works? I am not emotionally committed to Euclidean Geometry. But should I try some other “fiction” to figure out the width of my diagonally measured TV screen given its aspect ratio? How pragmatic would that be?

So according to my narrow conception, “rationality” is a normative term and therefore doesn’t apply literally to the natural order, since that order is amoral and absurd, assuming its godlessness.

I agree. I just don’t see why that conception is useful. I can dismiss laissez-faire economics as wrong-headed without invoking irrationality, venality, or cultism. That’s not to say that self-styled Randians et al. aren’t foolish cultists. I just don’t care whether they are or aren’t. I care that they are wrong about the nature of economic activity as a closed system, especially as something isolated from politics in a way that makes political intervention exogenous and not simply the little guys’ bargaining chip.

In my view, you are buying into their playing field and then saying they are wrong within it because economic actors aren’t “rational.” I prefer to say they don’t understand the game, and that over time, with due regard for the imperfections of our coordinating technologies (e.g., bank regulation), one can expect economic activity to appear to have been rational. In this regard, note that in the absence of effective coordination, defection in plus-sum games is likely, and the benefits of coordination are lost. Game theory tells us how to win, but, in so doing, also tells us why lose.

Or with Groucho Marx, you could say we’re implicitly “following reason,” by not trying to read inside dogs. But in _exactly_ the same way, we could say we’re thereby doing God’s will. In neither case are we being scientific or particularly rational in the narrow sense; rather, in both cases we’d be using metaphors to tell stories that are useful for certain purposes.

I disagree. It would be unreasonable to read inside of a dog. I do not see how that is even remotely like saying that God forbids it. But then, I don’t have Euthyphro’s problem. If God forbids us to try to read inside of a dog, it’s because doing so would be a dumb, and not vice versa. Why could you not prove scientifically that it is too dark to read inside of a dog?

Just as there are zealous supporters of fiction that border on being cultists (e.g. Star Trek fan clubs), we could say those who take game-theoretic fictions or idealizations seriously, such as those who use them to lobby congress to cut taxes for the rich might be cultists or con men, depending on their sincerity.

That’s a non sequitur. What do you mean by “might be”? Do you mean “are either”? If so, what if the lobbyists are advocating a good policy for a good reason? Economist argue for tax cuts for the poor and for UBI and Medicare for All, too.

You agree there are egregious uses of economics and game theory. But you seem taken with game theory and with a broad view of economics that encompasses politics.

I am not “taken with” game theory; I believe it is more useful than you do, perhaps because I don’t have a political agenda like you do. I am unapologetically a super-Clausewitzian: War is politics continued by other means, and politics is economics continued by other means. (And the Second Amendment is the First Amendment continued by other means.) Human activity is a seamless web. The idea that one field of action ends where another begins is a fiction, one you, er, “seem taken with.”

Sure, it could be rational to team up to overcome our weakness as isolated individuals, although we might also team up because we have a lust to dominate as a mob. It would also be righteous and blessed for us to team up and work together out of love of God and fear of divine punishment in the afterlife. Would either assessment be especially reality-based?

Yes, the first one. The second is a metaphor for the first. God is game theory for the masses.

I don’t think the US was founded on rational cooperation, not in the narrow sense at least. The venture began with imperialism, extermination of the natives, enslavement of a foreign workforce, and the zealous desire to practice heretical Christianity beyond the reach of Old World popes and kings.

I wrote about how the Federalists addressed the specific technological problem of creating a government for those it governed. I didn’t get lost in who fucked over whom on the way to Philadelphia or Appomattox or Selma or Minneapolis. You shouldn’t either; it’s not rational.

The Founders had it both ways, appealing to nature and reason when it suited them and to a shadow of God to lay claim to outdated religious arguments to ground their confidence in human nature.

None of which makes any difference to the subject at hand. Either the Constitution created a viable government or it didn’t, and game theory can probably explain why. The rest is just hyperventilation. Why it takes us so long to get where we need to be is interesting, as is why Dr. King’s arc of history bends toward a predictable goal. Justice is the ultimate plus-sum outcome. How could we not be headed there?

You say, “Game theory does not prescribe a political solution; game theory identifies the benefits of a political solution, which provides the theoretical impetus for trying to find one.”

But that hairsplitting is consistent with the historic role of game theory as an appendage of the US military in the Cold War.

One man’s hair-splitting is another man’s nuance. I’m sorry if I don’t share your jaundiced view of American history, or more pertinently, your ad hominem view of material problems. MAD is game theoretical, but so what? If game theory explains the price of eggs, it explains the price of eggs, whether or not other people use if for other things.

Certainly, free-market and neoclassical economists take themselves to be social scientists. I take them to be cultists or fraudsters.

Fine with me. Once you define “free-market” to mean unregulated and neoclassical to mean hyperrational, you can tar them with whatever brush suits your politics. I just think you’re throwing babies out with bathwater.