Journal entries

As part of the course on game theory, one of the problems that was introduced and discussed was that of Kitty Genovese. In 1964 Catherine "Kitty" Genovese -- a Queens resident, was walking alone on the streets when a prowler attacked and stabbed her. As she cried for help, apartment residents rushed to their balconies and one of them even called out to the attacker which scared him away. Soon afterwards though, once the lights went off the attacker returned and stabbed her many times. A second cry for help also went nearly ignored but still dissuaded the attacker as he entered a car and drove away. The lights went off again. Not much later, the attacker returned to find Genovese bunched up inside an apartment. He stabbed her yet again and killed her this time. Genovese's body was found early next morning. The episode shocked and shamed the whole country but it particularly brought great disrepute on Queens and the rest of New York. One of the defences the residents had was the difficulty in getting through to the police and the impossibility of doing it anonymously. This was one of many episodes that hastened the introduction of the 911 emergency phone number. Now, what does all this have to do with game theory? Consider the two-player scenario where both players are Queens residents. Imagine that each has a pay-off of 1 if the other calls the police, 1/2 if he himself calls the police and 0 if nobody does. The Nash equilibrii are when one of them calls and the other does not. The probability that somebody calls the police in his case is 1/2 (at which point, Federico Echenique remarked with mordant wit in his thick, dragging Portuguese accent that the odds that Kitty Genovese survived could just as well have been decided by tossing a coin). Suppose now that the game is extended to n players with the same pay-offs as before, the probability that somebody calls the police is 1-2^{-1/(n-1)} which tends to 0 as n tends to infinity.

The Killing of Kitty Genovese

And now, the Objectivists reason why

Non-cooperative Games in Social Sciences

January 2004 - March 2004

October 2003 - January 2004

July 2003 - October 2003

May 2003 - June 2003

April 2003

January 2003 - April 2003

2002

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