2. Putting yourselves into other people's shoes

Game Theory (ECON 159)
At the start of the lecture, we introduce the "formal ingredients" of a game: the players, their strategies and their payoffs. Then we return to the main lessons from last time: not playing a dominated strategy; and putting ourselves into others' shoes. We apply these first to defending the Roman Empire against Hannibal; and then to picking a number in the game from last time. We learn that, when you put yourself in someone else's shoes, you should consider not only their goals, but also how sophisticated are they (are they rational?), and how much do they know about you (do they know that you are rational?). We introduce a new idea: the iterative deletion of dominated strategies. Finally, we discuss the difference between something being known and it being commonly known.
00:00 - Chapter 1. Recap of Previous Lecture: Prisoners' Dilemma and Payoffs
06:47 - Chapter 2. The Formal Ingredients of a Game
16:01 - Chapter 3. Weakly Dominant Strategies
35:29 - Chapter 4. Rationality and Common Knowledge
01:05:37 - Chapter 5. Common Knowledge vs. Mutual Knowledge
Complete course materials are available at the Yale Online website: online.yale.edu
This course was recorded in Fall 2007.