Tom Siegfried

Any reasonably complete history of scientific cosmology, whether or not it specifically aims to shed light on the multiverse concept as this book does, is bound to spend much of its time on ancient and (especially) medieval ideas that were hopelessly entangled with religion. So it is that at least a third of Siegfried's volume is riddled with tiresome god-talk. But this annoyance is well compensated for by the late chapters, which include coverage of the quantum many-worlds, the chaotic-inflation, the stringy-"landscape", and the "braneworld" varieties of multiverse. It all adds up to a strong case against those who maintain that the multiverse idea is not science.… (mais)

A summary of game theory, pretty much starting with the Nash Equilibrium. Isaac Asimov's Hari Seldon and his "psychohistory" was kind of a running theme through the book.

My favorite takeaway was the hawk-dove game. Pretend there are generic birds that can become hawks or doves. If a hawk meets another hawk where there's food, they fight, and neither gets food. They score 0 and 0. If a hawk meets a dove, the hawk eats and the dove doesn't. They score 2 and 0. And finally, if a dove meets a dove, they both eat, and s ore 1 and 1. The Nash equilibrium given these numbers predicts the generic bird population will settle down at 1/3 hawks, and 2/3 doves.

Another nugget was this: just as molecules of a gas seek their lowest energy levels, people in a society seek their highest utility (the economics term).… (mais)