The difference is that poker is a game but finance is real life: physical resources, actual human lives. To operate at the game level of abstraction is sociopathic.
When real lives are involved, even more so do we owe it to our stakeholders to model the situations as carefully as possible, and figure out what the mathematically optimal strategies are.
Whether you apply the mathematical insights straight up is another question. But there's no excuse for being sloppy:
'Physical resources, actual human lives' deserve optimal play.
A sentimentality that treats a single photogenic orphan as more important than the plight of many does not cut it.
Just try to keep a handle on reality. People who play games tend to have a pretty loose grasp on the real world. Especially people who play games with other people's money.
Yes, that's important. And it's also important to always keep in mind the limitations of your models. (That's constantly on people's mind in finance already, by the way.)
> People who play games tend to have a pretty loose grasp on the real world. Especially people who play games with other people's money.
People who play money games literally have no idea what they're doing or what the real consequences of their actions are. They trade in weapons, they fund the destruction of human habitats, they undermine governments to put the desires of a small minority over the needs of the many. Yes they've lost their damn minds.
And when anyone points these things out, they complain and deny responsibility. "If I don't someone else will. Why is the government always on my ass trying to interfere?"
Are you talking about any one person in particular?
This seems like a whole hodgepodge of complaints about some boogeyman?
Eg for what it's worth, I've worked in finance on and off, and I can assure you that most people 'who play money games' do not 'trade in weapons'.
Trading weapons is a fairly specialized niche, and your average stock trader has no clue about that niche, even if they wanted to get into that specific market.
There might be other things wrong with people working in finance. But not all people you don't like engage in all the vices you don't like at the same time.
Btw, I suspect most weapons trading is done to prop up governments, not to undermine them. (Even thought neither you nor me might find the governments in question very sympathetic.)
Actually, I'm not sure you have noticed, but people in the real world tend to "play" "games" all the time. Whether it is trying to close a sale, convince someone the benefit of a going into a relationship, training an animal or teaching a child life skills. What you learn in playing games in a fairly safe environment, has wide application in the negotiation and assessments that we all use in everyday living
> People who play games tend to have a pretty loose grasp on the real world.
Don't lose track of the two senses of "game" being used.
The original post only mentioned game theory, and you complained "To operate at the game level of abstraction is sociopathic."
When we speak of the game abstraction in game theory, we are not talking about amusements. The term for the concept comes from the study of amusements, but in the context of game theory, a game is merely a situation where at least two participants make strategic decisions that effect each others' outcomes, potentially in the face of incomplete knowledge.
In this sense, "People who play games" are people who make mutual decisions which affect themselves and others.
There are plenty of poker players who play professionally and the bank roll management aspect of the game is an essential part of their job. Which is why at the highest level you'll find quite a complex ecosystem of players selling stakes in themselves to each other to lower the variance.
So the meta-game of poker is betting in your own competition as in buying shares on their possible (winning) stake.
That sounds a cool story either for a Doccumentary or maybe a webapp to easily manage that on the lower ranks where informality and everyone knowing each other might not be true?
No, this is a misunderstanding. It's about balancing how much you invest in today's game with how much you invest in tomorrows game. Preventing an unlucky streak from wiping you out and all that.
Game theory is about making decisions in the face of uncertainty, especially as it applies to real life with high stakes. The core principles of game theory were developed and used for making specific military decisions in WW2 with actual lives at stake.
Since game theory is a tool that allows you to make better decisions than the intuitive biases would nudge you otherwise, to operate at a game level of abstraction is not sociopathic but a necessity - if physical resources and actual human lives are at stake, abandoning such formal reasoning would be reckless and grossly negligent.
