معمای زندانی

by William Poundstone, عباس علی کتیرایی (Translator)

A biography of one of the most influential thinkers of the century tells how John von Neumann invented the digital computer and constructed a game theory called prisoner's dilemma, which was often used as an allegory for the nuclear arms race.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Economics, Mathematics, Biography, Psychology

356 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

William Poundstone is the author of more than ten non-fiction books, including 'Fortune's Formula', which was the Amazon Editors' Pick for #1 non-fiction book of 2005. Poundstone has written for The New York Times, Psychology Today, Esquire, Harpers, The Economist, and Harvard Business Review. He has appeared on the Today Show, The David Letterman Show and hundreds of radio talk-shows throughout the world. Poundstone studied physics at MIT and many of his ideas concern the social and financial impact of scientific ideas. His books have sold over half a million copies worldwide.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

When is a math book not a math book? How about when it's a biography, or a history of the early Cold War years? Clocking in at 278 pages, this book is sort of three books in one. It's kind of a look at Game Theory. Sometimes it's a biography of John Von Neumann, and then at other times it's a primer about early Cold War paranoia and the beginning of the arms race.

All three are pretty interesting subjects, and they are intertwined in ways that are fairly obvious (or at least fairly obvious if one reads the dust jacket), but unlike real brand Oreo's with their carefully calculated ratio of filling to cookie, this book is more like a cheap store brand that is skimpy on the filling and all about the cookie. That's fine, but it's not really a good proportion.

Problem one. (Spoiler?) John Von Neumann dies. It's inevitable, we all die. Historically he's dead. As the writer though he didn't need to kill off the central narrative strand of the book about sixty pages before the end. Once Von Neumann died it was like the book came to a slow halt, everything else after it felt like filer, even if it wasn't, it just felt like an after-thought, or like something Minor Threat would condone filling your head with (sorry, had to go with the Minor Threat / Filer reference). What follows Von Neumann's death is some explanations of different games, and maybe some Cold War stuff, but I kind of lost interest at this point (although the games are fun to read about, lots of little tricks you can pull on greedy friends if one was so inclined.)

Problem two. I don't know much about math, and reading this book I don't know anything more about math. I kind of wanted to learn a little something about Game Theory here, but in a nice and easy to understand way that someone who got a D+ in his third quarter of high school algebra could understand. I got a tiny bit of math that someone who got A's in a couple of statistics classes in college could have easily figured out for himself, but nothing math-ish except for descriptions of the games in a narrative form. I don't know what I expected actually. I guess I was a little disheartened to find out I knew most of these games already, and more of the math behind them from watching a few seasons of Numb3rs, and could usually even remember which episode's Charlie would enlighten some member of the FBI about a particular game strategy and how it would help them capture a bad person.

Problem three. This is like problem one. Douglas Hofstader and Richard Powers are masters at running three parallel narratives at once and pulling them in and out of each other as their books progress. If you're going to do three narrative threads it should be as neat and tidy as they do it. This book doesn't, and once again I'm disappointed because the three narrative thread structure is one that I love. To be teased with this structure and then see it unravel until only one lone thread is left without a satisfying 'brining it all together' makes me sad.

Problems aside the book was a nice read, but not exactly what I wanted the book to be. I'll just have to go back to watching more Numb3rs to learn my higher math concepts for the mathematically retarded.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is three intertwined story lines, all separate, but related. The first is a short biography of John von Neumann, the founder of game theory. The second is a layman's explanation of game theory, with many examples of various games, their properties, and how they might be applied to real life. The third is a history of the middle of the 20th Century in relation to the atomic bomb, specifically the arms race between the USA and USSR that gave us the huge stockpile of hydrogen bombs and mutually assured destruction.

Poundstone does a good job of keeping the book fresh by switching between the various narratives, although occasionally the pieces don't fit together quite well. Dr. Neumann's life sometimes interrupts the bomb history only to be followed by the game theory discussion, leaving the reader holding a lot in his head. But in the end, I feel I have a much better understanding of what game theory is all about and why it is important. This is probably the best compliment any layman's science book can receive.

[Hesam · Rating 3 out of 5]

ترجمه ی کتاب یک فاجعه ی به تمام معناست...ویراستاری که هیچ ...ندارد
اگرچه رویکرد تاریخی نویسنده کتاب برای شرح و تفهیم نظریه ی بازیها به نظر جذاب و موفق به نظر می آید اما روند کتاب نشان از آنست که این رویکرد به پاشنه ی آشیل آن بدل شده است.کتاب برای شروع به دانستن نظریه ی بازیها اصلا مناسب نیست و آشنایی قبلی لازم به نظر میرسد و تنها برای گرفتن اطلاعات تاریخی و آشنایی با تعدادی از بازیها مطرح بد نیست
خوب بخش های جذاب کتاب(با در نظر نگرفتن ترجمه ی افتضاح و فرض اندکی اطلاعات پیشینی) یکی ، اتفاقات جنگ سرد بین آمریکا و شوروی است که به رویکردهایی چون تفکر "جنگ برای صلح" منتج شد آنهم از طرف اندیشمندانی چون راسل که بیشتر به چهره ی صلح طلب شناخته می شدند
هم چنین نقش دانشمندان و عالمان در خلق احمقانه ترین موقعیت هایی که می توانستند و می توانند بشریت را تا چندقدمی انقراض پیش برند...
از جمله جذابیت های مصادیق تاریخی ، اجتماعی و ... نظریه بازیها ، چالشهای اخلاقی حاصل است که البته مشخصا در این کتاب بدان پرداخته نشده است...

[Remo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Biografía de John Von Neumann, sin duda uno de los científicos más inteligentes que ha habido, atendiendo a los testimonios de todo aquel que le rodeara. Trabajó en un montón de cosas, desde la creación del ordenador hasta la bomba atómica, pasando por la matemática pura.
Lamentablemente, en este libro William Poundstone (que luego ha escrito cosas muy interesantes) no le pilla el punto a la narración y sentía por momentos que se atascaba todo. Tal vez sea porque el autor quería mezclar a la vez en el libro la biografía de Von Neumann con la teoría de juegos que él ayudó a desarrollar, con la bomba atómica (y la carrera armamentística, relacionada con la teoría de juegos). El resultado es un engrudo demasiado espeso por momentos. Hay trozos saltables, omisibles e incluso fusilables. Se puede hacer uno una idea del personaje leyendo a Feynman, que tenía un ego bastante saludable, y que mostraba aun así su profunda admiración por la mente del genio.
Muy entretenido a trozos y doloroso a otros. Tres estrellas.

[Dan Downing · Rating 4 out of 5]

When one wants to write about something which will sustain only a quarter of a book's worth of print, one can be clever in a number of ways. I've no clue if Mr. Poundstone resorted to such padding techniques or if he merely threw together an olio of interesting stuff using John von Neumann as a jumping-off point.
For my money, I rounded up this volume in search of more information about Dr. Neumann. Norman Macrae's biography and the material in Richard Rhodes' magisterial works on the Atomic and Hydrogen bombs left me with questions or perhaps time had erased some bits. In any event, off I went and bought the present volume.
Poundstone examines game theory and matters relating to nuclear weapons, the Cuban Missle Crises, and a fairly large helping of von Neumann stories. Throw in a chapter on The Rand Corporation and some expanded material on various dilemma games, and you have an interesting and worthy book.
Reading it today as opposed to its publication era in the early 90s adds a bit of spice as some issues have been settled and a few still loom. 1992 is so far in the past that the term 'googol' is used without a blush. The charms of the internet and cell phones are never mentioned. Yet von Neumann's fingerprints are all over the technologies underlying these things. And so much more.
Recommended.

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My next book, continuing my quest to misunderstand nuclear physics. Word of the day mamihlapinatapai. Meaning "looking at each other hoping that either will offer to do something that both parties desire but are unwilling to do."

[Warren Mcpherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book combines a narrative of the life on John Von Neumann with an exploration of a couple of his ideas that have had a great impact on society.
John Von Neumann had a deep understanding of many of the most advanced ideas of his time. He also made critical contributions to many projects that were mostly shaped by other people. This makes a description of his life and ideas a formidable challenge.
I have run across his contributions to computer science and was familiar with the extremely high regard contemporaries had for him so I was quite curious to know more about the man.
Most of the book is spent explaining a selection of ideas that have had broad social impact like game theory and the development of the nuclear bomb. The core concepts of game theory are familiar to most people. The discussion fills in some background and explains some nuance. The discussion of systemic analysis of simple games with parameterized rules foreshadows cellular automata.
Knowledgable readers will gain an understanding of how some critical ideas are connected and have developed. But the book makes no assumptions and all readers will gain insight into one of the most incredible people of the twentieth century.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you saw the movie version of A Beautiful Mind and thought that its corny description of Nash equilibria left something to be desired, then this popular treatment of game theory is an excellent next step. The book devotes some space to a biography of John von Neumann and a rushed history of post-WW2 nuclear politics, but the real highlights are the author's crisp and readable explanations of the major concepts of game theory -- chief among them the Minimax Theorem, the Prisoner's Dilemma, Tit-for-Tat, and the Dollar Auction. The book wisely confines itself to a narrow corner of the broad and diverse field of behavioral economics, which lets it go deeper with each idea. But it's hard not to feel intrigued by the unexplored paths branching off from game theory. I guess for that there are other books to read.

[Miro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking an introduction to game theory, and ended up on this. I enjoyed reading this a lot, but be noted that this is also a history book that contains:

- a lot of history of the mathematicians who have been researching game theory: who they were, how did they end up studying this topic
- history of nuclear weapon development + the cold war politics

if those mentioned above are your jam, you are in for a treat. If you are looking something that explains only the game theory itself, look for something else

[Doug · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, though it suffers a bit from trying to be three books at once -- a biography of John von Neumann, a primer on game theory, and a history of the first decade of the Cold War. There are a lot of nifty ideas and fun anecdotes within, but it's not too successful in tying the various strands together.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very readable. Von Neumann sounds like like a fuddy-duddy, and all the praise of his intelligence, like hubris, however this biography of his life, and account of the development of Game theory and the Bomb, is jam packed with salutary concepts and crystal anecdotes. Until now I've never really grasped game theory. I still think I don't really understand it - it is much more abstract than I expected, and this biography is up-front with the criticisms that emerged over the decades about the flaws in the 'mathematical' nature of game theory. Mathematicians love a problem with a right and a wrong answer. Unfortunately, some of the foundational assumptions remain sociologically subjective. This does not detract from a fascinating conceptual apparatus developed and used to manage and analyse the decades long crisis of the cold war and nuclear weapons development and proliferation.

[Steven Ott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating look at the development of Prisoner's Dilemma and game theory. I particularly enjoyed the developers' interesting attempt to apply game theory to real life situations. Turns out real life is not just two dimensional. "Game theory is a kaleidoscope that can only reflect the value systems of those who apply it."

[Daniel Hageman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last couple chapters were great and covered novel games I had not heard over before, but on a whole the book was quite disjointed, jumping between biography or von Neumann (read Man from the Future instead) and game theory dilemmas.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this a bunch of times. If you find game theory fascinating it's the kind of book you can pick up and start reading and then find a hour or more has gone by.

[Itxaso Aizpurua · Rating 3 out of 5]

I revered von Neumann and thougut game theory was important. I read this book and found out how flawed both are. Very interesting.

[datanodes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A small but fact-filled biography of a physicist, the Cold war, and the man-made systems attempting to perfect human interaction. Highly recommended for old and new history/science buffs.

[Alberto Cid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro muy bueno que trata sobre todo acerca de Teoría de Juegos pero narrado como un relato interesante que une el desarrollo cronológico con aspectos biográficos y personales de Von Neumann, hilado con conceptos matemáticos, algoritmos, comportamiento económico, estrategia militar, juegos de mesa, dilemas, anécdotas, biología… y todo envuelto en un contexto histórico, y situaciones reales para pensar.
Una joya de libro.

[Danish Prakash · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend of mine recommended this book to me a couple of years back. I finally got around to reading it after getting interested in Prisoner's Dilemma sometime last year.

The book primarily covers three topics. It starts with John von Neumann's childhood and his early life to the point when he published The Theory Of Games and Economic Behaviour. It then talks about Game Theory and--not so surprisingly in hindsight--the book goes into a full-blown discussion about the events surrounding the atomic war and the nuclear arms race between the US and the USSR. Once the three topics are introduced, they all appear throughout the rest of the book in seemingly random yet chronological order.

The book spends a considerable amount of time discussing Prisoner's and similar dilemmas in the second half of the book. The different storylines helped make sense of the concepts being discussed and showed them in practice in real-life situations. At times, the information provided is overwhelming but it makes up for it with the change in pace and storylines.

[Daeus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think game theory, esp zero sum games, chicken, and prisoners dilemma help explain situations well (i.e. nuclear warface and arms races in general), especially traps to avoid like a sunk cost fallacy. However they are often not applicable for a practical optimal strategy in real life.

Quotes/Notes:
- "No, no,’ he said. ‘Chess is not a game. Chess is a well-defined form of computation. You may not be able to work out the answers, but in theory there must be a solution, a right procedure in any position. Now, real games,’ he said, ‘are not like that at all. Real life is not like that. Real life consists of bluffing, of little tactics of deception, of asking yourself what is the other man going to think I mean to do. And that is what games are about in my theory."
- "A game is a conflict situation where one must make a choice knowing that others are making choices too. And the outcome of the conflict will be determined in some prescribed way by all the choices made." ... "Von Neumann wondered if there is always a rarional way to play a game, particularly one with much bluffing and second guessing." ... "The mutual second guessing in games like poker invokes potentially infinite chains of reasoning. It was not obvious that rarional players would ever come to a definite conclusion of how to play."
- "Von Neumann demonstrated mathematically that there is always a rational course of action for games with two players. Provided their interests are completely opposed. This is called the minimax theorem."
- Zero sum games, prisoners dilemma. "The prisoners dilemma is apt to turn up anywhere a conflict of interests exist."
- "Einsteins mind was slower and contemplative. He would think about something for years. Johnny's mind was just the opposite. It was lightning quick, stunningly fast. If you gave him a problem he either solved it right away or not at all. If he has to think about it a long time and it bored him, his interest began to wonder. And Johnny's mind would not shine unless whatever he was working on has his undivided attention."
- "You don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in."
- "In the late 1920s, Von Neumann was already working on game theory and he would spend much of the last years of his life considering how a mind of sorts might be embodied in the relays and circuits of a computer."
- "'You must see that in a sense all science, all human thought, is a form of play.'... other animals play only while young.' ... to prepare himself for long term strategies and plans. Game theory is not about playing as usually understood  it is about conflict amongst rational but distracting beings."
- "Good poker players do not simply play the odds, they take into account the conclusions other players will draw from their actions, and sometimes try to deceive the other players. It was Von Neuman's genius to see that this devious way of playing was both rational and amenable to rigorous analysis." Though he was not great at poker.
- "It is one thing to prove that a best strategy exists, but it is quite another to do all the calculation and produce the strategy." Games as trees vs tables
- Minimax theorem: 'you know the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.'
- "We have all listened to Monday-morning quarterbacks who tell how they would have played the game had they been in charge... there is one rule implicit in such free frantasizing: you can't change the other team's strategy....if you could choose the imposing teams strategy you could sabotage their play, thats not fair. Nash's approach to non-cooperative games emphasizes equilibrium points. These are outcomes where the players have no regrets. Hold a post mortem analysis after the game. Go to each player in turn and ask him if he would have done things any differently given how the other players played. If everybody is happy with the way they played, then that outcome is an equilibrium point."
- "The advantage of a surprise attack was appreciated in the most ancient writings on war. The bomb raised the possibility of a surprise attack winning not just the battle, but the war.... Von Neumann wrote 'in the past, if the enemy came out with a particularly brilliant new trick, then you just has to take your losses until you had developed the counter measures which may have taken weeks or months. The period of one month is probably reasonable for a very brilliantly performed counter-counter move. This duration is now much too long, and the losses you have to take during this period could be quite decisive. The difficulty with atomic weapons, and especially missile carried atomic weapons, will be that they can decide a war... consequentially, the nature of technical surprise will be different from what it was before. It will not be sufficient to know the enemy has only 50 possible tricks and that you can counter every one of them, but you must also invent some system of being able to counter them practically at the instant they occur."
- [in repeated prisoners dilemma] tit for tat: "Cooperate on the first round, then do whatever the other players did on the previous round." ... "a strategy that is too eager to cooperate often gets clobbered. Tit for tat is also provocable, it defects in response to defection by the other strategy." ... "just as important is tit for tat's forgiveness." ... "that the winning strategy was nice and provocable was no suprise...[the surprise was that] tit for tat was simple." ... "by making its threat as simple as possible, tit for tat ensures that the maximum number of responsive strategies will understand it." ... "another important quality for tit for tat is that it doesnt have to be kept a secret." ... "When faced with tit for tat, one can do no better than cooperate with it." One potentially more optimal strategy tests to see if its an all cooperate opponent, but otherwise tit for tat (not necessaily optimal elsewhere as a completely submissive strategy isn't common.
- "No strategy is good or bad out of context."
- Repeat games led to predator and prey cycles, tit for tat stabilized longer term. However tit for tat can enable endless wars depending on history...
- US/scientists thought that Germany was close to developing an atom bomb so they thought it was best to invent it first.
- "It's a matter of personalities, group psychology, and luck, not game theory. Rationality has nothing to do with it." [In a protracted strike].
- "the game [prisoners dilemma] demonstrates just what it was intended to: namely that individual interests can overturn the common good."
- "The only satisfying solution to the prisoners dilemma is to avoid prisoners dilemmas."

[فرهاد ذکاوت · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب معمای زندانی از آن دسته کتابهای عمومی منتهی در حوزۀ تاریخ علم و همزمان جنگ سرد است. موضوعی که من هم به آن علاقه دارم. این کتاب را میتوانم عامه پسند تاریخی بنامم. عنوانی شبیه کتابهای علمی عامه پسند. برای کسانی که حرفه ای تر منابع را بررسی میکنند و یا جزییات بسیاری از جنگ سرد میخواهند بدانند صرفاً یک کتاب برای عصرانه های منزل یا دفتری ست که جوصله کار دیگری ندارید.

ترجمۀ کتاب اما، همانطور که در جلسۀ کاری با مدیر مسئول نشر داشتم، و به ایشان هم در مورد وضعیت تعدادی از کتابهایشان گفتم، به هیج وجه خوب نیست. کسی هم دستی بر متن پُرایراد و سر هم بندی شده و پر اشتباه و گاها حملات ناقص نکشیده. این خساست ناشرینی که به صورت فردی کتاب منتشر میکنند تحت عنوان انتشارات خودشان، و نداشتن ویراستارهای حرفه ای گرفتاری حوزه نشر در ایران است. بنابراین از متن فارسی انتظار یک متن یکدست و حتی درستی نداشته باشید. منتهی برای شروع آشنایی با تاریخ علم در جنگ سرد شاید یکی از منابع نه چندان عمیق و دقیق باشد که میتوانم به علاقه مندان توصیه کنم. اگر دسترسی به کتابهای اصلی داریدريال در مورد جنگ سرد کتابهای بسیار بهتر و جالبتری را میتوانید بخوانید و اگر همین کتااب را برای شروع انتخاب کردید، اولیوت با متن انگلیسی باشد و نه فارسی.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

the beginning and the end of the book are good. it talks abt game theory and its application in different scenarios


the middle part is less interesting unless of course you like history.

but i must say this book provides a good overview on game theory, especially to someone new on the subject

key takeaways from the book:

(1) provides scientific explanation on why ppl would be motivated to defect (rather than cooperate) given the chance to go behind someone's back. And why economically speaking, it's always better to cooperate in the long run in a prisoner's dilemma

(2) that the optimal solution (equilibrium) to game theory is following the principle of tit-for-tat (corrected 13 Dec) ( do unto others what others do to you)

[Teegee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never get tired of reading anecdotes of John von Neumann's mind. After two hours of RAND scientists pleading von Neumann to design a more powerful computer in order to solve a problem they deemed too complex for their current computer, von Neumann said "Gentlemen, you don't need a new computer. I have just solved the problem." Legendary.

The prisoner's dilemma is frustratingly vexing. I can only draw a few conclusions:

1) If we each were willing to be made a fool, none would be foolish at all.
2) Individual interests too easily topple the collective good.
3) The only "solution" to the prisoner's dilemma is to avoid prisoner's dilemmas.

tit for tat feels reasonable, but someone's gotta stop tatting

278p

[Ramin · Rating 4 out of 5]

فرض كنيد در اتاقي به صندلي بسته شده ايد و دكمه اي در روبروي شما قرار دارد در اتاقي ديگر فرزند شما قرار گرفته و وضعيتي مشابه با شما دارد درصورت فشار دادن دكمه فرد فشاردهنده كشته ميشود و فرد ديگر آزاد مي گردد و اين را اضافه كنيد كه شما و فرزندتان يك ساعت ببيشتر وقت نداريد وبعد از يك ساعت هر دو كشته ميشويد در اين صورت واكنش شما چيست؟
شايد به خود بگوييد كه احتمال بروز اين موقعيتها در زندگي براي من نزديك به صفر است ولي به نظر من قرار نيست آدم حتما به جايي بسته شده باشد و راه نجاتش دكمه باشد اين موقعيت ممكن است براي ما در قالبي ديگر پيش آيد .در اين كتاب ما با شيوه بهترين انتخاب براي حل اين مسائل روبرو ميشويم و مسائلي از اين دست در ابعاد مختلف مانند سياست و جامعه مورد بررسي قرار ميگيرد .

[JaredPar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book just didn't turn out to be what I wanted it to be. There is a good bit of info here about the history of game theory and how it evolved over the years. But there are also large digressions into topics that just aren't related.

I get that much of the Cold War stand offs are reducible to elements of Game Theory, and that reduction is interesting to observe. But the book spent entirely too much time discussing the Cold War and many elements that just weren't directly pertinent to the conversation.

It's the type of book that you could edit away 1/3 of and not miss anything important.

[Ushan · Rating 4 out of 5]

At once a biography of John von Neumann (which of course could not touch on all his scientific achievements, since this would have required a far greater sophistication than the author could assume), a popular introduction to game theory, including a detailed discussion of prisoner's dilemma, the game of chicken and Rousseau's stag hunt, and the story of early Cold War nuclear diplomacy (involving such prominent figures as Francis Matthews, Secretary of the Navy in the Truman administration who called for a preventive nuclear war against the Soviet Union).

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic and extremely accessible intro game theory. Although I found the portions on von Neumann’s personal history less interesting, it was helpful to know the world in which game theory evolved. Many games are covered in the book beyond the prisoner’s dilemma (stag hunt, the dollar auction, tit for tat, etc), all followed by discussions on how they relate to military, economics, advertising, and even biology. One of the top two books I’ve read this year.

[Nick Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

Amazon 2008-05-31

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book filled with fun facts that really color Neumann's life and the history of the Cold War from a game theory point of view.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Game Theory, John von Neumann, RAND corporation, cold war, prisoner’s dilemma, chicken dilemma, a melange of nerdy stuff that I really enjoyed.

[Maxime · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book, which mixes game theory with analogies to nuclear arms race and other real-life situation. It allow to really understand why there is no simple rational solution to most conflicts.