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Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Learn About Game Theory and AI?
xmojox writes "I would like to learn more about Artificial Intelligence and Game Theory. I know these are both large areas of study; however, my main interest is in how these affect decisions in the world. This would include politicians, business people, and general society. I'm not looking for a career or anything; this is just a personal interest of mine. Where are good places to start in these areas for somebody new to them? I'm aware of the Stanford on-line classes, but those don't work with my current schedule."
I'm aware of the Stanford on-line classes, but those don't work with my current schedule
Why? You can just watch the videos instead of doing the homework, or watch them sometime later and do the homework then.
But if you really had any interest you would be shifting around everything else, including sleep, to take fullest advantage of these classes in real time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One possibility here is of course that the original poster knows that the field is quite large and isn't interested in studying it intensely for several years. In that case it can be good to ask those who already have studied the field for pointers to figure out just which things are most essential to learn about, which books are likely to be most useful and such things. Basically, the original poster may just be trying to avoid wasting his/her time studying more or less irrelevant parts of the field (anyone who has ever gone through a few college courses in a technical field should know what I'm talking about here, there are plenty of textbooks out there that imply pretty heavily that specific peripheral details are somehow core concepts when in reality you could spend a day or two on them and learn all you'll reasonably need to know about them, I myself have a book somewhere in storage which confused me to no end when I was in high school, it went on for page after page after page about linked lists like they were the only thing that mattered to computer science when it could've just explained the concept, what they were good for and then moved on).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Not to belittle your choices, but this is a VERY complicated subject. My favorite introductions to game theory are, "The Compleat Strategyst" by Williams, and, "Strategy in Poker, Business and War" by McDonald. These are not trivial books, but they are easy reads into the uses of Game Theory.
After that, you get into some Math. Read anything you can on Probability and Risk; know your Statistics and Calculus. Much of what you are looking for will be found under the subject "Decision Theory."
I say study Economics because this is where political and economic scientific thought is making the greatest gains at this time. Game theory has a lot to do with "payoff" and Economics is a fertile field for studying payoffs. (So is Political Science, and there some good laboratories in, say, Afghanistan, Mexico and Chicago. But that's a slightly different, pragmatic, field of study.)
My favorite definition of "politics" is: "The behavior of vying for scarce rewards." This is almost exactly a definition for Economics. At one time Economics was thought to be a sub-level of politics; it now seems the opposite is true.
Hayak pretty much proved that economic behavior cannot be quantified because of the complexity. What is useful is deriving principles of actions under a variety of conditions to provide maximum payoffs, for the most people, under the widest variety of conditions. (An alternative course is to try to derive the largest payoffs for the fewest people under specific conditions.) AutoDesk used to have an Artificial Life laboratory that you could manipulate to learn about Genetic Algorithms and other AI behavior. Context-dependent AI can be learned through developing Neural Nets. Some of the guys I've talked to at Carnegie Mellon in the Quantitative Economics studies have warring economic artificial hybrid GA/Neural Nets, and the observations are pretty interesting.
If it was simply a matter of rational decision making, optimum economic strategies could probably be described and tested in a much smaller AI field. However, politics and economics are burdened with mis-perceptions, human values, and stubborn beliefs. This is a big field, and you should be able to enjoy it as a hobby for the rest of your life without running into a limit of learning.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I haven't seen anyone post it yet, but if your interest is in human-like intelligence, read an AI critic like Searle.