In Response to “Economic Scene; The Limits of Social Science
In “Economic Scene; The Limits of Social Science”, a New York Times article from 1982, author Leonard Silk brings up a “wave of pessimism” surrounding the seemingly unsolvable “social problems” of war, poverty, and disease. He brings up the power of evidence to counter doubts about the effectiveness of the social sciences in solving these problems. Namely, Silk mentions the work of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, two game theorists who he feels have had significant influence on the social science surrounding war in particular. He discusses how these two theorists utilized game theory to rationalize “war-breeding” situations by applying the prisoner’s dilemma game. In this context, it is difficult for any two nations with uncertain relations to measure how the other will act in a time of tension or conflict, especially given that, in the words of Nobel Memorial Prize winner Herbert A. Simon, “almost no one thinks the probability of [war]… occurring… is very low”.
The prisoner’s dilemma comes into play in that the nations at hand have the choices of working together to collectively reduce the problems that they will face, acting independently in such a way that one benefits and the other faces adverse effects, or both acting independently and both facing adverse effects. The first option is of course the most favorable, but the other two, which represent situations conducive to war, exemplify the model of the prisoner’s dilemma. Two nations who lack trust in each other, as well as the desire to ultimately maximize their own benefit, have just as much of a barrier to communication as two prisoners being questioned separately with the goal of one testifying against the other.
This format is applicable to many other problems faced currently within the United States and worldwide. Whether in the context of military, sports, or business, there is always a matrix of outcomes determining the best responses and dominant strategies for the players at hand. The various methods used to determine players’ responses in a given situation are unique because they reduce qualitative and seemingly complex scenarios to quantitative problems. This serves as a response to some of the questions presented by the article: has social science become obsolete given the problems of the modern world? The answer to this may be that although the science itself cannot singlehandedly serve as the solution to problems such as war, poverty, and disease, it can serve as a very useful toolkit in crafting solutions to fit the nuances of such problems as they arise.