Applied Games Research

20Jun2007 Filed under: Career

Yesterday I had a 7:30am breakfast meeting (guh!) with a group of researchers from Microsoft’s Cambridge office. Part of my job involves talking to cool people doing cool shit, and so that was what I was there to do. There were two Germans (one from the East, one from the West), a Spaniard, and a mostly-silent Dutchman.

These guys are obviously smart in ways most of us can barely even comprehend (I think there were something like 5 phds between the four of them) … but they were also ridiculously lighthearted and playful since, well, they spend their days researching game theory. Or rather, “leveraging the methods of approximate probabilistic inference for addressing relevant applications both in recreational games and in abstract decision games played in the real world.”

We had a great time and the meeting consisted more of bantering and laughing and poking fun than doing any hardcore strategizing. I was mostly just feeling out how I might write about them, and getting to know them is big a part of that. Mostly, it was just really entertaining, and sort of like playing tennis with Venus Williams or something. It’s not like you can really even pretend to keep up with people that smart, but it’s always fun to play, volleying back and forth and laughing together.

As I was preparing to leave (the meeting had run over and my car was being ticketed), I pulled my bag up onto the table and said, “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure.” I’d forgotten about my replacement CLITS UP! pin, but one of the researchers noticed it and asked innocently, “What’s this?” Oh shit.

“Well, that’s my Clits Up pin,” I said. “I got it from a writer named Susie Bright.”

“Clits up?” the foreign researcher blinked, feigning ignorance. “What does this mean?”

Oh, I see. Two can play at this game, and I am not one to be embarrassed.

“Clit is short for clitoris,” I shot back to the table with as a sharp touché, which was met with much laugher. Because really: it’s funny that somehow this is how our meeting is ending. As I walked out to my car, I had to shake my head at myself and ponder, “Jesus, Ariel. Only you would find yourself in a discussion about clitorises while at a work meeting with international researchers — and it’s not even 9am.“

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5 Responses to “Applied Games Research”

sarah
June 20th, 2007 at 2:20 pm

priceless!
yelahneb
June 20th, 2007 at 9:31 pm

nice catch! good for you for not blinking.

if you’re interested in knowing more of what makes those chuckling intellectuals tick (and about game theory in general), there’s a recent documentary by Adam Curtis that i highly recommend called “The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom”. here’s a taste:

“The program traces the development of game theory with particular reference to the work of John Nash, who believed that all humans were inherently suspicious and selfish creatures that strategized constantly.

Using this as his first premise, Nash constructed logically consistent and mathematically verifiable models, for which he won a Nobel Prize. He invented system games reflecting his beliefs about human behavior, including one called “F*ck You Buddy”, in which the only way to win was to betray your playing partner.

These games were internally coherent and worked correctly as long as the players obeyed the ‘ground rules’ that they should behave selfishly and try to outwit their opponents… but when RAND’s analysts tried the games on their own secretaries, they chose not to betray each other, but rather to co-operate every time.

This did not, in the eyes of the analysts, discredit the models, but instead proved that the secretaries were unfit subjects.

What was not known at the time was that Nash was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and as a result was deeply suspicious of everyone around him—including his work colleagues—and was convinced that many were involved in conspiracies against him. It was this mistaken belief that led to his view of people as a whole that formed the basis for his theories.”

A final foonote: the life of John Nash served as the inspiration for the film “A Beautiful Mind”.
lily
June 21st, 2007 at 6:43 am

OMG. I’m cracking up..and it’s not even 7am yet…
jenB
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:56 am

That is awesome! I worked at the University here for 10+ years and have learned that PhDs knows lot about one thing and it is rarely clitorises. Not that I asked, but I am assuming if you can’t use the fax machine or photocopier, you are probably not that deft with women’s sex organs. hee.
jenB
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:57 am

OH OH! And Mark’s PhD is in Game Tree Research as well. He is super smart! Can’t peel a potato though.

Hey there. I'm Ariel Meadow Stallings, a native Seattleite who's written my way up and down the Left Coast. Electrolicious is where I post daily randomata, but I also write for a living. My first book, Offbeat Bride, was published last year.

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