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Signals: Evolution, Learning, and Information 1st Edition
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- ISBN-100199582947
- ISBN-13978-0199582945
- Edition1st
- PublisherOxford University Press
- Publication dateMay 2, 2010
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions7.8 x 5.08 x 0.44 inches
- Print length208 pages
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"The argument is interesting throughout. Recommended." --CHOICE
About the Author
Brian Skyrms is a Distinguished Professor of logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California Irvine, and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University.
Product details
- Publisher : Oxford University Press; 1st edition (May 2, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0199582947
- ISBN-13 : 978-0199582945
- Item Weight : 7.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 7.8 x 5.08 x 0.44 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #840,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #118 in Epistemology (Books)
- #589 in Epistemology Philosophy
- #1,173 in Biology & Life Sciences
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This book is an elaboration on Skyrms' 2006 Presidential speech to the Philosophy of Science Association. It is highly accessible to readers with no background in philosophy, game theory, mathematics, or anything else, for that matter. On the other hand, it presents only a very small subset of the behavioral science literature on signaling games. Moreover, it presents only a couple of examples from the abundant animal behavior literature on signaling. For an up-to-date treatment of animal signaling, the reader might try Searcy and Nowicki (2005). I don't know of a generally accessible book on signaling game theory, but a very nice recent overview is provided by economist Joel Sobel (2007) at [...].
The setting for the conventional theory of signaling is the coordination game: a number of agents each chooses and action, and all receive the same payoff, which is a function of the actions taken by the various agents. All agents benefit equally from coordinating their signals so as to achieve the highest possible payoff for all. Thus, in a group of monkeys, all benefit equally from knowing that there is a snake or a hawk in the area, but the benefit depends on their knowing which of the two is the case. It is purely conventional which vocalization the monkeys use to indicate "snake" as opposed to "hawk." Problems arise when the various agents do not have the same payoffs. Indeed, in the diametrically opposed case, the so-called "zero-sum game," what one player gains the other players lose, and hence there is no form of truthful signaling that can evolve. However, groups can evolve the capacity to change a zero-sum game into a different game in which all can gain from some appropriate cooperative behavior. Skyrms does not discuss this issue.
As it turns out, there are very few zero-sum games in reality, and there are equally few pure coordination games. Thus Skyrms misses most of the real action, which lies in understanding the conditions under which signaling equilibria emerge even when agents do not have identical interests. This is most acute in human societies in which individuals routinely stand to gain from transmitting untruthful messages. But it is equally important in animal societies in which males gain from transmitting incorrect messages concerning their reproductive fitness to females, who use such information to guide their choice of mates. There is a brilliant literature on this topic, based on contributions by Ronald Fisher, Michael Spence, Amos Zahavi, and Alan Grafen, but this literature is not touched upon in Skyrms' exposition.
There are a number of criticisms on the web about "gaps" in this gem of a book. The amazing thing is the frames of reference-- philosphers ding the author on "forgetting" a key point in Russell, but read on... and you find similar dings in economics, dynamic systems theory, physics, information theory, zoology.. even chemistry! One might wonder if the author bit off more than he could chew, until one realizes a topic like SIGNALS (as in all of the universes' information) is more than ANY-ONE can chew!
I'm not as bright as many of the reviewers I've read and sincerely respect... wow. I design domain specific languages for autonomous robotics and am a mere EE, far from understanding even rudimentary game theory at such a lofty and intricate level. But guess what? That is NOT the only thing this book is about! I LOVED the depth and breadth this author brings to the party, even as an EE and IT person. Every voltage in every circuit is a SIGNAL-- that I do know about. Signal Processing is as astonishing from its Fourier transforms as from the high level monkey eats banana compete/cooperate frame! What about those tiny little signals that pull all our strings (genes)?!
TIP: If you are concerned about the author's syntax, logic and tone, ("proto truth functional"?), you might want to read some of the frankly GENEROUS selection from this book Amazon has in the "peek inside" feature above before buying.
THIS BOOK IS GREAT FUN! You do NOT have to be a game theorist, philosopher or economist to really enjoy it. A page turner on philosophy? Granted, the author does give the brain a workout, but unlike purer philosophy texts that are filled with mostly semantic differences and neural weight lifting, this book doesn't try to show off its profound command of past arguments or non pragmatic applications. Its foundation is wonder, and any level of reader, from any frame, cannot help but come away astonished in one frame or another. I can only guarantee one thing: you will NOT look at life the same after reading this book, regardless of your field, if you are the least bit open minded. You'll smile and see the signals all around us, not just in human communication and interaction, but rain, snow and earthquakes, neurons, electrons, sunsets, galaxies and music.
Amazing, highly recommended.
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The reason for why I cannot give the book five stars is very poor editing, an embarrassment for Oxford UP. There are typos, unreferenced figures, wrong order in the index (check letter 'p'), very ugly, inconsistent formula formatting. For example, conditional probability, like p(x|s), is expressed as pr_s(x) in one place, pr(x given s) in another. Probability of x, p(x) is sometimes p_pr(x) and sometimes Probability(x). A times B is sometimes A*B and sometimes AB. This is annoying, clearly the fault of the editor. Finally, I was puzzled by the picture on the cover until I checked the title. Perhaps not the best choice for a book on signaling.







