Links - to Machiavelli stuff and Schelling segregation model, including it being illustrated visually

10 June 2011

Here are the links I referred to last Friday. They’re not in order of significance. The first lot are the Machiavelli ones, including the Machiavelli Personality test and the article with the diagrams of the Machiavellian Space.

Next I’ve included links for the Schelling segregation model, which is the “game” we’ve thus far considered.

And finally an animated rendering of Prisoner’s Dilemma, which was the first of zero-sum games. Note that Schelling goes way beyond zero-sum; he includes cooperation, bargaining, negotiating. Core to his work are the situations, but I won’t go into that here. These are just links.

Mary Ann

Machiavelli

The first two links are versions of the Machiavelli Personality test. The third of the links is from the two people who developed it – Christie and Geis. The last link is the one that has the diagram of the Machiavellian space.

http://bob.bofh.org/~robm/misc/MachIV.html.

http://www.salon.com/books/it/1999/09/13/machtest.

http://www.levfritt.com/pdf/1pdf/machiavellianism09291004.pdf.

http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2005argentina/papers/503-277.pdf.

Schelling and his Segregation Model

First a very short interview with Schelling just after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. It gives the context of who he is and how he’s worked.

http://www.gametheorists.com/Interviews/schelling.html.

The segregation model itself. I found that Schelling wrote a book for a general, non-specialist readership. It’s titled Micromotives and Macrobehaviour, originally published in 1978 and re-published in 2006. And Chapter 4 in it (pages 137-166) is ‘Sorting and Mixing: Race and Sex’. He explains the segregation model in simple terms, as distinct from the lengthier version for his peers.

The chapter is available online. The link is:

http://sdl.soc.cornell.edu/curricular/schelling_chapter_on_segregation.pdf

In the event that you want to see how the segregation model works before venturing into the article, there is a video that explains what it is.

The link is:

http://timharford.com/2009/03/the-logic-of-life-racial-segregation-and-thomas-schelling/.

Tim Harford writes for the FT as the Undercover Economist. In his book The Logic of Life: Uncovering the New Economics of Everything, he has probably the simplest, most accessible description of the segregation model. It’s chapter 6 of the book - not available online.

Another visual rendering is Andrew Crooks version of Schelling’s Segregation Model, now on Second Life. He uses houses rather than brown and white eggs, as Tim Harford does.

The Crooks link is:

http://vimeo.com/1904652?pg=embed&sec=1904652

Finally, there were Reith Lectures, the ones on trust (deception and trust being core game-theoretic principles). As part of the website there is an interesting interactive Prisoner’s Dilemma illustration. The link is :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2002/