BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

GAMES as problems models 1)2)3)

← Back

R.L. ACKOFF scrutinized games as models for problems in the following terms:

"A person (or group) can be said to be in a problem situation if the following conditions exist:

1. He has one or more unsatisfied desires; that is, he wants something that he does not have, and

2. He has available alternative ways of pursuing the objective(s) and these alternatives are not equally effective: that is, he has a real choice.

… "It will be observed that in a game, as conceived in Game Theory, the first two conditions are satisfied. Utilities or valued outcomes are involved, as are unequally effective plays or strategies. To have a game, however, several additional conditions are required:

1. the possible plays can be specified in advance.

2. there is a set of well -defined end-states,

3. A specified pay-off is associated with each end- state.

… "In a game the problem is already formulated for the decision maker and hence he is deprived of the information which is required to formulate a real problem in this form. In a real problem-solving situation the decision maker is not given a game to play, he must extract it out of the situation itself. A pre-formulated problem is a contrived exercise in which the decision maker is presented with incomplete information. The procedure by which he does or should solve this exercise it not necessarily the same as what he does or should do in a real problem situation… " (1959, p.147-8).

As to the study of real situations, see J. WARFIELD's Generic Design.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible:

© 2020 BCSSS Contact/Imprint