John Maynard Smith - Game theory: The war of attrition game (46/102)

To hear more of John Maynard Smith’s stories, go to the playlist: The late British biologist John Maynard Smith (1920-2004) is famous for applying game theory to the study of natural selection. In 1973 Maynard Smith formalised a central concept in game theory called the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). His ideas, presented in books such as ’Evolution and the Theory of Games’, were enormously influential and led to a more rigorous scientific analysis and understanding of interactions between living things. [Listener: Richard Dawkins; date recorded: 1997] TRANSCRIPT: I developed these conditions for an evolutionary stable strategy, and then I applied it to various games. And one of the things that came out of the - at first, I have to say, I thought it was pretty trivial, any idiot could do it in an afternoon. I couldn’t see it was important, didn’t know that it was going to lead anywhere v