Today was a bit of a struggle. I returned to Robert Wright's NonZero book on the Logic of Human Destiny. I am beginning to fight it. I am not sure if it is the author's tone (many of the sentences are so authoritative) or if it is something deeper, but I suspect the latter. He appears to be using Game Theory to "explain" the evolution of culture, and indeed also biological evolution. Part of my difficulty is trying to imagine how anything could be disproved. It is a strange use of mathematics. He adopts a particular model, which is fine, but the model is then used in a heuristic sense rather than in a quantitative sense. There are no actual numbers used to support the theory.Thus the model appears to provide a strong mathematical basis for the approach, but this is not the case. The use of Game Theory is more of a metaphor. This is also okay with me, but it should be presented as such. Another concern I have is with the use of the examples. Many are very specific cases but they appear to have been chosen to buttress the argument rather than chosen in some form of systematic or random manner. There are no counter examples - a bit of a worry.

I also spent a bit of time looking on the web to see if I could find some discussion about this book. I locaated The Skeptics Society home page. There are 2 reviews of NonZero if one follows the Book reviews link on the leftt side of the home page. The author also has a website, NonZero, containing reviews of the book

I think I will put this book on the shelf for a while.