Week 9 - 10 & 11

Week 9 was supposed to give us the opportunity to work on our presentations, which are due in the following two weeks. Our topic is Moral Judgement. My part in this assessment is to summarize a paper by Koenigs and his colleagues. The paper is about the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex and the involvement in human moral judgement. In week 10 we heard the presentation about Social Dilemmas. Week 11 was our turn eventually. A summary about the topic with extra content can be seen in the final semester coursework.

Week 8

This week was a kind of revision of what we had so far. This was done by small exercises for the class. I especially liked the increasing difficulties in these exercises. Overall it was a good way to find out in which areas I should do some extra reading in case there will be difficult decisions in everyday life that are comparable to the decisions, or if someone asks me to write a blog about these topics :)

Week 7

This week we covered the topic Social Dilemmas. The focus was on Game Theory. Game Theory provides a methodology for analyzing interactions between players participating in a competition. The simplest version of an example would be the penalty shoot in a football match. What would be the best option for each player? Probably to aim for the middle, if you are the shooter, and to stay in the middle if you are the goalie. However, there actually is no ‘perfect’ solution for both players. Whatever happens in this situation there is always one side that has a better outcome, might it be to score or to save the ball.

The Nash Equilibrium is a solution concept in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain. If each player has made a decision and no player can benefit by changing this decision while the other players keep theirs unchanged, then the current set of strategy choices and the corresponding payoffs form a Nash equilibrium. This example can be seen in the movie The Beautiful Mind by Ron Howard.

What would you do – Blonde or Brunette?

To my mind Game Theory and Nash Equilibrium only provides explanation for the decision one makes in competitive situations. What one should do or should decide, however, cannot be described by the mentioned theories.

Week 6

There was no lecture this week, what does not mean that there were no decisions to make. On the contrary three important things went through my head.

First, there are still some alterations to make on my proposal and ethical application for my final year project. Second, there is the deadline of an essay for another course, and finally there are exams in “only” two months time.

Which of these “dilemmas” has a higher priority? The only way to figure that out is to examine when each of these works is due. The closest deadline would be the one for the essay (unfortunately the next week), which means I should start working on this one first. However, the final year project is more important. Does that mean I should work on this and maybe risk a bad mark in the other course? Considering the deadline AND the fact I might fail the module due to failure of submission of coursework, I should rather finish the essay first and later take care of the project. That’s sorted out and next week there will be another topic with more scientific content :)