Is it ethical for game theory to be applied to conflicts which may involve mass human deaths for non-defensive wars?

Comments

Perhaps it depends on what sort of application you have in mind.

Suppose we want to understand the sorts of conflicts you've singled out. Surely the attempt to understand isn't immoral—quite the opposite given what's at stake. And suppose that the branch of mathematics known as game theory helps us come to that understanding. It's hard to see what the objection could be.

On the other hand, if a country has unjustly gone to war against another country and uses game theory to come up with strategies for winning, then we might want to say that this is an immoral use of game theory. However, the immorality here has nothing special to do with game theory. What's wrong is the waging of the war in the first place.

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