I hope this is the right forum. Logic and psychology seem to fit.

I recently read an article in a Scientific American magazine. Conveniently it is online should you also wish to read it. It explores how games theory predicts the rational responses within limited choices for the best result. Here is a quote I found interesting, and will hopefully interest you enough to read the article. 

 <quote>Forget game-theoretic logic. ...both of us will ignore the rational argument ... What is interesting is that this rejection of formal rationality and logic has a kind of meta-rationality attached to it. If both players follow this meta-rational course, both will do well. The idea of behavior generated by rationally rejecting rational behavior is a hard one to formalize. But in it lies the step that will have to be taken in the future to solve the paradoxes of rationality that plague game theory ....

-Kaushik Basu </quote>

I am curious to know other peoples opinion on this.

My take is that games theory is resting on the false assumption that behaving rationally will garner the best results.

Can rejection of rational behavior itself be rational? After rejecting rational behavior how do you form your decisions? As stated, this seems paradoxical. If either you or your opponent choose an irrational choice, games theory will fail in its predictions. Thinking about this makes my head go around in circles, but it seems like if you remove that assumption from games theory (because you believe it to be false) then you can strategize rationally for a superior strategy than games theory with that assumption can predict. I don't even really understand my own thoughts on this, I am hoping you can help shed some light in this corner of my thoughts.