In this setting, it is perhaps difficult or even impossible for many Westerners to conceptualize the various factors that might contribute to the decision of an individual Muslim to pursue suicide as a terrorism tactic, but game theory provides a useful framework in which this can be accomplished, and these issues are discussed further below.



Game Theory Overview.



Game theory was invented in order to satisfy a mathematical curiosity; from the outset, though, the problem was to identify a theoretical solution to the problems posed by uncertainty in games of chance (Schmidt 2002). In his chapter, "Bluff and reputation," Sorin (2002) reports that game theory is basically concerned with strategic behavioral interactions as opposed to individual maximization, typically found in decision theory: "Thus each participant attempts to maximize a function (his above-mentioned "result") of which he does not control all variables. This is certainly...
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