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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which one of von Neumann's colleagues' family had been a member of the House of Lords?

2. What country did some feel stood in the way of a world government and should be bombed?

3. Several famous RAND studies looked at how the public would respond to contact with aliens and life after what?

4. In what country did von Neumann earn his PhD in mathematics?

5. In what century did Kriegspiel become popular among the Prussians?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who is Bertrand Russell?

2. What was the doctrine of deterrence during the Cold War and what did it mean?

3. Who is Merrill Flood?

4. Who helped Flood conduct his 100 prisoner's dilemmas experiments?

5. What are zero-sum games?

6. How did von Neumann end up at Princeton after earning his PhD in mathematics?

7. What was the Manhattan Project?

8. What was the Princeton social scene like while von Neumann was at IAS?

9. Why was von Neumann considered the "best brain in the world?"

10. How did the Nash equilibrium strategy affect the prisoner's dilemma game model?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In real life dollar auctions the author writes about how many a justifiable action, in looking back, becomes the first "defection" in an escalating dilemma. How can you penalize the first bidder for not wanting to waste the "ninety-nine cent profit?" In relation to the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union what was the defection? Why was there a defection and how did this dilemma escalate as both sides designed more and more nuclear weapons?

Essay Topic 2

Douglas Hofstadter invented the largest-number game. This lottery luring game was concluded to be a hopeless situation. What did this game involve and what were some examples of this game in Chapter 13? What were some common problems and/or complaints about this game? Why was this game concluded to be a hopeless situation?

Essay Topic 3

John von Neumann made significant contributions to military technology in connection with nuclear war. Yet as he got older he became pessimistic about the role of technology, especially military technology in modern society. What contributions did von Neumann make in military technology? Why did von Neumann become increasingly pessimistic about such technology in the modern world? Were his concerns valid? Why or why not?

(see the answer keys)

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