If you were going to guess at who would uncover a flaw in game theory, you wouldn't guess it would be a fiction writer though, if you did, you almost certainly would not guess it would be Edgar Allen Poe in a story from over 160 years ago.

That's the great thing about game theory - it teaches us humility.

Ariel Rubinstein is an economist and has a new appreciation of Poe (“he’s brilliant”) after finding an old analysis of game theory hidden in "The Purloined Letter", published in 1844.

I won't publish the whole passage here but you can read it all in this terrific article in Science News by Julie Rehmeyer. I remembered reading it as a lad but that was before I knew what game theory really was. It's true, looking at it now, that it has a simplistic elegance young guys don't notice, mostly because we want to read about homocidal gorillas and plagues when we pick up Poe.

But these researchers put Poe's prose to the mathematical test and he was right 53-54% of the time which, in statistics and game theory, is excellent. Down with game theory, up with Edgar Allen Poe!