@toby said in Humans are primarily driven by self-interest:
Was hoping @jgill might pop in and enlighten us with a bit of game theory
I'm not familiar with modern game theory, which has been extended to decision analysis and beyond. When Von Neumann and others introduced the subject, it relied heavily on fixed-point theory, specifically Brouwer's Fixed-point Theorem, which states that certain sets, no matter how they are shifted about retain a point that is fixed. If a function shifts the points about, then, provided the function is "continuous", there is a point that remains in the same position.
From Wiki: Take an ordinary map of a country, and suppose that that map is laid out on a table inside that country. There will always be a "You are Here" point on the map which represents that same point in the country.
My own investigations have included extending a similar classical result, the Banach Fixed-point Theorem, which tells one how to actually find this point, to a more general setting.
As for the assertion in the title, you are moving into the territory of the old "What is Mind" thread from ST. How are decisions formed? How much of decision-making originates in the subconscious?