Okay, so. I have been out of commission for a while. 2024 has kicked my ass a little, not going to lie. I’ve been pretty much alternating between being hurt and sick for the past five months and it’s been a bit shit. I have not felt much like writing. But there has been some good too. I got into my PhD program. I had a wonderful (very belated) birthday party. I have an excellent vacay on the horizon. Things could be much worse.
One good thing – many new hyper-fixations built on having way too much time to lie around and do nothing but deep-dive into weird interesting subjects. And this week it was… GAME THEORY!
What Exactly is Game Theory?
I’m sure you’ve heard of Game Theory before… Maybe in uni if you had to take any kind of math, stats, economics, political science or even biology courses. Or maybe you’ve heard it mentioned in pop culture or on the news. But just in case you’re a little fuzzy on the details, here’s a quick recap:
Game Theory essentially studies strategic interactions among rational decision-makers. It provides a framework for understanding how individuals, companies, governments, and other entities make decisions when their outcomes depend not only on their own actions but also on the actions of others.
It essentially boils down to four components:
The Players – those who make the decisions
The Strategies – the possible choices and actions each player can make/take
The Payoff – the results
Games – the structure of the interaction itself.
The easiest way to understand it is probably to look at its most famous thought experiment – The Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Imagine two prisoners, A and B. They are both arrested and imprisoned and taken to two separate interrogation rooms. The police have enough evidence to convict them on a lesser charge, but not enough for a more severe charge – unless one of them rolls on the other, that is.
Knowing this, the police offer the prisoners a deal:
If one betrays the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, while the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free, and the silent accomplice receives the full sentence (let’s say 10 years).
If both betray each other, they each receive a moderate sentence (let’s say 5 years).
If both remain silent, they each get a minor sentence (let’s say 1 year) for the lesser charge.
So what did the prisoner’s do? Well, in this case, each of them reasoned that no matter what the other one chose to do, betraying the other (defecting) would be the better option, because it leads to a lighter sentence.
For example, if A thinks B will stay silent, A should betray B (to get zero years as opposed to one year)
But if B thinks A will betray them, A should also betray B (to get five years as opposed to ten).
So ultimately, both prisoners end up betraying each other, resulting in a moderate sentence for both. However, if they had just cooperated and stayed silent, they would have served a single year only.
Tit for Tat – A Winning Strategy
In the 1980s, political scientist Robert Axelrod decided to determine the best strategy to apply to the Prisoner’s Dilemma. He put out a call for submissions for a computer game tournament called ‘The Iterative Prisoner’s Dilemma’. Users would submit different strategies that they thought would give them an edge in the game.
Broadly, these strategies fell into two camps:
“Nice” strategies that emphasised cooperation and “Nasty” strategies, that attempted to win through defection, or deliberately causing conflict.
The winner of the competition was a program called Tit for Tat submitted by Anatol Rapoport, a mathematical psychologist who focused on peace research. The Tit for Tat program was a “Nice” program, whose strategy was essentially doing to its opponent whatever its opponent had done to it in the previous turn. I.e. It rewarded cooperation with cooperation, but punished defection with defection. Its default, however, was cooperation.
And Tit for Tat wasn’t the only one. In both competitions, “Nice” programs out-performed “Nasty” ones. But what did they all have in common?
4 Keys to Cooperation
There were four key components to Tit for Tat’s success. The most successful programs were:
Nice - In other words, their default was cooperation, not defection.
Forgiving - They didn’t hold a grudge. They only retaliated and then returned to their default cooperative MO.
Retaliatory - That said, they weren’t pushovers. They did not hesitate to defect if provoked initially with defection.
Clear - Their strategy was easy-to-understand and simple. In fact, uniformly, the more convoluted a strategy was, the poorer it performed.
Since the experiments were run, these findings have had significant impact on global political thought, in particular in regards to promotion of cooperation between nations, conflict resolution through a balance of retaliation and forgiveness, clarity and predictability of action, mutually assured cooperation in regards to nuclear disarmament, reciprocal policies for economic sanctions and trade – and more.
But What About Meeee?
You may not immediately see how this applies to you – but it does! Because Game Theory isn’t just applicable to macro relationships, but also to everyday ones.
You can apply the four keys to cooperation to just about any relationship you can think of.
Niceness – Essentially, this just means approaching every social interaction in a spirit of cooperation and kindness. Don’t, in short, approach any conflict with a friend, romantic partner or colleague by looking at what you get versus what they get. Instead, look at what the best outcome could be for everyone.
Forgiveness - Don’t hold grudges. After you address any conflict, forget it and move on. And be forgiving when people are doing their best to improve their behaviour.
Assertiveness - Don’t be a pushover. Show everyone mutual respect, but don’t be afraid to take appropriate retaliatory action. This might look like setting a firm boundary or addressing problematic behaviour appropriately, but without escalation.
Consistency and Clarity - Keep your behaviour predictable and consistent. This will help reduce misunderstandings and encourage stability.
So whether its cooperation between nations or between you and your bestie – game theory can help you us all do it better.
Keen to learn more? This video from the always-excellent Veritasium is a great place to start and involves an interview with Robert Axelrod on his experiment. It’s super interesting and I definitely recommend it!
Bits and Bobs
Because I have spent an inordinate amount of time this year being sick/hurt/stuck inside, I have inhaled an alarming amount of media. I’ll limit this to like… just lately to not get out of hand here.
Watching: The Apple TV adaptation of Blake Crouch’s super-fun sci-fi book Dark Matter is pretty solid. David is loving it and I am enjoying it. Starring Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly.
Reading: I am finally getting around to Stephen King’s It and can I just say that parts of it are brilliant, parts of it are fucking bizarre, and you can absolutely tell that he was on extraordinary amounts of drugs when he wrote it.
Listening to: I recently discovered Sturgill Simpson and I am obsessed. The first time I heard “Turtles All the Way Down”, I was blown away. It sounded like country from the 70s, but he was singing about some very, uh… modern concepts, especially for a forty-something white dude from Kentucky. Then I found the rest of the album Meta-modern Sounds in Country Music and fell in love. I can’t recommend that album or A Sailor’s Guide to Earth enough.
Personal favourites so far: “Turtles All the Way Down”, “Long White Line” and the stunning “Breakers Roar” below.
Enjoying: I recently learned about a trending hashtag in France #JeChieDansLaSeineLe23Juin, which essentially means “I’m shitting in the Seine on June 23.” So, President Macron and the mayor have pledged to swim in the Seine to prove its cleanliness ahead of the much-contested Paris Olympics and the French have planned a shitting flash-mob on the day they plan to do this. Once again, I sincerely applaud the French and their prevailing attitude of “We fucked the ruling class up once and we’ll do it again.” Pleasant shitting, comrades.
That’s all for this week! I would love to say I will be consistent and be back next week, but honestly who the hell can tell with me. I’ll do my best!
Subscribe if you’d like to be notified when I write again and thank you all so much for reading.