On game theory and a little fun for Christmas

One of my favorite all time books is by a Hungarian mathematician named László Mér? called, Moral Calculations: On Human Frailty and Game theory. If anyone wants a transformative read, this is certainly one of them.

Game theory overall is a model of human behaviour and fundamentally different from psychology or psychiatry. In fact, it applies to processes other than behavioural, which makes it even more fascinating. If Richard Dawkins has a claim to fame, it is that he appears to have merged game theory with Darwinian evolutionary theory and came up with something that explains a lot more about how life works over generations.

It is, I am told, the only model of behaviour that accounts for conflict. And some of you may have inadvertently been exposed to some of it had you seen the film, A Beautiful Mind, which is more or less about John Nash, the genius who came up with it. The film contains a number of distortions, but overall does show the story of the Nobel Prize winner for his contribution to economics via the creation of Game Theory.

One of the models used to describe human behaviour is called, The Prisoner’s Dilemma. And although the book describes it brilliantly and gives examples of its application, it roughly goes like this.

Two men are arrested for a bank robbery while speeding away. There is not enough evidence to try for the robbery, but they arrest them on a speeding in a school zone charge, which can get them 2 years in jail instead of ten for the armed robbery. The men are separated and individually told that if they rat out the other guy first, they will be released without charge while the other guy gets ten years for the robbery. If they both rat at the same time, it’s 10 years for both of them and if neither of them do, it means both do 2 years for the speeding. Of course they are not allowed to communicate, but it’s doubtful it would make a difference if they did.

Today, a friend of mine, (yes I still have one or two left) sent me the following video for fun. But I found it doubly enjoyable as it is a great little demonstration of the Prisoners Dilemma…

Not quite perfect, but close enough for fun.

YouTube wouldn’t allow the embed. So here is the original source of the video if you want to follow the creator.