Foolish Games, But not Child's Play Game theory offers powerful and sophisticated methods for working problems. But, in parsing down the world into binary decisions and simple games it's easy to enter a hypnotic state of belief in these games as reality. Through familiarity and repetition with these games we begin to trust them as fact. Porn becomes sex.

For example, I found a notebook from 2003 that had a decision tree for the upcoming year. It had all sorts of options relating to finances, school, love and such. But, moving to Oregon and upending my life wasn't even on the map.


Another example: Kennedy's advisers mapped the nuclear situation as a classical PD utility grid.

a. we bomb them first with no retaliation
b. they bomb us first with no retaliation
c. we bomb them first with retaliation
b. they bomb us first with retaliation

This lead to an obvious conclusion that we should not only strike first, but strike immediately. Why bomb tomorrow when you can launch today? Why wait till 3pm when you can fire at noon? They were drawn into the false assumption that these were the only possible outcomes. They never foresaw a 5th possibility, that it might end peacefully.

We may soon be in a similar situation with a nuclearized theocracy that is even less rational than ol' Ivan. My guess and hope is that it will end in a similarly unpredictable way.

Labels: you've got to keep making decisions - even if they're the wrong ones. Otherwise you're stuffed.

  ¶ 11:37 PM