Have you ever had to compete against someone way out of your league? What strategy should you employ when you are in way over your head?
My Name is Shaun McMillan and this is the Best Class Ever.
In a previous episode we discussed the Prisoner’s Dilemma scenario and the ultimate strategy that emerged from it called Tit for Tat. This is a fascinating discovery that came out of Game Theory, and I highly recommend listening to this episode if you missed it. It’s a strategy that is useful in any competitive situation and has huge implications for any social scenario as well as political science.
You can easily catch up on what you missed by visiting the URL provided in the show notes at www.BestClassEver.org.
Game Theory
Today I would like to explore some of the other strategies that have emerged from game theory and how they have been used by brilliant reality tv show participants to win out over their fierce competition.
The Golden Balls
The first reality t.v. show we are going to look at is called the Golden Balls. In this show a number of contestants compete in various games and either earn various amounts of prize money or end in elimination. Eventually the competition gets dwindled down to a duel between the last two remaining contestants.
All of the prize money is gathered into one large pool, and the last two contestants play a game called the Golden Balls to see if one of them wins all of the money, or whether they split the winnings and both walk away winners.
Split or Steal
The game works like this. Each contestant is given two identical golden balls. Secretly they look inside the balls to see what is written there. One of their balls says, “split,” and the other says, “steal.” The two contestants must then choose simultaneously whether they want to split or steal.
If they both choose to split then they split the winnings in half both going home as winners. Remember that there is more than enough winnings for them to share, so in the case that they share they both win, and everyone goes home feeling like the world is a wonderful place.
But if one of the contestants chooses split and the other chooses steal, then the stealing players win all of the prize money leaving the split contestant with nothing but public shame and humiliation.
Can you guess what happens if they both choose steal? They both lose, no one gets the prize money, and they only have their own greed to blame.
Is this starting to sound familiar? This is yet another version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. But the major difference is that before the contestants make their choice, they are given time to speak to each other about what they should do.
Prisoner’s Dilemma
You can imagine how this conversation usually goes. Basically the strategy is always to convince the other contestant that you are in fact going to split, because even if you aren’t going to split, you only win if you can convince the other guy to split.
We know from human psychology that winning half and winning all makes almost no difference to the individual. Both are considering a win, and winning twice as much does not feel twice as good. In fact it feels worse since winning twice as much in this scenario requires a public display of deceptive behavior.
Humiliation is a Powerful Motivator
But public humiliation–now that is a powerful social motivation factor. Players often choose to steal just to guard against the horror of an entire audience watching you get taken advantage of.
There are a couple famous episodes of the Golden Balls, like the time an older shady guy tried to convince a young innocent looking blonde girl to split the winnings, only to get conned by the little girl who then took home all of the winnings.
But the most famous episode of the Golden Balls is the episode where one of the contestants managed to game the game of the Golden Balls. If you aren’t familiar with this terminology, gaming a game is when you find a strategy that ultimately is impossible to defeat. You might have seen this in Tic Tac Toe or Connect 4. If you are the first player, there is a way to win Tic Tac Toe that ultimately cannot be defeated.
Gaming the Game
So how would you game the game of the Golden Balls?
Well it went like this. There was a gullible looking white guy, and a slightly manipulative looking Middle Eastern guy. Immediately the Middle Eastern guy began explaining that his father raised him telling him that your word is your life. He is an honest guy, and he is going to split, so the white guy should also split.
It should also be noted that the middle eastern guy started swiveling in his chair and pulling on his ear lobe, clear tells that he was lying.
But the gullible looking white guy had an interesting response. He said, “I also am an honest guy, and I’m telling you that I am absolutely going to steal. I will take all or none of the winnings, but if you choose split, then trust me, I promise I will give you half of the winnings after the show is over.”
The middle eastern guy and everyone for that matter was taken aback. No one had ever seen or thought of this strategy before. The audience was shocked. I can’t imagine what the show runners behind the scene were doing. The host sitting at their table immediately began to explain that the show cannot guarantee that such commitments will be upheld, that the only way to officially split is if they both choose split.
This middle eastern guy was not having it. They argued back and forth for a long time. You can’t see it in the show because it is edited, but they argued long enough that eventually the crowd, which initially was impressed with this strategy, began to turn on the white guy and booing him down. But this white guy just stuck to his guns saying he was going to steal.
The host finally got exasperated and said, “You can’t do this all night. These people need to go and have breakfast, the show is over. Please choose.”
They chose their balls and can you guess what happened? They revealed their golden balls, and each of them smiled as they had each chosen the same response. SPLIT. The middle eastern guy let out a huge congratulations but also exclaimed, “Oh my God, what is this? You made me work so hard for this.
After the show ended they interviewed the Middle Eastern guy to see what his initial strategy was. He told them he never had any intention of ever choosing to split. When they asked about his father he replied, “I never knew my father. He left when I was a child!”
The resolution and sound isn’t very good, but you can watch this scene play out for yourself on YouTube.
Survivor
The next game we are going to look at is Survivor.
There’s a great interview with Yul Kwon, the first Asian-American winner of the show survivor. He was interviewed by Freakonomics host Steven Levitt on his podcast People I Mostly Admire. In it he explained how he used his knowledge of game theory to work out a deal with one of his betrayers to help them both make it to the final round.
Early on in the game two factions formed. Jonathan and Yul were both in the same faction, but Jonathan defected to the other side putting the other faction at an advantage.
Yul played exactly and predictably according to Tit for Tat, always keeping his promises and punishing anyone who defected or acted deceitfully by voting for their elimination.
Yul’s faction was at a disadvantage so he needed to turn one of their opponents. Initially he tried to explain his game theory strategy to Candace showing her that by targeting her with votes they could guarantee her elimination, but by collaborating he could guarantee her survival even if his team was at a disadvantage. The rationality of the math did not have the desired effect and she didn’t come to trust Yul’s faction. So Yul’s faction voted her off for both this and as punishment for previous devious behaviors.
Using her defeat as an example he then reapproached Jonathan who had put their faction at a disadvantage through Jonathan’s betrayal. He explained the rationality of his game theory strategy to Jonathan like he did to Candace. Yul told Jonathan that Jonathan had one of two options. If Jonathan stays with the bigger faction then Yul’s faction would target and punish Jonathan for his non-compliance just as they had done to Candace. But if he returned to their initial faction giving them the advantage in numbers, then they could guarantee his survival and he had a good chance of making it to the last round. This had the desired effect and Jonathan defected back to he and Yul’s initial faction giving it the advantage it needed to protect and survive the next rounds of the game.
Yul wasn’t guaranteed to win by this strategy, but it certainly helped. The shortcoming of game theory is that you cannot always rely on human beings to act rationally. Humans will often act out of fear or spite despite the harm it poses to their own self-interests.
Just look at the ultimatum game. In this experiment two participants are placed in two separate rooms but allowed to communicate. One is designated as the proposer and given $100 to split any way they choose between their self and the remaining participant.
The second participant, the responder, may accept the offer or reject it. If the responder rejects then both of the participants end up with nothing.
The Myth of the Rational Actor
Traditional economic thought assumes that the responder will always act rationally and accept even the smallest offer of $1, because anything is better than nothing. But due to the participant’s feeling of “fairness” the responder does often reject extremely unbalanced splits. More often than not, the proposer will offer something close to a 50/50 split, but if they get greedy and offer a much smaller amount to the responder, the responder would often reject causing both to go home with nothing.
Why would we act so irrationally?
The altruist punishment theory proposes that punishing participants for uncivil behavior prevents future behavior perceived as unfair. But self-control theory argues that the responder is simply frustrated with the inequality of the offer and will cut off their own nose to spite the other’s face.
The Ultimate Strategy when you are Outmatched
There is one more strategy that has emerged from game theory which I find really useful. What do you do if you are totally outmatched by the competition? Perhaps your opponent is far more experienced, more talented, or simply knows more strategies than you do. In this scenario your best bet is to act totally randomly. Especially if you act unpredictably in a way that guards against a worst case scenario in which your opponent would be guaranteed to defeat you.
Gary Kasparov VS Deep Blue A.I.
We can see something similar to this when Gary Kasparov first lost a chess game to the A.I. named Deep Blue. Gary assumed that the A.I. would always act rationally. So he was totally baffled when Deep Blue made what looked like an intentionally bad move. Gary couldn’t think of any reason why Deep Blue would do such a weak move, and thinking endlessly about this totally wrecked his game causing him to lose his advantage. Ultimately it undid Gary trying to figure out what the A.I.’s logic was.
As the weaker player we are only likely to come up with extremely predictable strategies, so we are just as likely to win by playing without deliberate strategy or randomly. Since we are at a disadvantage anyways we can afford to take the risk, and playing randomly has the advantage of deliberately confusing the stronger player thus foiling the advantage of their experience.
It is rare that one can guarantee a win, but some degree of rationality can help us to face uncertainty. May the odds be ever in your favor.
To see charts, videos, and links to the various different references in this episode feel free to visit me at www.BestClassEver.org
