GAME THEORY SAYS MAYBE YOU ARE NOT BEING AS GOOD AS YOU THINK.
Are you setting your mind on coming up with answers that are, in theory, rational, so that you can be seen as smart, or so that you can reach an answer that actually wins you the games in reality?
Personally I’m pretty fond of those pleasant, “nice” people, who always seem to always try their best not to upset anyone. They are the type to always be willing to “remain silent” in a prisoner’s dilemma, and always be open to cooperation. And it seems that, or at least that’s how it is from my personal observation, these people desire nothing more than for others to treat them kindly in return, so the world could become a better place.
But, the problem is, though, are these “nice” people really helping the world to become a better place?
1. The cleverest strategies in Game Theory and the Paradox of Tolerance.
Unfortunately, these “nice” people, who are always trying to be as humble, tolerant and forgiving as possible, might as well be among the main contributors to the emergence of problems for everyone.
This perhaps would be most noticeable in stories and movies where among the group of protagonists there’d always be one of those goody-two-shoes who would somehow, someway always manage to unintentionally drag the team into unfavorable or even dire situations. But when you watch these movies, even if in everyday life you are just the same type of person, you would also always tell yourself “there’s no way I’m gonna be like that guy, right?”.
Game Theory may help you identify whether or not you are the type so nice that you will put yourself and your entire team into difficult or dire situations.
But before we go any further on this topic, let us first give you a few notices:
- The assumption is that the world is not a place only consisting of people who always think for others, but actually one where the overwhelming majority are those who always prioritize their own benefit or, in some case, their groups’.
- While it’s true that we’re kind of pointing out faults of the “nice people”, this is not by any mean a form of victim blaming (or cyber bullying), because we will be considering this while keeping in mind that nothing bad has happened yet, and even if something really did happen, a loss of benefits does not necessarily always generate a specific victim (Even though the nice people and their group might become the victim).
- Please make sure you have read our previous articles on Game Theory before you proceed any further.
Our advice is that you should approach this topic via the repeated prisoner’s dilemma. Generally speaking, “tit-for-tat” still remains the best strategy. You always mirror the choice of your opponent from the previous turn, and both your personal risk and benefits from cooperation will be ensured. By showing that you are playing a tit-for-tat game, you also make your opponent think twice on whatever decision they will make in the next round. Because if they do something bad in this round they know they will receive exactly that in the next round. This hesitation of the opponent certainly benefits you, and for both players, in fact.
Meanwhile, if you are a player who tends to be overly tolerant and gullible, your opponent will soon realize that there’s nothing to keep him from selling you out and get a much shorter sentence (even shorter than when both players cooperate). In other words, in a prisoner’s dilemma, one prisoner being too nice can actually harm the chance for both prisoners to cooperate (as the other “not so nice” prisoner may not feel any pressure to do so).
But of course, in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma, it is very unlikely for a player to be irrational enough to choose to cooperate all the way to the last round (while getting betrayed all the time), as their decision-making will eventually evolve in response to the opponent’s actions. The cooperation process will gradually evolve, and the cruel reality of the game will help ensure that even the most irrational people will eventually learn to cooperate in a manner that is mathematically optimal, not one that fits their values, personal preferences or anything else. The same thing is true for the extremists, as they will learn to act more selflessly, realizing that their selfish way will do them more harm than good.
In 1984, a professor of political sciences from the University of Michigan — Dr. Robert Axelrod — had written a book based on the observations he made from some real life experiments. By analyzing data, Robert managed to make a generalized list of traits that are required for a good strategy in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma [1] :
- Be nice: always choose to cooperate to demonstrate your goodwill, and get rid of the selfish thought of reaping unjust advantage by betraying first.
- Be provocable: a successful strategy should never be blindly optimistic about the opponent’s good will (as pointed out earlier). You must show the willingness to retaliate, in order to curb the extremists.
- Don’t be envious: focus on maximizing your own ‘score’, as opposed to ensuring your score is higher than your opponent’s.
- Be merciful: be willing to cooperate when the opponent signals redemption, in order to avoid escalation of conflict and, consequently, bad scores for both.
In addition to showing your benevolent and tolerant side in order to promote cooperation, you should also always show that you are willing to retaliate and punish the ones who take advantage of your kindness, so that others get discouraged from committing selfish acts and mutual benefit is ensured.
Next, let us approach the same topic but via a slightly different game: the hawk-dove game. In this game, the hawks and the doves will compete for the same resources. The players will get to choose their roles as either hawk or dove. If you choose to be a dove, and everyone else does the same, everyone will together share the limited resources. If you choose to be a hawk, and the others do the same, the hawks will fight each other to death. But if a person chooses to be the hawk, and the rest choose to be doves, the doves will always give the lion’s share to the hawk and thus starve themselves to death, while the hawk will get a lot of resources.
The game is designed to prey on the behaviors of the doves, so that the choice to become a hawk can be highly tempting because while it’s true that both choices can potentially lead to terrible endings, the hawk simply wins a lot more than the dove when they win. The introduction of an “always-conceding” role indirectly gave people the incentive to select the more extreme role (and hope that they can prey on the conceding one) — and just lead everyone to demise.
The negative externality generated by the existence of overly tolerant players also has close relation with Paradox of Tolerance, which was first coined by the philosopher Karl Popper in his book The Open Society and its Enemies [2] .
His idea can be summarized as follows: The limitless tolerance will eventually doom itself. If we tolerate the intolerants, if we are not willing to combat and eradicate the intolerance, our limitless intolerance will just help to foster the intolerance, which will eventually grow strong enough to overpower and then eradicate all tolerance.
Ironically enough, the perfect tolerance requires us to be tolerant toward anything and everything — including intolerance. But if the intolerance is allowed to exist, the gullible benevolent folks will one way or another fall victim to their own much humanitarian, yet overly idealistic way of thinking. And if we tolerate others only to convince the world that we are the tolerant type, would the said tolerance be so morally-right anymore?
So maybe for once we should revisit our definition of our own ‘goodness’. That, are we being good because we want to be seen as a good person, or because we truly wish for the best for all?
And maybe we should also ask ourselves the following: if we play nice just to be seen as a nice person, would that make us nice people at all?
2. Always be beware of other players’ irrationality.
But, to be fair, the existence of overly nice or irrational players in game theory is not so detrimental that it has to be eliminated at all cost. In reality, in more complicated games involving a much larger number of players, especially when these players team up into large groups, the introduction of players who prefer more volatile or even irrational strategies may actually help the team to proceed further in a game.
Because, in some cases, the player’s acting too rationally may cause the game to settle right in the first round, with a result equally unbeneficial to all parties. Because the more rational the individuals are, the quicker they are to identify the Nash equilibrium.
But while we are criticizing the gullibility of the nice people, or trying to avoid overdoing that, we also need to be clearly aware that the population of nice people is by no mean small — and that the actions of those people as a whole, not that of a single rational individual, have very significant say in the final results. For example, in the number-guessing game we mentioned earlier in the article [3] , but with a bigger player pool, the rational people who select 0 may even lose themselves the game (even when 0 is indeed the Nash equilibrium).
[Summary of the problem: You and other players will each choose for yourselves a random number ranging from 0->100. You will win if you choose a number closest to the final answer. The answer, in this case, equals 80% of the arithmetic mean of the selected numbers.
For example, two players will pick the numbers 75 and 34 respectively. So, the arithmetic mean of the set would equal (75+34)/2 = 54.5. The answer is the number that equals 80% the arithmetic mean of the set, which is 43. So the one choosing 34 is the winner, as his/her answer’s closer to the true answer.
So, which answer would you pick? And why is that the case?]
Basically, as most people would never think that far ahead, and as they irrationally come up with an answer, the odds for that irrational answer to be one of the other 99 numbers are much higher. As a result, you cannot really choose 0 as the answer, even when it is rational to gun for the Nash equilibrium. You have to be so rational that you put into the equation account the others’ irrationality as well. And, for that purpose, the Cognitive hierarchy theory (CHT) can be a very helpful tool, as it categorizes players into groups with different levels of rationality.
General speaking, if all of your opponents are the rational type and you clearly know they are, things would be a lot easier than with a more diversified pool of players. Because most of the time the rational folks the number of optimal choices would quickly narrow down to just one or a handful, but when playing against irrational players, on the other hand, you will have to ask yourself “what type of irrationality does this guy have”?
As a result, in addition to training yourself to become less irrational, you will also have to keep yourself clearly aware that the majority of the people around you are not exactly rational. This is absolutely crucial. And also bear in mind that, even when the others are irrational and, as you may think, dumb (yeah, even so), it does not necessarily mean that they have to face a harsher reality than your own, or that you are contributing more to the society than they do.
And just like for the irrational, nice people always think of themselves as good people, as we mentioned in part one, before you beat your chest saying that you are smarter, maybe you should ask yourself “What kind of smart am I being”?
Are you setting your mind on coming up with answers that are, in theory, rational, so that you can be seen as smart, or so that you can reach an answer that actually wins you the games in reality?
And if some people are so dead set on giving an answer that should be right on paper just to then watch that answer turning out wrong in reality, then would that be the right answer at all, or, in a broad sense, are they really smart at all?
3. The suffering of those who are bound by a system of ethics that doesn’t match theirs.
As Game theory has pointed out, the individuals who adopt the strategy of indiscriminate tolerance are not exactly being that “good” toward themselves as well as to the people around them. But if that’s the case, then why is this type of people not disappearing completely from society anyway, or why is there still a limited number of people who choose this way of life? There has to be something else that justifies this irrationality, some kind of benefit, though might be not rational or physical.
In my opinion, the most plausible explanation for the existence of this type of people may be that they choose to strictly adhere to the system of ethics thinking that it is, implicitly, their purpose of existence, and that it is without questions the right thing to do.
Ethics, or morals, are the systems created to direct the behaviors of individuals in the society. As we came from the root of being primates, and then the more primitive stages of human beings, ethics help the species homo sapiens to distinguish a simple and yet absolutely crucial difference between each and every intention, decisions or actions: What is right, and what is wrong.
Ethics has continued to evolve over time and geographical distances and thus witnessed differentiation among specific demographics. This also means that ethics is by no means an universal truth, and does not necessarily fit all of us, and also by no means something that is right all the time.
But all those downsides should not automatically trigger human society to just toss ethics away. In fact, it is still a system absolutely vital for human society, as it is the glue that holds together the structure of a society where the majority are individuals who do not uphold a perfect, mechanical rationality.
What I’m trying to say is that, even though the ethics system does have its variations, a lot of people think that the system (as they perceive) are universally accepted, and thus force themselves to act by ethics all the time — and in turns harm themselves and the people around them.
According to Marx, ideologies in general, and moral values in particular, sometimes can even be capitalized on by the ruling class, as they use those ideologies and values to steer the world to a direction that benefits them, where the world would look up to them and idolize them [4] .
For example, the rich’s ethics, which revolve around what they considered the proper way to dress, walk or to do everyday routine… sometimes would be fancied and picked by the people from the lower class in the society. Some poorer people may mistake these facade as the embodiment of superiority and progressiveness, and would try to mirror those patterns of behaviors with the hope to “level-up” themselves. But this submission would only help the rich (who already won over the world financially) to come closer to winning the world on the morality and culture front as well, as their standards become the moral compass for the rest of the society (regardless of the appropriacy or the actual beneficiality of those standards), while the adoption of rich people’s ethics helps sap away the resources of the poor which is already meager as it is.
Another evident example is how the publishers, after some half a decade of making tons of money for themselves popularizing self-help, get-rich books, have also succeed in damaging the mentality of a large proportion of younger generations to the point that they are roped to a new system of ethics where deception and exploitation reign supreme. The ethics such as “work should never stop with just 8 hours/day”, “we should mind bad pay during apprenticeship”, “we must risk big to do big”, “be dynamic or not be at all”… have pretty much infested the society thoroughly, and even got canonized to some extent. Lots of people think that adhering to these patterns and ethics will earn them success, and not doing so will doom them to failure. But, the truth is, these ideas are nothing more than the capitalistic, pro-exploitation ideas that are spreading at a much more terrifying rate than they ideally should be, causing the workers to feel bad or guilty even when they are doing things that are legally allowed (like leaving work at the hour they should); or cause them to idolize their capitalistic employers.
Constraining ourselves with ethics just to then stress ourselves out by doing what we wish not to, to serve the cause of others, seems to be the common problem for all of us.
It can be the case of a pair of parents who, out of fear of the neighbor’s ridicules, force their children to go to the college despite how unfit that choice is for the family’s financial situation as well as for the children’s desired career path.
It can be the case of a woman who actually feels bad about herself when her husband is the one who had an affair, simply because ethics say women are responsible for keeping the family together, and by failing in doing so, you become a failure of a woman.
It can also be the case of a youngster who cannot bring himself to enjoy his youth and have fun with his friends in much common activities by having long trips or party overnight — because his parents have been telling that those are degrading things to do, that such behaviors are signs of ungratefulness to his parents, and something like “if you want to see me die, go and do it”.
Or the case of an overly macho guy who always tries to treat his friends at any parties, even when that will force him to live on instant noodles in a less-than-decent lodging with an utterly dark future. Just because popular movies, novels and music hits have been telling him that’s how real man should act, and perhaps because he hopes that his friends (or the society, or God himself) will treat him kindly in return in the future.
Or also the case of that “nice” employee, who always concedes to the demands of his employers or subordinates despite knowing that he is being used in work, just because he believes the goodness he’s showing is the good and right thing to do, and as he thinks that a Fairy Mother will one day come down from the sky to reward the Cinderella that he always has been.
…
By adhering to ethics, and with a little luck, you may earn yourself some titles like “good boy”, “the nicest guy in the company”, or “the most generous friend”, … something along that line. But I can tell you that those staples really will not by any means guarantee you a better experience in your life, or ensure that your existence is helpful to the world. Maybe I can’t even be sure that you can earn themselves those titles without harming yourself.
But then keeping yourself from falling into that pitfall might perhaps be something easier said than done. There are things that we humans cannot really decide for ourselves, and ironically enough, one of those is our way of thinking. The ethics we choose to bind ourselves with sometimes are just so powerful that it forces us to feel like a complete failure even with just from a word we said to our parents, friend or college; or to feel extremely proud from doing something we would find incredible stupid if we employed any common sense — the feelings you get from it may not even compliment the nature of the action you committed in reality.
Therefore, it seems that truly being a good person is a lot harder than acting so you can see yourself as one. But, to become aware of this problem, and to take a step back to take a rational look at your own self and finally identify that you might as well be not nearly as good, I think, is the crucial first step for any person’s journey to become a better person.
Or… maybe not?
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References:
[1] “The Evolution of Cooperation* * Robert Axelrod.” [Online]. Available: https://ee.stanford.edu/.../Breakth.../book/pdfs/axelrod.pdf.
[2] J. Plamenatz and P. K. R, “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 264–273, 1952, doi: 10.2307/586813.
[3] https://www.facebook.com/.../a.19620070.../2832333690380712/
[4] Abercrombie, Nicholas; Turner, Bryan S. (1978). “The Dominant Ideology Thesis”. The British Journal of Sociology. 29 (2): 149–170. doi:10.2307/589886. JSTOR 589886
