[POPTECH] Our Non-Zero Future
Robert Wright explains that non-zero sumness means “a correlation of fortunes for better or worse.” E.g., when you buy something, the merchant is happy with your money and you’re happy with the good.
Why care about non-zero sum games? Stopping the spread of AIDS would be a NZ game. Globalization can be. We’ve been playing NZ games since history began. E.g., hunter-gatherer societies are held together because it’s a NZ game. History advances because technology enables poeople to play NZ games over greater distances.
Thomas Schellling, a leading game theorist, told Robert: “In a non-NZ game it never makes sense to communicate honestly.” So it’s not surprising that information technologies have driven the evolution of social complexity. In this view, history has a moral direction. He references Peter Singer’s The Expanding Circle about how we have expanded the realm of creatures we consider to be moral agents and worthy of dignity.
Terrorism creates zero-sum relationships. NZ relationships such as economic interactions get us to acknowledge our common humanity. An active compassion is going to be more and more in our self-interest. If their economic problems cause your economy problems, you need to take an interest in their economic problems. [Hmm. Not what I would usually call “compassion.” Seems more like self-interest.] With regard to terrorism: if potential terrorists get happier, it’s good for us. That’s the definition of a NZ relationship. Hatred is a threat to your children’s future.
I.e., Freedom is inversely proportional the amount of hatred in the world.
Q: Do economic sanctions work?
A: It’s mixed. Yes in South Africa. But they’ve been an abysmal failure in Cuba. “Cuba would be the 51st state by now if we’d been trading with them.”
[I like all this, and he’s a great presenter, but the game theory part sounds like a jargon-izing of common sense; yes, I know game theory has greater depth than you can present in a 25 minute talk, especially where your point isn’t about game theory but about futures and peace. Or maybe game theory has shaped commonsense already. Anyway, it was a terrific talk.]
David, read the book ‘Nonzero’ – it is a good complement to ‘Small Pieces’.
Classical game theory is flawed due to abstracting things into one-shot choices; Wright brings in the insights of Axelrod on what happens when a ‘game’ is part of a series.
Cooperation and evolution
David Weinberger has been blogging PopTech.
So, does it make sense to communicate honestly in a NZ game? Apparently so, even despite all the defections that may occur.
How do you translate that into our current economic and political system, though? Here, those are clearly Z Games, so notoriously in the political sphere.
This reminds me of Charles Handy, when he advocates replacing the corporation with employee-owned enterprises, thus making the labor the owner of profits, not the capital.
Sounds familiar?
NZ games require certain equality in originary strengths amongst participants. When one participant in much stronger than the other one explotation can go on for a long time. In third world countries that is exactly what takes place. Society is so pyramidal that the few at the top always find it easy to collude against the majority of the people. Even when the very rich want to get richer they do so bounded by rules of cooperation amongst only themselves which guarantee the exploitaion of what has been refered to as “the masses”.