Two person, zero sum

I was watching his amazing BBC documentary by Adam Curtis called "The trap, What happened to our dream of freedom", which set out to show how every attempt to free people has led to more tyranny. In the first part it discusses the role of Game Theory in creating a free world for people, the world of free market, where every individual is an agent who is independent, selfish and self-seeking, looking to find maximum gain. And against all intuitive judgement, this system does not fall into chaos. This is what the mathematician John Nash, protrayed in "The Beautiful Mind", recieved the Nobel for.

Even though the mind may be beautiful, but the theory and its logical outcome is definitely not. At Rand Corporation, John Nash was working as a cold war strategist, figuring out the best methodology to fight it out. He came up with a number of solutions to competitive games using his theories, among them was the Prisoner's Dilemma. Prisoner's Dilemma deals with the uncertainity that we face in daily life regarding whether or not to trust the other person on any matter. His answer, "F*** you buddy". He proved that in any such situation, mathematically, the best solution for the individual, under the uncertainity, was never to trust and to betray the other person. If you trused the other person, you might stand to loose everything. Of course, this is a localized solution, considering what one person does under uncertainity, its a strategy, not really a solution. From a global perspective, where information on all individuals are known, it is best to trust the other person.

This cold logic was developed under the Cold War environment. But amazingly, continued to live long afterwards. This logic was applied in all forms of situations around the world, from politics to markets to wars. The results were good, but people stood to loose. Lives were lost in process and people once again became trapped. Trapped in the cold and dark world where they cannot trust anyone. Not even their family members. A psychiatrist called R. D. Liang did a study based on the idea of game theory, on eight different couples. To his satisfaction, he found out that married couples used all kinds of games and strategies to acquire power over the other and used every weapon at their disposal, including love.