Game Theory calculates optimal strategies

“Intelligence is the ability to get what you want.”

As agents, we set goals and figure out how to achieve them. That’s what being smart is. Being intelligent is not the ability to learn 100 digits of Pi. That’s just pure computation. Being intelligent is reciting those digits to a girl you have a crush on, but only if it works. If she gets the ick, then that behavior was dumb, unless you were purely competing with yourself, in which case it’s back to being smart. As you can see, the definition of intelligence is amorphous because it’s subjective.

Hence, computers cannot become intelligent until they start choosing their own goals and achieving them.

Tit-for-tat is the best strategy in infinite cooperative games

Mathematics calls it tit-for-tat. Biology calls it reciprocal altruism. Philosophy calls it the categorical imperative. My teachers called it the golden rule.

Game Theory has shown us that cooperation is the best default strategy in infinite, cooperative games. If your fellow player also cooperates, continue cooperating. As soon as the other player cheats against you, you cheat against them next time. Then keep cheating until they go back to cooperating, then you go back. This is called tit-for-tat, and it beats all other strategies. It drove the other strategies to extinction. It’s retaliatory, it’s clear-cut, easy to understand, and it’s forgiving. It’s perfect!

It may lose an immediate battle, but it wins all the wars. It has a vulnerability. Forgiving tit-for-tat has a vulnerability against players who do not forgive so easily. A better strategy became apparent.

I heard a speech about business being an infinitely cooperative game. The time horizon is basically forever, and the best way to play is to find other smart people to work with. Something like that.

Stickleback fish, a notoriously dumb type of fish, are capable of applying tit-for-tat strategy in cooperative/competitive games. All animals incorporate this strategy.

Stickleback fish display tit-for-tat behavior

Even the dumbest, oldest, most basic lifeforms – fish – apply tit-for-tat. They will cooperate with eachother until they get burned. Incredible.

Update: I’ve recently started fishing again, and I forgot how crafty fish can be. My apologies, little finned ones.

Strategic dominance makes decisions easier

In game theory, strategic dominance occurs when one strategy is better than another strategy for one player, no matter how that player’s opponents may play.

Strategic dominance creates easy decisions. If you can find a strategically dominant strategy, you can just use that. This is because a strategically dominant strategy beats anything your opponents choose to do.

This is rare in games. If you find it, stick with it.

References

• Robin Wall Kimmerer. Braiding Sweetgrass. Probably my favorite book of all time. Over and over, Kimmerer stresses that our relationship with the Earth needs to be one of reciprocity. She tells stories about elders reminding younger students to think about how we can reciprocate the gifts of the Earth with our own gifts, which may be: gratitude, science, justice work, art, regenerative agriculture, circular economies, respect, education. And education is defined not as rote learning, but as a way for us to offer our gifts to the land and all the people. As a Crow elder explained, “to be educated is to understand what your gifts are, and to understand how you can return them to the world.”