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Sam Smith
The childish, petulant, hypocritically self-righteous and jingoistic
attacks on Iran's president by politicians and members of the media
provides a useful insight into why America is such a hated place in the
world these days.
The reality of the world is that there are places where the Holocaust is
denied, women are badly mistreated and gays abused and then there are
other places that have been responsible for the deaths of over a million
Iraqi civilians and have caused much of the global ecological damage
that threaten the lives of millions of other humans.
The rational approach to ameliorating the damage done by both such
places does not rest on the unilateral assessment of blame, unilateral
admission of guilt or on military action that increases the number of
victims. It depends rather on incremental acceptance of new ways agreed
upon because they work well for all parties. As Benjamin Franklin said
of happiness, peace does not depend on great strokes of good fortune but
on the little felicities of every day.
Because the American elite, from the president of Columbia University to
the Columbia Broadcasting System commentator, is so absorbed in a
fantasy of its own perfection, it is constitutionally unable - save in
rare moments - to step down from a self constructed altar and make the
successive small adjustments necessary for peace, progress and
cooperation.
Thus, if they had not been so obsessively narcissistic, those attacking
Ahmadinejad might have noticed that the Iranian president was opening a
door for discussion, negotiation and perhaps even resolution. Would it
work? We don't know, but we know for certain that not taking the
opportunity will not do a single thing for women or gays in Iraq nor
bring Ahmadinejad any closer to understanding the history of Nazism.
Instead we could easily find ourselves in an even more disastrous war in
part because we don't talk to people who don't understand the Holocaust.
In fact, if one examines Ahmadinejad's statements, he has shifted his
position on some of these issues. Not that words are inherently
important. We have wasted years as American and Israeli officials
insisted they would not talk to country X until it "recognizes the right
of Israel to exist." In fact, the miscreants long recognized that right;
they just don't want to do with their lips.
Nearly 20 years ago, game theorist Robert Axelrod conducted an
experiment to figure out the best way to evolve cooperation. Using other
game theorists around the world, the result that came out on top was a
system of tit for tat: you do something and we'll do something
comparable (whether good or bad). And Axelrod noted: "Words not backed
by actions are so cheap as to be meaningless. The players can
communicate with each other only through the sequence of their own
behavior."
Where words are important, however, is when they suggest a shift in
actions is possible. Ahmadinejad's statements suggest just such a shift
and we have reacted to them in precisely the wrong way.
SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW 1990 - A remarkable short book written by
a University of Michigan game theorist should be required reading at the
White House as it muddles its way through the Gulf crisis. In The
Evolution of Cooperation (Basic Books, 1984), UM political science
professor Robert Axelrod reports on his fascinating and instructive
effort to come up with a computer model for cooperation.
His experiment was based on a classic conundrum known as the 'prisoner's
dilemma.' In one traditional form, this game sets up four possibilities:
• Neither prisoner informs on the other and thus are rewarded for mutual
cooperation.
- Player A informs on B, with A being set free and B getting the
sucker's payoff.
- B informs on A, with the reverse result.
- Both inform on each other so both lose.
What makes this complicated is that A and B do not know what the other
is going to do.
In Axelrod's experiment, the choices were generic, whether to cooperate
or defect, with a reward system. Further Axelrod proposed numerous
iterations, or repetitions, of the game, to make it more similar to a
real situation. The players could not make enforceable threats or
commitments, predict what the other player would do in any given move,
nor change the payoffs. Nor could a player be eliminated. Said Axelrod:
"Under these conditions, words not backed by actions are so cheap as to
be meaningless. The players can communicate with each other only through
the sequence of their own behavior." Already sounding familiar? To test
the results, Axelrod ran a tournament, inviting game theorists around
the world to participate in a game of two hundred moves. There were 14
entries from five disciplines: psychology, political science, economics,
mathematics and sociology.
The remarkable result was that the winning entry, from Professor Anatol
Rappaport at the University of Toronto, was also the simplest program,
dubbed TIT FOR TAT. The player cooperates on the first move and after
that simply imitates the other player's move: cooperation for
cooperation and defection for defection.
Other entries proposed trying to get away with an occasional defection,
doubling the reaction to a 6 defection (i.e. escalation) or waiting
before the other player had defected twice before defecting.
If the players cooperated each time they could receive a maximum score
of 600. Tit for Tat scored 504. The top eight entries, all based on
initial cooperation, scored between 472 and 504. The entries which were
"not nice," i.e. the player defected on the first move, scored no higher
than 401.
Axelrod then ran another tournament, requesting entries and providing
entrants with the full results of the first round. Interestingly, some
of the contestants didn't believe this information and continued to seek
solutions based on concepts that had been shown unsuccessful in the
first round, much as nations continue to pursue policies in the face of
contrary evidence. Once, again Tit for Tat came out on top.
The book also has a chapter on the often unspoken cooperation that
developed in WWI trenches and another, co-written with sociobiologist
William D. Hamilton, on the evolution of cooperation in biological
systems, are worth the price in itself. In the former, Axelrod describes
how evolved cooperation allowed troops to leave their trenches for food
and water and to predict when the shelling would occur. Said one
soldier: "It would be child's play to shell the road behind the enemy's
trenches, crowded as it must be with ration wagons and water carts, into
a bloodstained wilderness . . . but on the whole there is silence.
After all, if you prevent your enemy from drawing his rations, his
remedy is simple: he will prevent you from drawing yours." Axelrod uses
the WWI example to show how cooperation can develop among antagonists.
Later he discusses the ability of a "nice" strategy like Tit for Tat to
establish a foothold in even an unfriendly environment. His basic rules
are:
- Don't be envious
- Don't be the first to defect
- Reciprocate both cooperation and defection
- Don't be too clever.
In one conclusion, he states: "In a non-zero-sum world you do not have
to do better than the other player to do well for yourself. This is
especially true when you are interacting with many different players.
Letting each of them do the same or a little better than you is fine, as
long as you tend to do well yourself. There is no point in being envious
of the success of the other player, since in an iterated Prisoner's
Dilemma of long duration the other's success is virtually a prerequisite
of your doing well for yourself."
Axelrod's book is a reminder of how much effort we expend on the
strategy of non-cooperation and how seldom we study, with the diligence
of a military planner, the strategy of settling disputes. Instead,
America continues to stumble on its downward path from its brief moment
of empire, clinging to the belief that cooperation is weakness and
bullying a sign of strength.
Even a computer knows better than that
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sam Smith
The childish, petulant, hypocritically self-righteous and jingoistic
attacks on Iran's president by politicians and members of the media
provides a useful insight into why America is such a hated place in the
world these days.
The reality of the world is that there are places where the Holocaust is
denied, women are badly mistreated and gays abused and then there are
other places that have been responsible for the deaths of over a million
Iraqi civilians and have caused much of the global ecological damage
that threaten the lives of millions of other humans.
The rational approach to ameliorating the damage done by both such
places does not rest on the unilateral assessment of blame, unilateral
admission of guilt or on military action that increases the number of
victims. It depends rather on incremental acceptance of new ways agreed
upon because they work well for all parties. As Benjamin Franklin said
of happiness, peace does not depend on great strokes of good fortune but
on the little felicities of every day.
Because the American elite, from the president of Columbia University to
the Columbia Broadcasting System commentator, is so absorbed in a
fantasy of its own perfection, it is constitutionally unable - save in
rare moments - to step down from a self constructed altar and make the
successive small adjustments necessary for peace, progress and
cooperation.
Thus, if they had not been so obsessively narcissistic, those attacking
Ahmadinejad might have noticed that the Iranian president was opening a
door for discussion, negotiation and perhaps even resolution. Would it
work? We don't know, but we know for certain that not taking the
opportunity will not do a single thing for women or gays in Iraq nor
bring Ahmadinejad any closer to understanding the history of Nazism.
Instead we could easily find ourselves in an even more disastrous war in
part because we don't talk to people who don't understand the Holocaust.
In fact, if one examines Ahmadinejad's statements, he has shifted his
position on some of these issues. Not that words are inherently
important. We have wasted years as American and Israeli officials
insisted they would not talk to country X until it "recognizes the right
of Israel to exist." In fact, the miscreants long recognized that right;
they just don't want to do with their lips.
Nearly 20 years ago, game theorist Robert Axelrod conducted an
experiment to figure out the best way to evolve cooperation. Using other
game theorists around the world, the result that came out on top was a
system of tit for tat: you do something and we'll do something
comparable (whether good or bad). And Axelrod noted: "Words not backed
by actions are so cheap as to be meaningless. The players can
communicate with each other only through the sequence of their own
behavior."
Where words are important, however, is when they suggest a shift in
actions is possible. Ahmadinejad's statements suggest just such a shift
and we have reacted to them in precisely the wrong way.
SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW 1990 - A remarkable short book written by
a University of Michigan game theorist should be required reading at the
White House as it muddles its way through the Gulf crisis. In The
Evolution of Cooperation (Basic Books, 1984), UM political science
professor Robert Axelrod reports on his fascinating and instructive
effort to come up with a computer model for cooperation.
His experiment was based on a classic conundrum known as the 'prisoner's
dilemma.' In one traditional form, this game sets up four possibilities:
• Neither prisoner informs on the other and thus are rewarded for mutual
cooperation.
- Player A informs on B, with A being set free and B getting the
sucker's payoff.
- B informs on A, with the reverse result.
- Both inform on each other so both lose.
What makes this complicated is that A and B do not know what the other
is going to do.
In Axelrod's experiment, the choices were generic, whether to cooperate
or defect, with a reward system. Further Axelrod proposed numerous
iterations, or repetitions, of the game, to make it more similar to a
real situation. The players could not make enforceable threats or
commitments, predict what the other player would do in any given move,
nor change the payoffs. Nor could a player be eliminated. Said Axelrod:
"Under these conditions, words not backed by actions are so cheap as to
be meaningless. The players can communicate with each other only through
the sequence of their own behavior." Already sounding familiar? To test
the results, Axelrod ran a tournament, inviting game theorists around
the world to participate in a game of two hundred moves. There were 14
entries from five disciplines: psychology, political science, economics,
mathematics and sociology.
The remarkable result was that the winning entry, from Professor Anatol
Rappaport at the University of Toronto, was also the simplest program,
dubbed TIT FOR TAT. The player cooperates on the first move and after
that simply imitates the other player's move: cooperation for
cooperation and defection for defection.
Other entries proposed trying to get away with an occasional defection,
doubling the reaction to a 6 defection (i.e. escalation) or waiting
before the other player had defected twice before defecting.
If the players cooperated each time they could receive a maximum score
of 600. Tit for Tat scored 504. The top eight entries, all based on
initial cooperation, scored between 472 and 504. The entries which were
"not nice," i.e. the player defected on the first move, scored no higher
than 401.
Axelrod then ran another tournament, requesting entries and providing
entrants with the full results of the first round. Interestingly, some
of the contestants didn't believe this information and continued to seek
solutions based on concepts that had been shown unsuccessful in the
first round, much as nations continue to pursue policies in the face of
contrary evidence. Once, again Tit for Tat came out on top.
The book also has a chapter on the often unspoken cooperation that
developed in WWI trenches and another, co-written with sociobiologist
William D. Hamilton, on the evolution of cooperation in biological
systems, are worth the price in itself. In the former, Axelrod describes
how evolved cooperation allowed troops to leave their trenches for food
and water and to predict when the shelling would occur. Said one
soldier: "It would be child's play to shell the road behind the enemy's
trenches, crowded as it must be with ration wagons and water carts, into
a bloodstained wilderness . . . but on the whole there is silence.
After all, if you prevent your enemy from drawing his rations, his
remedy is simple: he will prevent you from drawing yours." Axelrod uses
the WWI example to show how cooperation can develop among antagonists.
Later he discusses the ability of a "nice" strategy like Tit for Tat to
establish a foothold in even an unfriendly environment. His basic rules
are:
- Don't be envious
- Don't be the first to defect
- Reciprocate both cooperation and defection
- Don't be too clever.
In one conclusion, he states: "In a non-zero-sum world you do not have
to do better than the other player to do well for yourself. This is
especially true when you are interacting with many different players.
Letting each of them do the same or a little better than you is fine, as
long as you tend to do well yourself. There is no point in being envious
of the success of the other player, since in an iterated Prisoner's
Dilemma of long duration the other's success is virtually a prerequisite
of your doing well for yourself."
Axelrod's book is a reminder of how much effort we expend on the
strategy of non-cooperation and how seldom we study, with the diligence
of a military planner, the strategy of settling disputes. Instead,
America continues to stumble on its downward path from its brief moment
of empire, clinging to the belief that cooperation is weakness and
bullying a sign of strength.
Even a computer knows better than that
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