Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

)! $!+.5 %* 0$! #! +" $ +/ ŏ ÌÌ»ŏÌ¥ŏ ßß þßŏÌÆŏ§ Ä ßŏ Æ ŏ×̾¯ç¯ ß þŏA¯» ŏ\ ¾¯Æ» Û ¥ÌÛ øÌÛ ŏ þŏA ýŏc Ä»¯Æ ý×Ì߯ç¯ÌÆßŏ Æ ŏ§Û ׬¯ ß þŏX¯ ¬ Û ŏA ¾ Æ Ŀt Û ¯ç ŏ þŏ% þŏt ¯ ¾¯Æ§ Æ ŏ#Īŏt ß¾ þŏ\ ¬Æ ¯ Û Ì÷ Ûŏ þŏ;¯ăŏ\× ¯Æ ŏ ß» çŏÌ¥ŏ ÌÛ ¾ ßŏ×ì ¾¯ ç¯ÌÆ

Also from Basket of Adorables The Ghastlytrump Tinies

Basket of Adorables P.O. Box 356 Renton, WA 98057 © 2018 Basket of Adorables.

Text © 2018 Mike Selinker & Richard Malena-Webber.

Basket of Adorables logo © 2018 John Kovalic.

ISBN 978-0-9913159-6-3 Printed in China by Regent Publishing Services Ltd. www.basketofadorables.com

2

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Contents 4 6 10 16 22 28 34 40 46 54 60 66 72 80 88 96 104 110 116 124 130 136 142 150 153

Foreword by Max Temkin Introduction: What happened?

Game theory and the two magic words that will impeach Trump The gambler: Why Trump keeps doubling down on an idiotic Russia strategy Co-op mode: Why Trump sees “many sides” to Nazi murder Abortion rights and the game theory of armor Good Guys, Bad Guys, and the end of an armed society Two madmen play poker: The North Korea bluff-off Sweet relief: How we can pay our national debt upstream The Kap trap: Why no team will call in Kaepernick Beating the veto player: How to end sexual harassment in the workplace Playing chicken with Robert Mueller is a bad idea The GOP is living in a fantasy world on taxes— specifically, Star Wars Trump is tanking the presidency Targeting the Clinton Foundation is Trump’s dumbest move yet For Trump, everything ends when the Wall comes down How to make a weak man feel strong: Throw him a military parade The Democrats pick the right strategy (even though it hurts) The grim trigger: Trump declares a trade war on himself #MPRraccoon and the puzzle of hope Seizing children is good policy (if you’re a complete monster) Trump gambles for resurrection Mike Pence is the Werewolf Conclusion: What happens now?

From the archives: An open letter to Speaker Boehner from a game designer

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

3

Foreword One of the telltale signs of being a first-year philosophy student is that you can’t stop thinking about free will. It seems like the most interesting and all-consuming problem in the world. Then eventually you read a little more of the canon, and you reach a stage of advanced intellectual development where you become a compatibilist and move on with your life.

Now I never studied game design in a classroom. But it seems like when I meet people just getting into game design, their version of “the problem of free will” is trying to work out what is and isn’t a game.

Try it, it’s hard!

For example… why is playing Betrayal at House on the Hill (with the Widow’s Walk expansion, featuring an all-new haunt

by Max Temkin) a “game,” but exploring an actual creepy mansion “not a game?” Good luck coming up with a definition for “game” that includes Monopoly but excludes actual real estate investing.1 Here’s a few good ones to chew on: Sid Meier defines games as “a series of meaningful choices.” Ernest Adams and Andrew Rollings define games as “one or more causally linked series of challenges in a simulated environment.” Roger Caillois says a game is an “activity which is essentially free, separate, uncertain, unproductive, governed by rules, make-believe.”

Johan Huizinga says a game is “a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life.” Bernard Suits gave my favorite definition: “To play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favor of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity… playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”

1

4

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

So, after you’ve gotten high and thought about this a few times, I think most people settle on the idea that “games” aren’t a natural category, and so it’s more or less arbitrary to try and decide why Carcassonne is a game but city planning isn’t. In my view, we’re all enacting a bunch of games at all times, some of which we take more seriously than others, and some we play pervasively for a long time, and then we die.

Do you find this depressing? I don’t. But even if you do, here’s an upside: games have a lot to tell us about how to change huge, imposing systems that can make us feel powerless. In this book, you’re going to find a catalogue of classic fallacies, powerful ideas in game design, and a new vocabulary that will help you zoom out and see the whole game of our political system.

Ever since Mike wrote his “Open Letter to Speaker Boehner,” I’ve found that thinking about politics as a game has pretty incredible explanatory power. At that time I felt like Republican Congressional leadership was playing checkers and President Obama was playing chess. But now I think Republicans have taken their pieces off the board and we’re still sitting at the table trying to play chess.

Our opposition knows that in a system with no accountability, the ability to have and exercise power is all that counts. Our side would be smart to take the lessons of this book to heart, and play the game that’s in front of us today.

Max Temkin Co-creator, Cards Against Humanity and Secret Hitler Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

5

Introduction

What happened?

September 16, 2018 If you only have a vague idea of who I am, you might be wondering why a game and puzzle designer is writing about politics. Don’t worry, I’m not offended.

I mean, people a lot worse than you have wondered that aloud, usually using the words “Why don’t you just stick to making games!” or other condescending comments. Not you, though. You’re okay in my book.

As for what else is okay in my book, this set of essays attempts to use game theory—a thing I’ve studied a little bit and put in practice a lot—to explain the troubling situation we find ourselves in. It’s a situation that cries out for explanation. On November 9, 2016, I woke up to fascists crowing at their chance to take over the White House. Maybe some people were surprised that they came out of the shadows in such abundance. Not me.

Anyone in the game industry knew they were there.

They’d taken over gaming forums with their love of authoritarianism, hatred of diversity, and willingness to be driven toward violence, especially when aimed at women.

6

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

The thing is, deep in our hearts, we knew we were better than them. That gave us a different feeling, which was that because we were better people, that made us absolutely sure we could stop them.

Which would have obvious to us as a clear error if we’d looked even a little bit at game theory at the time.

Specifically, the error of zero-sum thinking.

Game theory likes to look at a principle called the zero-sum game. In a zero-sum game, any gains by one competitor are suffered as losses by the other competitors. An election result looks like this. If I get more votes than you, I win.

But an election is not just about a comparison of percentage results. The process of an election is a non-zero-sum game. That’s because turnout matters.

If I can get more of my people to show up, I don’t have to convince your people to be my people. We can both increase our results without reducing the other’s results. We fell into the trap of thinking the game was zero-sum, won the popular vote, and lost.

So, all it took for the worst American imaginable to become the worst president imaginable was for the Republicans to find some people who had not been activated before. People who didn’t feel a connection to the electoral process. People who felt outside the mainstream.

You know, Nazis.

To be clear, most people who voted for Trump weren’t Nazis. Most were ordinary Republicans. Some Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

7

believed the racist semi-billionaire would look out for them instead of the people they thought got all the breaks. People who had it better than white heterosexuals, I guess. It’s hard to envision the argument that says that the demographic group that has run everything in America for centuries is the oppressed one. But you don’t have to understand it to know it’s there.

It took a man as vile as these modern-day Nazis to rally them. They won because of a deadly combination of hard work, Russian interference, and appeals to the worst beliefs. Violence against women. Violence against the press. Violence against Arabs and Mexicans. Violence against each other.

Alexander Hamilton had this one, by the way. Writing in his Objections and Answers Respecting the Administration of the Government, he said: The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion…. When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits— despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”

8

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

So, hey, we got the whirlwind. Before we could quell it, we had to understand it. As the GOP got hijacked by fascists, I dusted off the skills I gained in Chicago as an investigative reporter and research director for Mayor Daley. I wrote a popular Tumblr screed called “An open letter to Speaker Boehner from a game designer,” which you can see at the end of this book.

Before the election, my Basket of Adorables partner Gaby Weidling and I published a little cartoon book called The Ghastlytrump Tinies, a depiction of all we’d lose after Trump was elected. It too was popular, raising $10,000 in contributions to the Clinton campaign and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

After the inauguration, I kicked off a series of game theory pieces for the Medium site Politics Means Politics., trying to rationalize what was happening as an alternative to screaming at the darkness. Now I’ve put them in this book. I was greatly assisted by Gaby and editor Wes Schneider. Atomic Game Theory expert Rich Malena-Webber penned deeper analyses of specific game theory concepts in the sidebars.

Cards Against Humanity and Secret Hitler co-creator Max Temkin wrote an illuminating foreword. My codesigner Liz crafted a brilliant and disturbing cover.

We issued this book with a challenge: If you help us take back Congress in the elections of 2018, we’d give it to you for free. The Democrats are the only hope of getting out of this with an intact America. If you can help, either before or after the election, please do. If these essays focus your efforts, so much the better.

And now, some magic words.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

9

Game theory and the two magic words that will impeach Trump

July 23, 2017 If there’s one thing I know, it’s that game theory is a beast. It’s how we got Trump. We knew Candidate Trump was a racist, a sexist, a fraud, a fascist, a creep, a climate change denier, an anti-vaxxer, and a colossal fool. Some of us voted for him anyway, because he was a disruptor. Hillary Clinton was our stable equilibrium, a validation of everything we had done up to that point. But Trump tried a bold new strategy— fumble through debates, collude with Russia, brag about sexual assault, threaten to shoot people—and new strategies are the only things that disrupt stable equilibriums. Et voilà, President Trump.

But even those who voted for disruption didn’t know that he was this stupid, this destructive, this infantile.

They didn’t know that in six months, he’d reach where Nixon and Clinton got to in six years: the edge of impeachment. Of course, one thing stops us from rectifying the dumbest move Americans have made since the founding of the Confederacy: the GOP’s hammerlock on Congress. The only body that can remove him seems perfectly happy to be in blind 10

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

lockstep with a boy who plays with trucks while health care reform dies.

Trump provided a disruption. Game theory says we need one too. I think that disruption comes in the form of some magic words. Only two of them, really.

Those words are “AND PENCE.” I’m guessing you’re used to saying, “Impeach Trump!”

Just add the words “and Pence” to the end. It’ll take a bit to get used to. You’ll get it. “Impeach Trump and Pence!” Let it roll sweetly off your tongue. Say it a lot.

Here’s why. Game theory has this little gem called the prisoner’s dilemma. You have two suspects and only enough evidence to give each a short sentence. You independently offer each suspect the ability to walk free if he just rats the other out. If both of them don’t take the bait, they both get the short sentence. Yet they squeal every time, getting the longer sentence, because each doesn’t know what the other will do.

Accordingly, the situation is always less bad for each one if they betray the other.

Let’s talk about Mike Pence. He’s worse than Trump, some say. Well, no, he’s not, in that Pence won’t nuke Ontario if Alex Jones tells him to. But he is bad in a lot of ways. We don’t want him as president, at least for very long. So, we shout, “Impeach Trump and Pence!” at the top of our lungs. He’s a smart guy. He’s gonna hear it. If he hears it enough, that will guide his behavior. Because Pence is about the only person who can organize a 25th Amendment cabinet vote of unfitness against Trump. If Pence fears impeachment, Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

11

he might take the weasel way out and turn on his boss.

But Pence isn’t a weasel. His defining characteristic is loyalty—to his God, his wife, his president—so we need something else at work.

We need to guide Rep. Paul Ryan’s behavior. As Speaker of the House, Ryan gets to be president if Trump and Pence are simultaneously booted. While no one else wants that, Congress’s resident hamster-devil2 assuredly does. If Ryan knows Pence fears impeachment, Ryan—whose defining characteristic is not loyalty—might be spurred to make that happen.

And if Pence knows Ryan knows Pence fears impeachment, the veep might cut a deal with Senate leader Mitch McConnell. Because if McConnell knows Pence knows Ryan knows Pence fears impeachment, he’ll tell his pal Pence that the Senate GOP won’t convict him. And if Ryan knows McConnell knows Pence knows Ryan knows Pence fears impeachment, Ryan’s only move is to impeach fast. And if Pence knows Ryan knows McConnell knows Pence knows Ryan knows Pence fears impeachment, Pence’s only move is to turn on Trump faster. If Pence can get out in front of this train, he can be president before Ryan files the papers against him.

The thing about getting out in front of a train, though, is you get run over by a train.

The train—the Republicans’ Rambo Coalition—is composed of three groups: the Racists, the Zealots, This position will open up when Ryan retires at the end of the 2018 session.

2

12

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

and the Randies. Trump and Steve Bannon lead the Racist faction; they monsterize Muslims, Mexicans, and African Americans, and the Racists eat it up like deep-fried Twinkies. Pence is a standard-bearer for the Zealots; he’s got a puncher’s chance to outlaw abortion and gay marriage, and nothing in his blessed world matters more than that. Ryan is the poster child for the pragmatic-conservative Randie faction; if poor people die from a lack of health insurance, he sleeps well at night.

The Racists, Zealots, and Randies basically hate each other. But they’re united in a communal and entirely heteronormative love of white males, so they manage somehow. Sure, they can’t pass a health care bill, but they at least can keep the Democrats off the board. They’re running a dysfunctional train, but it’s lurching in the direction they want.

So, if the Rambo Coalition keeps the president in power, the goal must be to break the coalition.

Only one thing will do that: making them fight over who gets to drive the train. If we create a disruption— say, we get the Zealot leader to betray the Racist leader and frustrate the Randie leader’s ambitions—they’ll turn on each other. If none of them knows what the other is doing, they will sell each other out. When they do, the Democrats swamp the GOP in 2018 and redraw the maps in 2020. Bingo bango, America saved.

However, one more thing is needed to make that happen: an actually united Democratic Party. This will be a challenge, because Democrats eat their own.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

13

So, they need to fear too. We must threaten every Democratic incumbent who doesn’t back impeachment with a primary challenge in 2018. Call your Representative today and ask, “Do you support impeaching the president?” If they say “Yes,” you can tell them they have your support. If not, especially if they say “We have to gather all the evidence before we consider…,” say “Then I will be running against you.”

Or if not you, say you’ll find someone who will. Tell your Congressperson that you are a one-issue voter, and that issue is chucking the madman from the White House. Now, who knows? Maybe you won’t pull your support. But they don’t know what you’ll do, so they have to act. It’s just basic game theory.

The prisoner’s dilemma works on a lot of people. But most importantly, it works on prisoners, those people who think they’re going to jail. Or worse. We all know what the penalty3 for treason is. If you think you might be in power because you committed treason, your dilemma becomes a whole lot easier to resolve.

You just need to not know what the guy in the next cell is going to do. I’m sure as hell not going to tell you.

Fun fact: Most states have treason statutes too! And they pretty much all have the same penalty as the one spelled out in the federal code. But hey, Mr. Vice President, I wouldn’t worry about it. You’re probably fine.

3

14

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: the prisoner’s dilemma Hi, I’m Rich Malena-Webber. I’m a math teacher who tries to make game theory approachable. In these sidebars, I’ll explain some of the concepts Mike drops into his essays.

Everyone’s first exposure to game theory is the prisoner’s dilemma, which is itself a dilemma. The whole thing is built around a weird story of you, a criminal, about to ruin the life of your best friend for a reduced sentence. I’m hard pressed to find a board game that plays out like the prisoner’s dilemma, which leads new students to think this topic is about a strange world, disanalogous to our own. It’s just one of many game theory dilemmas, each dealing with a different kind of conflict.

Later, we’ll look at risks, dangers, and common sense, but for now, we’ll just deal with making the best of a bad situation.

The prisoner’s dilemma is best described visually using a mathematical chart called a matrix, such as the one here.

You can see that this situation describes the choices of two prisoners. Each has the same two choices because they were each given the same deal. Keep quiet, and go to prison for four years, or cut a deal and get one year while the other guy gets ten. But if both prisoners try to cut a deal, they both go down together, with each getting eight years in prison.

Both players are looking out for themselves, so they each take the deal. The bottom right represents the equilibrium state, or the solution to this dilemma. If either player made a different choice, they would end up in a personally worse scenario while their former friend runs free. For both players to escape this pit of despair and make it to a land of mutual cooperation, they need to establish communications, empathy, and trust, which ends up being the real lesson of game theory.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

15

The gambler: Why Trump keeps doubling down on an idiotic Russia strategy August 9, 2017 In the most recent play in which they will eventually be dead, Hamlet’s pals Rosencrantz and Guildenstern flip a coin. A lot. It comes up heads, always heads.

This surprises them. Eventually, it should come up tails. It does not.

This requires Guildenstern—or maybe it’s Rosencrantz—to reexamine his faith in the law of probability. Surely, they must be outside the bounds of nature if so many heads come up in a row. Only the arrival of a flip of tails could restore his faith. Yet it never comes. They are vexed.

Then again, these guys are idiots.

Which brings us to the president of the United States.

The Trump “administration” has been aswirl in a vortex of allegations and investigations about his campaign’s collusion with Russia. The administration’s strategy in dealing with these issues can charitably be described as “highly unlikely to produce positive gains.”

16

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Consider the following: • • • •

When faced with an FBI investigation, Trump fired the FBI director, then said he did so to bring an end to the investigation.

When faced with an investigation into, among other things, the firing of the FBI director, Trump threatened the investigator.

When his attorney general recused himself from matters involving the allegations, Trump said he wished he had not hired him.

When his son and son-in-law met with Russians to get dirt on his opponent, Trump dictated a lie about why they went to the meeting.

These are likely the actions of a man who believes he is guilty of a crime. But they are also incredibly stupid. If you believe you are guilty of a crime, the one thing you don’t want to do is bolster the belief that you are guilty. Yet over and over, this is what Trump does.

There can be only one explanation for this: The president believes that this is a winning strategy, despite all evidence that each step so far has been a loss.

And if this is true, he is like millions who believe in the gambler’s fallacy.

The gambler’s fallacy, reduced to its essence, is that if something happens a lot more or less than it should, the opposite will happen soon. This is a hopeful belief, a suggestion that the universe will balance itself out over time. But if the events are random, as in the aforementioned coin flips, they won’t necessarily balance out now. If you get 78 heads in a row, it is no more likely that you will get tails next than you will get heads.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

17

Now, the events of the Trump team’s collusion with Russia are not random. Proof erupts on a daily basis that something did go down. But I’m not talking about the collusive events themselves here. I’m talking about the administration’s expectations of responses to its actions. Those are binary: either they do something that makes prosecution less likely or makes prosecution more likely. The Trump people keep choosing “more.”

This is because Trump believes he is due for a win. A gambler who believes in the fallacy is very likely to follow a betting strategy called the martingale. It was invented in the 1800s, and like such 19th century glitter-traps as recapitulation theory and canals on Mars, it’s complete nonsense.

But it sounds good, and that’s all some people need to make very bad life choices.

When you pursue a martingale, after every loss you double your bet. That way, the theory goes, when you win you will wipe out all previous losses. Thus if you lose $100, then $200, then $400, your next bet of $800 will get you slightly ahead of the game if you win, and back to zero when you bet $100 again. At minimum, you think, you at least will never lose money.

The poorhouses are filled with people who pursue this strategy, because of two interfering problems. One is obvious: There is a house, and the house takes a cut.

So, your expected value (your average outcome) is to come in at what you bet minus the house’s cut.

That is called losing.

18

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

The other is less obvious: If you keep doubling your bet when you lose, you will eventually run out of money before you win. This is called stopping time, and it will kill you. Because you can’t win what you can’t bet. You must have unbounded wealth to win in a martingale.

Herein lies the trap for the president: He believes he has unbounded wealth. He’s sure he has the uncontested ability to pardon himself and everyone he knows, so each loss is meaningless. Only the eventual win matters. So, he doubles down on a losing strategy over and over, and each step seems twice as disastrous to his case as the one before. He will keep doing things that play into the investigators’ hands—ash-canning his attorney general, pardoning his relatives, lying even when the truth is unthinkably apparent—because changing strategies is fatal to the martingale gambler.

It’s kind of odd that a casino owner like Trump acts like a gambler on tilt. But it’s going to fail him.

Because the House—and the Senate—takes a cut, floating legislation that restricts his ability to veto sanctions and stops him from firing the special prosecutor and eventually doing his job at all. Each loss makes more likely the outcome that the gambler fears most: he won’t be able to return to the table.

That’s Trump’s daily dread. If he’s a loser when he runs out of chips to cash, then he’s a loser forever. This president doesn’t like being called a loser. Not one bit.

There’s another road available to the president. A paradox related to the martingale deals with a game of infinite expected value. Even when you have losses, your resources mean you will eventually have a moderate positive outcome, and all will be well.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

19

Now, you and I don’t get to deal with infinite expected value much; our lives are filled with situations where even the most positive outcomes are capped. But imagine you were president and had the near-limitless resources of the executive branch at your disposal. You could keep playing for years if you liked the game. But if you were bored and tired—if, for example, you were like a certain “Lazy Boy” on the cover of Newsweek—you’d walk away from the game, since the expected value of all this work isn’t interesting enough to you. Even with an infinite expected value, you’d give it up after a series of predictable and survivable downturns. Paradoxically, you’d just resign.

President Trump might like this theory. It’s called the St. Petersburg Paradox, and it was invented in Russia. Just like his presidency.

20

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: the gambler’s fallacy Humans beings are pretty clever overall, but we are notorious for making terrible decisions when randomness is in play.

Say you are asked to generate a completely random string of eight values consisting only of 0’s and 1’s. Given the setup, you might start with a pair of zeroes. But the more you tack on zeroes at the start, the more you start to feel like you should throw in a one, just to balance things out. In a sense, your intuition about randomness is exactly right.

But in another, it’s completely wrong.

In the long term, we expect that if two outcomes of a random event are equally likely, and the event occurs often enough, then each will happen fifty percent of the time. We call that the Law of Large Numbers. A six-sided die can never land on 3.5, yet that is the statistical average for a single die roll. So, if we roll that die 100,000 times, we will expect to see a total of 350,000 pips. This truth gives us confidence when it comes to defying randomness. Unfortunately, this generalization doesn’t quite hold up if I only roll the die ten times.

In the short term, if we expect that two outcomes of a random event are equally likely, then we cannot conclude which of those outcomes will happen during the next event, no matter what outcomes have occurred before. This is because random events are independent and cannot influence future outcomes. There’s no way to gain momentum, which is really the heart of the gambler’s fallacy.

A gambler is constantly trapped between these two statistical truths—that we cannot comprehend a single random event though we can predict the overall outcome of 100,000 of them.

So, what happens if we play ten hands? Or a hundred? Where’s the line between order and chaos?

I’d say ask a gambler, but that’s kind of the issue...

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

21

Co-op mode: Why Trump sees “many sides� to Nazi murder

August 13, 2017 Quite the week for Donnie Darkest-Timeline: He got to invoke nuclear war on North Korea and for bonus fun he completely blindsided Venezuela with a threat of invasion or something.

The Republicans who had been abandoning him in droves slunk back into the fold at the possibility of carpet-bombing brown people. The president loves competitive games: golf, football, board games with his face on them. Now he could tee up for the best competitive game of all: war. It could have been quite the boost and then everything went sideways.

When James Alex Fields drove his Challenger into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters in Charlottesville, it ended all that rah-rah. Politicians across the spectrum chose to condemn the neo-Nazi violence by its common name, white supremacist terrorism. Orrin Hatch did. Chuck Schumer as well. John McCain. Bill Clinton. Marco Rubio. Nancy Pelosi. Terry McAuliffe.

Ted Cruz. Bernie Sanders. Ivanka Trump. Just about everyone.

22

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

The president? Eh, not so much.

He was sad about the loss of life—activist Heather Heyer assassinated by Fields, and police officers H. Jay Cullen and Berke M.M. Bates killed in a copter crash—but said there were “many sides” to the violence. Hard to find the multiplicity of sides in the head-on collision. There was one side in the car, and one side with its shoes flying everywhere.

This equivocation when faced with actual Nazis killing Americans met with a fiery reaction from every quarter.

Republicans and Democrats bade Trump to denounce white supremacy for once in his overly charmed life.

Well, wait, not every quarter.

3:46 PM: Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together.

Nothing specific against us.

He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate... on both sides!

So he implied the Antifa are haters.

There was virtually no countersignaling of us at all.

He said he loves us all.

Also refused to answer a question about white nationalists supporting him.

No condemnation at all.

When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room.

Really, really good.

God bless him.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

At left—though I presume they’d prefer at alt-right— is a post from the Daily Stormer, the neo-Nazi website used as an event organizer for this year’s “Summer of Hate.” You don’t want to look at that site. It claims that promoting violence is not allowed, but every comment there is about promoting 23

violence. It’s about as bad a group of people as you can imagine.4 One of these White Power boys just killed an innocent woman, and predictably, the Stormers are victimshaming her. President Fire-and-Fury would be justified in turning on the neo-Nazi movement and making it his enemy. As I mentioned, Trump loves competitive games, and this is a game he can win. Like with North Korea and Venezuela, there’s no danger to him for standing up to this enemy. He’d be like Nixon to China—call it “Trump to Charlottesville.”

But he had two opportunities to do so, and he didn’t take the shot. So, I will presume he’s not going to.

Here’s why: For him—and for almost no other politician—the game he’s playing with white supremacists isn’t competitive. It’s cooperative, and co-op games are very different from competitive ones.

Since I’ve designed a lot of co-op games, I’ll spell out how they work. In co-op games, everybody works towards a common goal. We win together or lose together. Hacky sack is a co-op game. So is Diablo. So is running a company. We all use our skills to help each other succeed.

Trump’s cooperating with white supremacists. That cooperation helped get him elected, so he’d be loath to cut the racists out of his already minuscule base.

He’s got no real upside for turning away the white supremacist vote, because those who dislike him really The Daily Stormer is down now, but one presumes it just creeped up somewhere else.

4

24

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

hate him, so he’s unlikely to gain ground. He’ll drop in popularity even if he does the right thing. Poor guy.

What Trump doesn’t understand about cooperation would fill a library, so I’ll just focus on two big problems of co-op games to explain why he’s flailing.

The first is the so-called Pandemic problem, named for the classic board game which didn’t actually invent the problem. In a co-op game, since everyone is on one side, one alpha-gamer can direct the whole game, taking everyone’s turns for them. The other players disengage from boredom or frustration. It’s kind of awful. Modern co-op games solve this by undermining the alpha-gamer, either by introducing traitors or encouraging self-interest or destabilizing the value of experience.5 This is usually perceived as a good thing.

But—and hey, stop me if you saw this coming— Trump is the ultimate alpha-gamer. Trump wants to take everyone’s turns: Congress, the courts, the press, the FBI. Everybody should do what he wants. They don’t, because the system is designed like a modern co-op game. It undermines the alpha-gamer in favor of… well, many sides.

The second problem of co-op games is subtler, but it’s what could collapse the Trump/neo-Nazi coalition.

When everyone playing is on the same team, the thing you depend on to hold the game together—a mutual desire to enforce rules—disappears. In a competitive

Disclaimer: Those are the alpha-killing design strategies in Betrayal at House on the Hill, the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, and Apocrypha, all games I helped create.

5

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

25

game, one side can call the other out for cheating. The referees or other players will step in to set things right.

In a co-op game, there’s no other side, so there’s no reason to enforce the rules other than social stigma and desire for fairness. “We start with just five cards each? Naw, let’s make it ten. Wait, we lose if we run out of cards? Screw it. How about we just win then.”

Sure, you could do that. But the game might not function if you do.

I’m not privy to the rules that Trump and his racist fanboys are playing by. I’ll guess one rule was “We should not mow people down in muscle cars.” Now that rule has been broken. We’ll find out if Trump thinks that’s out of bounds.

He could flip the table, threatening every one of these Nazi punks with bunker-busters and the electric chair.

He could fire their dog-whistling leaders—Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Stephen Miller, et al.6 He could join the game the rest of us are playing.

My guess is he’ll keep playing the game he’s playing now, because he thinks his team is winning. If he does, we’ll all lose together.

Within a few weeks after I wrote this, Bannon and Gorka were excised from the White House. Miller remains in his job, apparently in control of immigration policy.

6

26

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: the Pandemic problem Problem players exist in all kinds of games, but few are as frustrating as the quarterback player. This alpha believes that they are best able to see the board and come up with the plays that will lead the team to victory. This kind of condescension is especially frustrating in something like a board game where all players exist as equals, because it creates a new power dynamic where only cooperation existed before. Suddenly, players must choose between following orders or being seen as working against the group. In both cases, player agency is lost.

Alpha players fall into two major camps. The first are the strategists. These players truly are completing a comprehensive scan of the game in order to find success. In football, the quarterback is trained to read certain signs and has the authority to call audibles if they believe a play should be altered in the final moments before the snap. Confidence and expertise wrapped into one package is hard to ignore, which is why it feels so difficult to argue with an alpha.

Fortunately, the second kind of alpha is truly worth that argument. The second kind are the reachers. These alphas see cooperation as a power vacuum and attempt to work their way to the top. If everyone can work towards a single design, then everyone succeeds together. Or, if things go wrong, then the reacher can push blame on those who didn’t work hard enough to meet these lofty goals.

For a strategist, dissent is an opportunity to discuss and build a new strategy after weighing all the options. For a reacher, dissent is the same as treason—to question the plan is to doubt the leadership abilities of the alpha. Neither alpha is needed to win at a board game like Pandemic, because board games don’t require leaders.

However, if you’re reading this book and you don’t see our last two presidents in these differing leadership styles, then you might want to give it another read.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

27

Abortion rights and the game theory of armor

August 25, 2017 While Charlottesville set itself ablaze with white supremacist fury last week, there was another equally horrifying assault in the South. The Governor of Texas signed yet another horrendous abortion bill, this one mandating something called “rape insurance” to get coverage for a medical procedure.

It’s the fifth abortion bill the Texas House and/or Senate passed this year. Texas is the largest Republican-held state, and it tries like the dickens to outlaw abortion on an annual basis.7 It’s not very good at it.

This is because of Texas’s other propensity: faring spectacularly poorly before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here are some legendary losses before the most august body in the land:

One proposed bill just banned abortions outright. That one failed.

Something about having a Supreme Court.

7

28

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

• • • • •

In 1869, it lost Texas v. White, negating the South’s Civil War secession.

In 1954, it lost Hernandez v. Texas, giving Mexicans equal rights.

In 1989, it lost Texas v. Johnson, allowing us to burn the flag at will.

In 2003, it lost Lawrence v. Texas, shredding sodomy laws across the U.S. In 2017, it lost Moore v. Texas, ending execution of the mentally disabled.

Texas is the biggest loser at the Supreme Court, apropos since everything’s bigger there. But even a year after the fact, no loss seems as jimmy-kicking as Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt, the Supreme Court decision that struck down H.B. 2, Texas’s last abortion law. It’s worth looking at that decision, lest we panic too much over the latest predictable Texas-sized overreach.

Much discussion centered on Justice Ginsburg’s concurrence, which characterized Texas’s law as “beyond rational belief.” But the interesting bit (to me, anyway) was the justices’ chatter about severability, both in Justice Breyer’s majority decision and in Justice Alito’s dissent. Severability is the rule that if one provision of a law is struck out, the rest of the law remains in force. This might be a dry subject, but here it was shockingly entertaining.

H.B. 2 had the most insane severability clause I’ve ever seen. It said: Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

29

it is the intent of the legislature that every provision, section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, or word in this Act, and every application of the provisions in this Act, are severable from each other. If any application of any provision in this Act to any person, group of persons, or circumstances is found by a court to be invalid, the remaining applications of that provision to all other persons and circumstances shall be severed and may not be affected.

Guys, this law was severable by individual word. This was madness. Even Alito, defending the clause in dissent, was gobsmacked at the overreach.

H. B. 2 contains what must surely be the most emphatic severability clause ever written. This clause says that every single word of the statute and every possible application of its provisions is severable.

Then, in case anyone was not clear that H.B. 2 was about restricting the ability of women to access abortions, it doubled down and became severable by individual human female.

The legislature intends that every application of this statute to every individual woman shall be severable from each other. In the unexpected event that the application of this statute is found to impose an impermissible undue burden on any pregnant woman or group of pregnant women, the application of the statute to those women shall be severed from the remaining applications of the statute that do not impose an undue burden, and those remaining applications shall remain in force and unaffected, consistent with Section 10 of this Act.

Wowsers. So, okay, let’s see what happened in that “unexpected event” (a staggering term in an abortion bill). In this law, Texas set up a truckload of restrictions on abortion providers, two of which—the admitting privileges and surgical center requirements—the majority found unconstitutional 30

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

under Planned Parenthood v. Casey’s “undue burden” clause. Beyond those two, there were dozens of other requirements in there, from teaching guidelines to sound barriers to fire alarms. The Court could have kept all of those intact and just cut out the two most offensive impediments.

They could have, if Texas had understood basic game theory involving armor.

Armor is a series of choices. You probably want some.

I wouldn’t advise wading into a Game of Thrones-style battle wearing a loincloth. But I also wouldn’t advise wearing armor so cumbersome that you can’t move, because a giant will catch you and stomp you into sandpaper.

Layering on armor has its costs. In game design, I often say: “The more armor you put on, the more you’ll get hurt when you suffer an injury.” That’s just sensible; if you cover everything but your eyes, anything that gets by that cover is going through your eyes. This is why basketball players get elbow sprains and football players get broken knees. Football’s armor brushes away the minor injuries that two colliding basketballers would suffer if they hit each other. But when something gets through and actually hurts a football player, he is out for a long time.

Possibly for good.

In Hellerstedt, we got a real example of the consequences of trying to clamp on the most bulletproof, Hulkbuster-ish legal armor possible.

Writing for the majority, Breyer seemed ready to embrace Texas’s wishes for severability: Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

31

Severability clauses, it is true, do express the enacting legislature’s preference for a narrow judicial remedy. As a general matter, we attempt to honor that preference.

Gee, that must have felt reassuring. And then…

But our cases have never required us to proceed application by conceivable application when confronted with a facially unconstitutional statutory provision. “We have held that a severability clause is an aid merely; not an inexorable command.”

OH, HI THERE. Breyer showed nary a whit of enthusiasm for parsing the infinite number of conceivable rules required to save this patient.

Such an approach would inflict enormous costs on both courts and litigants, who would be required to proceed in this manner whenever a single application of a law might be valid. We reject Texas’ invitation to pave the way for legislatures to immunize their statutes from facial review.

With a sweeping “facial review,” Breyer said, “Man, it’s too much brain-pain to fight through all this. What if your armor just didn’t exist? Yeah, fuck that noise, your whole bill is toast.”

So, H.B. 2 became nothing but powder, an unmoving husk stomped flat by a giant. And severability is no longer all that trustworthy a suit of armor. Thanks to Texas, no one will ever win with that dodge again at the USSC. Texas continues its legendary history as the Supreme Court’s whipping post. So, if you tremble at this year’s awful rape insurance law—and I can see why you might—there’s a solid chance the black robes will ride to your rescue.

Oh, also, yay for women’s rights.

32

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: armor theory One of the most important contributions to the game theory of armor came from a Hungarian statistician named Abraham Wald. During World War II, he was consulted on a project about protecting US aircraft from enemy fire. As one of the brilliant minds in the Statistical Research Group, Wald had access to reams of data from aircraft covered with bullet holes. The assignment was simple: given that gunfire usually hit these aircraft in similar places, but armor plating is heavy, what areas of the plane should receive a layer of reinforcement? Since the majority ran along the fuselage, this seems like an obvious spot to place some armor.

Wald, a statistical juggernaut, disagreed. His recommendation was to reinforce the engines, the area of the planes with the fewest bullet holes. And he was right.

What Wald realized is that the obvious answer was based on survivor bias, a fallacy where data is drawn only from those who survive to be sampled. A plane shot in the fuselage could still come home! Engine shots weren’t rarer than fuselage shots in general, just in the surviving planes. Any aircraft shot in the engine was significantly less likely to ever make it home to be part of this study. With Wald’s advice, Allied aircraft became that much stronger throughout the rest of the war.

Not only does armor provide protection, it also makes it possible to determine where successful attacks will fall. If a castle is heavily defended, except for the front gate, then it only stands to reason that most attacks will come through that front gate.

Studying these weaknesses grants attackers an edge and also gives defenders a very specific strategy during combat.

If you’re interested in a quick research project, look at the differences in glove types and hand injuries between boxers and MMA fighters.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

33

Good Guys, Bad Guys, and the end of an armed society

October 3, 2017 Every time we have a gun massacre, two things will happen: The Onion will publish a “No way to prevent this” article and the gun control debate will flare. The anti-gun side will try to get agreement on common sense gun laws, whoever the pro-gun SarahHuckabee-Sanders-of-the-week is will say it’s premature, and nothing will happen except the guaranteeing of more massacres.

I’m going to presume something about you here, and if I’m wrong, I apologize. I’m going to assume you want fewer gun massacres.

If you don’t—say, if you’re the NRA, who get airtime and contributions whenever innocents get gunned down—you’re not going to like this much. But if you just want people to not be shot full of holes when they go to music festivals, this might help.

Game theory is often applied to gun control, usually on the anti-gun control side. I’ll go through this logic, which is called “A Good Guy with a Gun.” 34

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

A Bad Guy wants to rob a Good Guy. The Bad Guy might be armed, and the Good Guy might be armed.

As game theory is obsessed with payoffs, we need to look at the two sides’ payoffs separately.

Let’s look at the payoffs for the Good Guy first. Bad news: They’re never positive. The unarmed Good Guy is in trouble against an armed Bad Guy. But the armed Good Guy doesn’t have a positive payoff either. Because the Bad Guy knows the attack is coming, the Good Guy loses most of the time against an armed Bad Guy. Even winning won’t guarantee a positive outcome. The Good Guy has guaranteed a gun confrontation: he might get shot in a situation where he would otherwise lose only money.

Now let’s look at the Bad Guy’s payoffs. He always wants to be armed, because a Bad Guy without a Gun is almost always beaten by a Good Guy with a Gun. Against an unarmed Good Guy, the Bad Guy with a Gun’s payoff is presumed to be greater than 0.

(This is a weak argument, since prison exists to put robbers in cages. Bad Guys know this, so they generally don’t commit ten heists a day. But for now, let’s say crime against an unarmed victim does pay, at least a bit.)

The argument presumes that 0 is greater than the Bad Guy’s payoff against an armed Good Guy. In the latter case, he guarantees a gunfight in which he can be killed or maimed, so he has to think about it first. This last value presumption is the linchpin of the anti-gun control argument.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

35

Which is great if we all have one-shot revolvers and rational goals in life. The logic crumbles when the Bad Guy is intent on murder, has access to good guns, and doesn’t care about consequences. Then, the guns have a greater utility to the Bad Guy. So, the Bad Guy goes five football fields away and opens fire.

64-year-old white male millionaire Stephen Paddock set up 23 firearms, among them an AR-15 and a Kalashnikov rifle supported by bump fire stocks, on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay. He smashed out a window and fired on the Route 91 Harvest Festival crowd that was 500 yards away across a busy street.

The density of the 22,000 concertgoers meant he hit almost 600 people, killing 58, and then turned his gun around and added one more body to his count. He was dead when the SWAT team blew open his door.

This was a country concert in Nevada, not Lilith Fair; if the demographic holds, many attendees owned guns.

But they didn’t have them. If they had, the body count would’ve been higher. No Good Guy with a Gun would’ve done anything to improve the result. A pistol is accurate to 25 yards; the only thing they could hit was each other. As country musician Caleb Keeter noted in his mind-changing manifesto, any Good Guy who pulled out his gun would’ve been shot by police.

The value proposition for the victims if they were armed was worse than if they weren’t. (Heaven forfend if the victims had AR-15s, as I expect they would have killed dozens of innocents inside the Mandalay Bay.) If you have two people with handguns, you have an okay possibility the Good Guy with a Gun wins.

36

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

But make any of these changes, and the situation changes entirely: • • • •

If you add range, the Bad Guy with a Gun wins.

If you add magazine capacity, the Bad Guy with a Gun wins.

If you add rate of fire, the Bad Guy with a Gun wins.

If you add quantity of guns, the Bad Guy with More than One Gun wins.

The Good Guy’s payoff versus this Bad Guy is nearly always a disaster, gun or no. There is only one thing you can do to the Bad Guy’s guns that will make him less likely to win, and that is remove them. If the Bad Guy can’t obtain the high-range, high-capacity, highrate of fire multiplicity of guns, he can’t win.

How do we know? We learn that gun homicide rates are 25 times higher in the US than in other such countries. We learn that the US has 30% of the world’s mass shootings and only 5% of its people. We learn that nations and states with more guns have more gun deaths. We learn that Australia has had 0 mass shootings since it enacted gun control in 1996, the UK has had 1 since then, and the US has had 1,500 mass shootings since Sandy Hook.

And if we really want to learn, we learn that the only difference between us and the other nations is that we have half the world’s guns and they don’t. Since the day after a mass shooting is supposedly not an acceptable day to discuss gun control even though there’s a mass shooting every day in the US, we will never discuss it.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

37

But we must. Because a Good Guy with a Gun doesn’t have a blessed chance. He’s just as likely to be massacred as the rest of us. He just doesn’t believe it.

So, he fights for the right to possess an assault weapon that won’t stop the Bad Guy with a Really Good Gun and never will. The Bad Guys will get more and more really good guns, and kill more of us at a time, because we’re fervently committed to letting them do so.

After all, as The Onion says, there’s no way to prevent this.

38

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: utility When a game theorist makes decisions, they often build a framework based on their own personal wants and needs in an attempt to maximize their own happiness. Since this is quite subjective, game theorists came up with a more concrete term they called utility. That’s right, we quantified happiness.

In simple terms, an outcome which is better for a player has a higher utility value. Most game theory problems are easier to understand once we stop thinking about complex motivations and just assign them an overall utility score. A presidential candidate doesn’t need to decide if the Iowa Caucus is important because it’s early in the schedule or because it allows a connection with the Heartland. In the end, what’s important is that Iowa gets a utility value of 10 for any serious candidate. On the other hand, my state of Oregon might round up to a 1.

After making these plans, we can build a utility matrix that compares my possible outcomes with those of my opponents, turning a long series of thoughts into a simple calculus. Should I campaign in Oregon while my opponent works some voting magic in Iowa? Of course not. With a late primary and only a small number of electoral votes, Oregon is cursed with its traditional single visit in an election cycle.

The most important reason to develop a matrix is to consider how to alter outcomes in your favor. How much would I have to change the utility for Oregon to convince more candidates to visit? I can’t add electoral votes or change what time polls close on the West Coast, but what if Oregon developed a unique debate or can’t-miss event that convinced politicians to stop by?

By creating a utility matrix, we can determine what kind of changes might turn bad strategies into good ones.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

39

Two madmen play poker: The North Korea bluff-off

October 15, 2017 There was this one poker tournament I said I would attend, but I ran late, and so they just blinded me down as play continued. But everybody else played so aggressive that I actually came in third and cashed in without ever showing up. What a fun story! Say, here’s a horrifying poll.

48. Would you support or oppose a preemptive strike on North Korea?

Support Oppose DK/NA

Total 26% 62% 11%

Rep 46% 41% 12%

Dem 16% 77% 7%

Ind 20% 67% 13%

Per the reliable Quinnipiac University poll, 46 percent of Republicans would support a military strike on North Korea—a nuclear power with the capability to devastate Seoul and the nearly 30,000 American troops stationed therein—right now, with no armed provocation. Who even puts this idea into their heads?

40

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

The Hermit Kingdom may have a scarcity of resources, but it does have about one million activeservice soldiers and as many as five million in reserve.

Here in the US of A, we have a little over a million active-service soldiers.

So, 46 percent of Republicans support either thermonuclear assault or a draft. If Quinnipiac’s boffins said, “Would you support a draft to fight North Korea?” I expect the number of draft-age Republican supporters would go way down.

But hey, that number has gone up from 28 percent of Republicans in the last two weeks, per an earlier ABC poll. President Trump’s “fire and fury” bombast energized his base, and they’re ready to make the Korean Peninsula a smoking crater. Even if it kills some of them.

How did we get here? A simplified answer: Both Trump and Kim Jong-Un are kinda nuts. They know there’s a time-tested theory behind nuclear-age confrontation that fits their personalities. It’s called the madman theory.8 President Nixon’s foreign policy rested on a Machiavellian dodge: He would simulate madness. To do so, he launched Operation Giant Lance, a threeday run of nuclear bombers near the Soviet border. By convincing Leonid Brezhnev he would risk nuclear war, Nixon thought Brezhnev would beg for peace.

Trigger warning: I’m going to say “crazy” like it’s a bad thing. Mental illness is complicated, and this is a simplistic article about war. Apologies in advance.

8

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

41

It failed. We don’t know that Brezhnev understood that Nixon wanted him to think he was crazy, and even if he did, Brezhnev himself wasn’t crazy, and he didn’t think Nixon was either. The START agreement got done because President Bush Sr. and President Gorbachev weren’t crazy. The New START treaty got done because President Obama and President Medvedev weren’t crazy either. Uncrazy people can do uncrazy things like ensure world peace.

The madman theory collapses because the world is led by mostly sane people. But there’s a risk of two insane leaders leading two opposing nuclear powers. When that happens, all bets are off. It’s worth understanding that with nuclear weapons, we are making big-time bets. So, let’s talk about betting.

The madman theory plays out every day for far lower stakes in the world of competitive poker. In poker, a “maniac” is a very aggressive player who plays lots of hands, often out of proportion to their expected value.

Maniacs crash and burn at the table most of the time, since playing 4–9 offsuit a lot gets you killed much more often than not. Maniacs don’t care. But they should.

When one maniac plays at a table with five nonmaniacs, he should lose pretty much all the time, because someone will have a better hand than him and play it. The rest of the players will let him do it, giving the non-maniac the win. But when two maniacs are at the same table, it’s common for the conservative players to let them fight each other. This can result in one maniac quickly losing out to the other—but now there’s a maniac with a large stack of chips.

42

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

When a maniac has a large stack of chips, suddenly his madness is a weapon. He can afford to lose some chips, so he wades right in. If a sane player isn’t willing to risk all his chips, he’ll buckle, and the maniac will collect more and more chips. The traditional way to beat a maniac who has a big stack is to either have a bigger stack or much better cards.

The trouble with the standoff in North Korea is that both players are maniacs, and both think they have the big stack. Both men have shown they are insecure about size (for various reasons), and so they are prone to posturing. But who really has the big stack here?

I doubt it’s us. Nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula is not something America can have. If Pyongyang destroys Seoul or even Tokyo, millions die, the world economy collapses, our Japanese-held debt is called in, and everybody suffers—and that’s the best case scenario. Worst case is war with China and Russia and hooboy I can barely type it out. We don’t win a fight with a nuclear power. Everybody, including Kim, knows it. At least everybody except Trump, that is.

Trump only has the big stack if he is 100% die-in-aholocaust insane. He is at least a little bit nuts, as I said. But the White House isn’t. General Kelly isn’t. Rex Tillerson isn’t. Mike Pence isn’t. Nikki Haley isn’t.

Even the guy named “Mad Dog” Mattis isn’t. The truly bonkers cats like Gorka and Bannon are longgone. Trump is Mad King George, alone in his straitjacket. He’s the one who wants to de-certify Iran’s nuclear compliance; he’s the one telling Putin that he won’t re-up the START agreement; he’s the one who thinks 4,000 nuclear weapons aren’t enough.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

43

So, Trump continues his Crisismonger-in-Chief “strategy.” Maybe he thinks it’s a reasonable play. But it only works if Kim Jong-Un thinks it’s a reasonable play, and, as a poker player, Kim’s savage “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” takedown makes me think he doesn’t. Leastways, he’s not backing down at all. Kim’s playing the big stack. While I personally wish he’d leave the table and make peace, aggression might not be a bad play in his position. Now, I want it to be a bad play. So does Trump, I expect... no, I hope.

I mentioned that the traditional way to beat a maniac who has a big stack is to have a bigger stack or much better cards. That’s not the only way. The other way is cooperation. Remember the tournament where everyone was so aggressive that I came in third despite not playing at all? Well, there’s a reason I didn’t come in second. Eventually, after all the carnage, the last two players decided there was no point to fighting while I was a factor. So, they sat on their cards until I blinded out for good, then split the pot. If maniacs abound, the best way to survive is to work with other nonmaniacs (in a non-colluding manner, of course) and figure out a way to isolate the maniacs’ damage.

We can do that with North Korea. We could decide to work diplomatically with China and Russia and our allies to isolate and cut off North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. We can try to raise the country’s standard of living, or bombard them with propaganda, or impose sanctions, or—wait, this is exactly what we’ve been doing for decades and no one has been obliterated in atomic fire. I like it that way. So, all we need to do is not have a madman of our own in charge of our nuclear codes. Maybe we should work on that.

44

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: the madman theory The origins of the madman theory can be traced back to the great political mastermind Niccolò Machiavelli, who said it is sometimes “a very wise thing to simulate madness.” Though Machiavelli simply pointed at madness as a method to hide weakness by appearing foolish, Nixon took this a step further.

But Machiavelli doesn’t support Nixon’s “madman strategy” of aggression. Instead, he tells a story of a Prince who wishes to be left alone, unobserved and secure while building his strength.

The maniac prince, Junius Brutus, sucks up to those who are more powerful through flattery and praise. When someone is powerful enough to stand up against an enemy, Machiavelli encourages them to focus on their strength and make war.

The madman strategy has usefulness in low-stakes scenarios repeated over time. Sometimes, I have a strong position yet choose to appear weak. Other times, I choose to appear strong when I’m barely hanging on. By confusing my opponent, I hope I can push them into a suboptimal move. After the round, the opponent has difficulty reacting to the seemingly random move unless they can find a pattern or gain new intelligence.

In the long run, playing as a Maniac is a losing strategy. When a Maniac isn’t lying about their strength, their odds of winning are equal to that of the Stable player. When a Maniac pretends to be weak while actually being strong, they may trick a naive opponent into a mistake. But a canny Stable opponent may play safely, not taking big risks against a known Maniac. Similarly, when a Maniac pretends to be strong while actually being weak, a Stable opponent may also keep their distance.

The downside of playing a Maniac is letting your opponents know that you are no longer to be trusted. Statements of strength and weakness can be completely ignored by the canny opponent. Meanwhile, just as Machiavelli wrote five centuries ago, appearing foolish is for the player who is weak, because the strong do not need to hide from their opponents.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

45

Sweet relief: How we can pay our national debt upstream

October 20, 2017 What would you do if you had a trillion dollars?

Would you rebuild every aging public school in the country? Finance wars of principle in three Iraq-sized nations at once? Underwrite an array of hydrogen stations to replace gas-burning cars? Reinvest it in high-end stocks like airlines and biotechs? The multiplicity of options, like the size of the number, boggles the mind.

Thankfully, you don’t have to make that tough decision. You’ve ceded that right to the Chinese, who as of this writing possess some $1.1 trillion in US Treasury bonds, a big part of the $6 trillion we owe to foreigners. Our orgy of spending in the last quarter century has been underwritten by the Chinese and Japanese banking systems. They took our traditional role as the world’s lender of last resort, and we’ve resorted to them on a daily basis for several decades.

This might be tolerable if the Chinese banks weren’t on the verge of total collapse. Because of shadow 46

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

banking and unchecked debtmongering, China’s outstanding credit is now three times its gross domestic product. This raises the ugly specter of the Chinese calling in their loans. That could lead to something not seen in this nation for five generations: a run.

You remember the run. You saw it in It’s a Wonderful Life, as the residents of Bedford Falls rushed to the Building and Loan to get any payout they could on their home accounts. Except that was a movie. This time, there’s no kindly George Bailey telling you that your money’s in Mrs. Macklin’s house. This time, it’s General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping, who thinks he’s the most powerful man in the world. And he wants your money.

The federal government spends more than 6 percent of its earnings—your taxes—as interest on the deficit.

That’s about $266 billion a year. Those are payments we pay first, assuming we make them. Those last four words are what stops the Chinese from calling in our loans. We’ve shown a propensity not to pay before; this is what led to Ted Turner stepping in to pay off our United Nations dues. We could do that again, but of course, we take our position in the world seriously.

Unless some moron defaults on our debt, China won’t call in the principal. The system holds together for the time being. But if China gets deeper in hot water, that time might come to an end.

So, what can we do? We can’t crank our economy into gear any faster, can we? We’re not at full employment by any standards, but the US economy is still pumping along at its innovative best. We could do some trimmings around the edges—end self-employment Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

47

taxes to encourage small-business innovation, say— but we won’t double our production no matter what we do.

But what if we had our debt back? We’d stop paying interest. We could do a lot with $266 billion a year. To get our debt back, we’d have to have something we don’t want, but that the Chinese would want. If we gave them something we need, we wouldn’t be helping our situation. We don’t have a trillion bucks in spare cash, or anything else. Except one thing.

We have other people’s debt. From the end of World War I to the mid-1980s, the US was the world’s biggest creditor. Sure, we’re now the world’s biggest debtor, but there are a whole lot of loans lying around that haven’t been paid—roughly two and a half trillion dollars that nations owe us in long-term debt. For example, the least developed countries owe us a couple hundred billion. In his last days in power, President Clinton tried to forgive their debt. The plan didn’t even make it to Congress. These countries are being destroyed by the interest on debts. Could their interest be in our own self-interest?

Let’s say we traded these nations’ debts to us to the Chinese. We’d be giving up our interest on their debt, in exchange for forgiveness for some of our debt.

Poker players call this upstreaming.

In the poker game known as 3–5–7, all players pay every player that beats them. So, three players might go into a hand knowing that if they don’t have the best hand, they will pay an amount equal to the chips in the pot to each player that beats them. In practice, 48

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

though, the lowest of the three hands pays the winning hand twice the pot (paying “upstream”). That’s a lot simpler than the lowest hand paying the middle hand and the highest hand, the middle hand paying the highest hand and being paid by the lowest hand, and the high hand being paid by both.

Paying upstream in the financial world can ever be simpler than that. For example, if Country A owes Country B $3 billion, and if Country B owes Country C $3 billion, then Country A could just pay Country C $3 billion, zeroing out Country B’s debt to Country C. Country B need not participate in the payment stream, as Country A paid upstream.

The low hand (A) owes $3 to the middle hand (B) and owes $3 to the high hand (C). The middle hand also owes $3 to the high hand.

So, instead of the low hand paying $3 to the middle hand, and then the middle hand paying the same $3 to the high hand, the low hand pays $6 upstream to the high hand, thus satisfying every player’s debt to the high hand.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

49

This runs aground, of course, on whether Country C wants Country A’s debt. In the poker game, if the lowest hand needed to reach into his pocket to pay for a hand, and then said he didn’t have any money, then the highest hand would be justified in demanding no upstreaming occurred. He’d want whatever he was owed from the middle hand, and then both solvent players would take the deadbeat out back for some reeducation.

Country C, in this case China, might take the $17 billion that Israel owes the US at a one-for-one basis.

Israel pays its bills regularly, so that’s a safe trade.

China would be less inclined to take Brazil’s $42 billion in debt to us. China figures that (a) it already has some of Brazil’s debt, and (b) Brazil is in the middle of a meltdown. Brazil’s debt is a worse risk than American debt, so taking it is a more dangerous investment than just holding our debt.

It’s more dangerous, that is, unless China understands the concept of pot odds. Calculating pot odds is how good poker players know when to make a bet. In the course of a game, nearly every hand has a calculable chance of improving to be good enough to win.

Here’s an example of pot odds: In Five-Card Draw, if you have four consecutive middling cards (say, 6–7– 8–9 offsuit) before the draw, you have eight cards (four 5s and four 10s) that you could draw to make your straight, among the 47 cards you haven’t seen.

This 8-out-of-47 ratio is a 17 percent chance (8 out of 47), or roughly 5:1 odds of failing to make your straight. (At the table, you might call that a 5-to-1 underdog, or “dog.”)

50

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

You figure your pot odds by comparing these odds of failure with the amount you would make if you succeeded. You make a new ratio based on the amount of money in the pot with the amount you must pay to call the bet. So, if there’s $12 in the pot and the amount you must bet is $2, the bet odds are 6:1. If the bet odds exceed the failure odds, you bet; otherwise, you fold. In this case, the 6:1 bet odds are greater than the 5:1 failure odds, so you’d bet on your outside straight draw. Over time, you will make money making this play.

Certainly exchanging the American debt straight-up for less reliable Brazilian debt is a bad idea for China.

But there must be some rate at which Brazilians will pay their loans, and pot odds tell us there’s an exchange rate that makes sense. Its neighbor Argentina did this very thing in 2005, restructuring its post-default debt to pay at 30% of face value. It worked.

So, let’s say Brazil is only 1/3 as likely to pay as we are. Then if America offers China $4 US in Brazilian loans for each US dollar that China forgives, China should take that deal. China gets the $42 billion in debt certificates that Brazil has with us, and we get $10 billion in relief of our own debts to China. Nobody defaults, Brazil gets one less creditor, and the US and China are better off.

We get from poker a form of Nash equilibrium, a game theory construct that says that for every situation, there’s an optimal strategy, and deviating from it costs you utility. When a country is drowning in debt, its equilibrium is to either pay the debt or default on it. Sometimes one of those is right, and Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

51

sometimes the other is. We can use pot odds to tell ourselves whether we should pay or crash out. In our situation, defaulting is a disaster, because we need to take on more debt to pay our way out. We don’t want to end up like Brazil or Greece, where defaulting looks like a better way out. So, we’re stuck paying lots and lots of interest on our debt.

But when we trade away our debt, we can spend like a nation that has some level of self-control. It’s not guaranteed, of course, but it’s possible. Right now, no one has capital to do anything, so everyone suffers under the onus of debt. Open this up, and we can start making sensible decisions with our money.

This assumes, of course, that we stop racking up our debt. Which we could do as long as nobody tries to give a $1.5 trillion tax cut to the rich and…

Oh, okay.

52

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: the Nash equilibrium We owe a great mathematical debt to Greece. From Pythagoras throwing poor Hippasus into the Aegean Sea for coming up with a weird new number, to Plato saying only philosophers were fit to rule, it’s tough to conceive of a world without Greek thought.

Sure, many of their ideas originated in other parts of the world, and the rest of the world soon caught up, but every western high school geometry class is still devoted to the Greek ideal.

So, what does Greece do when they owe a great mathematical debt to the European Union? They pull an incredible move right out of the Platonic playbook and bring home one of their own— a philosopher king. Economist Yanis Varoufakis earned his stripes as a game theorist, and returned to Greece as Finance Minister in 2015. As the debt crisis loomed, his background kept being hyped by the media to show Greece as arcane masters of decision making. After a month in office, Varoufakis had to let everyone know that he was not using game theory to affect the EU’s strategies. Of course, whenever a game theorist speaks, game theory is happening, no matter what they might say.

The media assumed Varoufakis had a solution to the question of whether Greece should pay back their debt and whether the EU would accept a smaller amount than they were owed. In such a situation, the solutions are about determining which strategies each side would be forced to enact. Named after the game theory titan John Nash, a Nash equilibrium denotes a naturally occurring outcome which locks each player in, only able to switch to a different outcome if they are willing to lose utility and hurt themselves. John Nash proved that every game theory scenario has an equilibrium, and the idea that this Greek god could somehow find it meant that everyone else in Europe needed to simply sigh and fall in line or face the consequences.

Standing firm, Varoufakis urged his nation to vote against the EU, putting his career up as collateral. Sadly, theory and reality seldom agree. Greece voted down his designs, and the defeated philosopher king resigned after just six months in office.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

53

The Kap trap: Why no NFL team will call in Kaepernick

October 29, 2017 Another NFL Sunday is here, another day Colin Kaepernick watches it on TV. This week, the National Anthem protest issue, previously a subject of league unity after Trump’s thoughtless fearmongering, spiraled into divisiveness after Houston Texans owner Bob McNair’s grenade-like comment that the NFL “can’t have the inmates running the prison.” Hooboy, Bob Ol’ Buddy, you don’t wanna say that if your player base is more than 70% minority.

At the heart of this Anthem anathema remains Kaepernick, a former San Francisco 49ers quarterback of mixed racial heritage. Kaepernick was the first player who decided to protest the oppression faced by people of color by not standing for the National Anthem in 2016. That was also the year he opted out of his contract with the Niners, and he hasn’t touched a football in the NFL since.

On face value, this is hard to fathom. This is a quarterback who led his team to the Super Bowl, and at age 29 may have much left in the tank. As QBs like 54

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Aaron Rodgers, Carson Palmer, and Jay Cutler go down, some fans ask, “Why not Kap?” Fan sentiment has gotten so loud that Kaepernick filed a grievance that owners colluded to keep him out of the league.

Some fans. Others are clear: “Not Kap. Not Kap at all.” But how much of this is due to his Anthem protest and how much is due to his playing ability? I’ll dissect it from a game theory viewpoint by looking at an analogous model: the stag hunt. Because every now and then, game theory applies to games.

The stag hunt is a dilemma posed thusly: Two hunters track a large stag into the woods. They lay a trap which, if the stag springs it, will let them both eat.

Days go by. They get very hungry. Then the hunters see a hare hop across the trap. Each thinks, “If I snare that hare, I’ll eat, but the trap will be ruined.” The hare is of less value; the hunter who springs the trap will be the only one who eats. But if both stay put, then maybe—maybe—they’ll snag the stag, which can feed both of them. If it comes. If, if, if.

Let’s put aside the question of where the hunters’ AR15s are and accept the dilemma as is. A hare in hand is worth more than a hypothetical deer to a hungry hunter. But the enmity of the hunter he condemns is a real social consequence. So, what should they do? It turns out the answer is that they should either both stay put or both go for the hare as fast as possible, with neither strategy being predominant. Or predictable.

I pointed out that the hare is of less value than the stag. That brings us back to Kaepernick, and how good a player he is. No one thinks he’s Aaron Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

55

Rodgers. But one would presume he’s a better bet than the unknown Brett Hundley, who replaced Rodgers. One would presume he’s a better bet than perennial backup QBs Drew Stanton and Matt Moore, who replaced Palmer and Cutler. One would presume this—and one, it turns out, could be wrong.

Kap played in the 2012 Super Bowl and the NFC Championship Game the year after. That’s good, and it got him a six-year, $126 million contract. But after that?

Um, not $126 million worth of good, that’s for sure.

Two fines, two departed head coaches, three seasons of 8–8, 2–6, and 1–10 in his starts. He lost his starting job to Blaine Gabbert—not good—and never regained it. At 32–32, Kaepernick wasn’t great for a while, despite being stellar before.

The quarterback position is hard. To play it, you have to learn a system, and every head coach has his own system. Hundley, Stanton, and Moore know their coaches’ systems. The coaches might be forgiven for trusting the men in whom they’ve invested time.

Kaepernick is an outsider they’d need to teach from scratch in the middle of a season. The hare might have value, say the hunters, but we can get by on this stale trail mix for at least a little while.

That doesn’t let the teams off the hook in the last offseason. There’s plenty of time to teach a gifted quarterback like Kaepernick a new system, and he very well might prosper in it. It at least is a better bet than hoping Blaine Gabbert turns out to be great. Yet no one took the bet on Kaepernick. No one at all.

56

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

This leads us back to the stag. In this case, it seems to be the National Anthem. McNair’s “inmates” comment came right after fellow Trump supporter and Washington Team-That-Cannot-Be-Named owner Dan Snyder claimed that “96 percent of Americans are for guys standing.” Like on everything else, Snyder’s wrong here. 43 percent of Americans say the protesters are doing the right thing—and importantly, some 82 percent of African Americans do. The Trump supporters’ case for Anthem supremacy is overstated.

The 49 percent of Americans who oppose the protests are quite vocal, though. The league’s revenue is tied to mollifying those people, and so Commissioner Roger Goodell has said “we want our players to stand” for the Anthem. But the league has stopped short of mandating it, despite Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’s incendiary statements demanding his players stand during the Anthem or face suspension. Other owners have been less iron-fisted. The NFL wants to appear 100% behind the flag; while it knows players have rights to speak out, it would prefer they not exercise them during the Anthem. Sponsors have stood on the sidelines, mostly supporting free speech.

So far, the players still show up to work. So far, the fans are still there. So far, the money flows. It’s a very careful equilibrium.

And it all collapses if they let Kaepernick back in. At least we have to presume the NFL thinks so. The fans who’ve threatened to boycott will do so if the most vocal Anthem-protester is playing quarterback on Sundays. Fox News would erupt. The Commenter-inChief would go crazy on Twitter. So, no job for Kap. Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

57

This is a horrible place for a player to be in—and the fact that I just spent a thousand words comparing Kaepernick to an animal can’t have helped much. He’s just a guy who wants to play ball while his legs and arms allow. Playing in the NFL isn’t a right, but it’s a privilege conferred to people who’ve done a lot more wrong than he has. It’s impossible to take Jerry Jones seriously on the subject of morality, since he signed defensive end Greg Hardy after he violently threw his girlfriend onto a futon full of guns. Yet all 32 teams have found reasons they’re better off without Kap in uniform.

The quarterback thinks that’s collusion. So do his fans.

But the problem for Kap is that it’s not necessarily collusion, at least of the malicious kind. It could just be 32 hunters who gamble that if one team seizes the hare, all the hunters lose out on the stag. For now, they’re all waiting in the bushes. For now.

But they might miss the big picture. Kaepernick might not be the hare in this example; he might instead be the stag. If one team signs him, it’s like waiting for the stag to come back through the trap. Two things can occur: the trap works or it doesn’t. Either way, they know. Kap could be great again, or competent, or a bust. Either way, we’ll know. While signing Kap doesn’t erase racial oppression, it at least moves the debate to something else. Folks forgot what it was like when Tim Tebow—a controversial player who knelt for a different reason—couldn’t advance his career based on talent. Folks’ll forget it if Kaepernick can’t.

They won’t if he never gets the chance.

Meantime, #ImWithKap. 58

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: the stag hunt The Stag Hunt Dilemma is an important problem in game theory because players are focused on minimizing their level of potential risk rather than in gaining the greatest possible reward. Traditionally, this story is all about a group of knights hunting a stag for King Arthur’s feast. If the knights all work together, they might bring home a great trophy and bring honor to their king.

But they might also fail, and come back empty-handed. In the face of that, a knight might neglect their role of hunting the stag to go after some easier game, making sure that the table at least has some food. Then again, if one knight leaves the hunt, it makes it all the less likely that the stag hunt will find a successful conclusion for everyone—except, of course, for the stag.

The stag hunt is all about the nuances of cowardice and pragmatism in a community. Because while a lot of players would consider that a sure, small thing is better than a big, risky move, the story itself leads everyone to also consider the aftereffects. What happens when the knights come back?

Sir Pragmatic is so excited to drop two small quail on the table, because it was an easy get. Every other knight stares at Sir Pragmatic, who walked away from the line and cost the rest of them the glory of catching a stag. Sir Pragmatic’s chest fills with pride and his voice fills the chamber, “I have brought the most food to this table! Clearly, I am the greatest of all knights.” In an ideal world, King Arthur would immediately show Sir Pragmatic the door.

And yet, in a sense, Sir Pragmatic is correct. Bringing something is better than bringing nothing, but sabotaging a group effort to win a personal victory is seldom considered a “win.” This becomes a much larger problem when we start to consider senators with multiple constituencies—calling something a “win” when it benefits the home state yet supports the other party is probably the pragmatic approach.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

59

Beating the veto player: How to end sexual harassment in the workplace December 3, 2017 The announcements of the firings of Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor were watershed moments in the history of sexual harassment. They marked the first day I can recall that we learned about powerful men harassing women after they were punished. The recent revelations involving Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Mark Halperin, Brett Ratner, Charlie Rose, Michael Oreskes, Russell Simmons, and Kevin Spacey preceded their punishments, and those of politicians Al Franken, Roy Moore, John Conyers9, and Donald Trump have preceded… well, a complete lack of consequences so far, but we’ll see.

The Lauer and Keillor revelations suggest there’s a real method for driving out harassment in the workplace, admittedly one that hasn’t worked very well in the past. But I think it’s time is now. To understand it, it helps to know how game theorists think about veto players.

The day after I published this, Conyers resigned his seat. A few days later, Franken announced his resignation. Moore still ran, and Trump endorsed him, and both lost the Alabama Senate race.

9

60

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

In cooperative game theory, the veto player is a player who belongs to all winning coalitions. Whoever the veto player allies with, that player will win, as will the veto player. This leads to policy instability. If you want to adopt a new policy or continue an old one, you need the consent of the veto player, or you need the veto player to disappear. If you can’t get either of those to happen, you have only one possible winning strategy: you must find or create a second veto player that doesn’t have a reason to ally with the first one. That’s how you get policy stability when a veto player is present.

In business, bosses are often seen as veto players. An owner, president, or CEO who has ultimate control of the workplace must agree to all changes to the workplace. So, if you want to stop sexual harassment in a boss’s workplace, the boss must agree publicly that any employee including the boss will suffer gravely if they harass others, and employees must mandate their agreement. The employees then become the second veto player, and policy stabilizes.

Disclaimer: I am a veto player. I’m an owner who has control of the workplace. Statistically, I’m much more likely to be a victimizer than a victim. So, the small company I own has a crystal-clear policy on the subject: Our employees will be safe. It’s a policy that applies not only in our office but at conventions and game stores and everywhere we go. It’s a policy I mandated, and it applies to my behavior as well as everyone else’s.

The Weinstein Company didn’t have such a policy until 2015, and it very clearly did not apply to Harvey Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

61

Weinstein. That’s because Weinstein enforced his position as a veto player. He could act with impunity because he made people into millionaires and stars. To take him down required deep reporting and dozens of high-profile women willing to speak out about their ordeals. That is an impossibly high bar to clear when the veto player is the problem.

But Lauer—just as much a veto player as Weinstein— crumbled after a single allegation. Here’s how Lauer reacted, per a source that spoke to People.

“He was shocked and dumbfounded and completely bewildered by what happened. He never thought it would get to this level. He never expected this. He had felt like he was invulnerable—like Superman.”

Turns out Superman is not actually invulnerable. After the firing, other women came forward against Lauer, but did you notice something? Unlike with the accusers who brought down Weinstein, you never learned their names. Because honestly, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

When someone alleges harassment, their life shouldn’t be required to be turned inside-out for them to be taken seriously. Management should investigate and, if appropriate, act. The court of public opinion doesn’t get a vote, and it shouldn’t need one.

There were a few perfect-storm conditions in Lauer’s case: a victim willing to come forward, women who corroborated her story and revealed patterns of behavior, and a management willing to listen. It’s 62

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

reasonable to ask: why was it willing to listen? The #metoo campaign that rose after the Weinstein allegations is a probable reason, but what it does might not be obvious. #metoo has created an ability for women in an organization to band together and threaten the health of the organization if it doesn’t enforce the highest standards. Their external remedies are becoming obvious even to the least empathetic of bosses: reputation loss, monetary loss, talent loss, and (in The Weinstein Company’s case) possible company loss.

One harassed woman on her own can’t easily become a second veto player. It takes multiple women who believe her and hold the organization to the fire.

Multiple men too. The network has to exist before the problem does, or at the very least it has to build itself fast when it discovers that the problem exists. It’s got to steamroll the Nancy Pelosi-like enablers that can’t see the problem. As hard as it is to do against the powerful men who prey, it’s got to win.

It might be doing so. NBC News had routine antiharassment training—online, if you can believe it— but is now instituting in-person training and other measures. Whatever remains of The Weinstein Company will assuredly have a solid policy, or it won’t have any employees. The Met just figured out this is multidimensional issue, as it needed to do some serious work over the weekend on its James Levine problem. Given Pelosi’s about-face, we might even see change in Congress—heck, after Billy Bush smashed Trump in the Times on Sunday, we might even see change at the White House.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

63

OK, probably not this White House. But despite that, I anticipate that most organizations will re-examine their policies as their neanderthal overlords crash and burn around them.

About damn time.

64

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: veto players Back in 1965, a law professor named John F. Banzhaf III strolled into New York’s Nassau County, determined to bring mathematical justice to an inequitable voting system. Each region of the county had a number of representatives based on its total population, which seems like a valid way to reflect the will of the people in that county. As such, there were multiple representatives from the regions with larger towns, and few from the more rural areas.

Banzhaf stormed in and pointed to the tendency of each region to vote as a single bloc as the first problem. The second problem was that a decision only required a simple majority of 16 out of 30 votes to pass. The third problem, and the biggest, was the number of representatives from each region. As he scanned the council chamber, he saw blocs of 9, 9, and 7 voters from the three larger regions and blocs of 3, 1, and 1 voters from the three smaller regions. Intuitively, this seems absolutely unfair, but Banzhaf was not content to just point out vague inequities.

With a wave of his hands, the great professor created what we still call the Banzhaf Power Index. This is a way of evaluating each bloc in a vote to determine how much voting power they truly have. Given the need for 16 ayes to succeed on a vote, Banzhaf noted that the support of the three smaller blocs is never needed to make a vote succeed. The three cannot win together (3 + 1 + 1 < 16) and they cannot win with the support of a single large bloc (5 + 9 < 16). On the other hand, any two of the large blocs can win all on their own.

Banzhaf created a system to show what was already intuitively clear: the three small blocs were completely powerless. The same system, of course, can be used to show when a single bloc has all the power, turning into a veto player, who must be part of every winning vote. While anyone can look at a situation and find inequity, I find it a uniquely impressive achievement to use mathematics to point out situations in which power dynamics can truly be described in zeroes and ones.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

65

Playing chicken with Robert Mueller is a bad idea

December 15, 2017 The GOP is on a collision course with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In the two weeks since Mueller indicted Michael Flynn and everyone figured out that Trump is toast, FOX News apparatchiks and their allies in Congress have been eager to smear him and the FBI over the tiniest of breaches. Their efforts to delegitimize the investigation against Trump are transparent, vapid, and possibly effective.

Except for one thing: Mueller is the wrong person to play chicken with.

Chicken is a classic puzzle in game theory, but unlike such arcane constructs as the prisonerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dilemma, everybody understands it. Two idiots get in cars and drive toward each other at high speed. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a onelane bridge between these idiots. If they both continue at their current speed, they will crash and kill each other. But if one or both idiots veers away, they will bypass each other and live to be idiots on another day.

(This really happens.)

66

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Chicken has a bizarre payoff matrix. Obviously, the payoff for both not veering is complete disaster. Both idiots die, and everybody they knew shakes their heads and says, “Of course that happened.” But if either veers, his payoff should be zero. Nothing bad happens.

Nothing at all. All he’s done is let someone go by. But the payoff isn’t zero. It’s negative.

The game’s name tells you why it isn’t zero. It comes from an implied rebuke: that whichever idiot decides not to be an idiot is less of a man. (It’s always a man.)

There is a minor loss payoff to being the only one to veer, and a minor gain to being the only one to drive through, because the veerer is perceived as not even a real man. He’s a callow bird. Who wants to be callow?

Just man up and plow your hot rod into another real man. Then, after you beneficently remove yourself from the gene pool, we’ll tell people you weren’t a loser. Honest, we will, Mr. Totally-Not-a-Chicken.

So, back to the GOP and Mueller. The GOP is bulleting its car toward Mueller. Should they think he’ll veer?

Well, let’s review what Mueller has done.

•

•

First, he indicted Paul Manafort and his flunky Rick Gates with the clear intention of putting them behind bars for years. Prior to that, he night-raided Manafort’s house. This is not kidding around. It’s a clear statement to other conspirators that this could be you.

Second, he flipped George Papadopolous and kept it secret for three weeks after indicting him.

During that time, Papadopolous cooperated with

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

67

•

•

• • •

•

Mueller’s team, likely wearing a wire to catch the malefactors cold.

Third, he bonded with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman10 to undercut the president’s statement that he could pardon anyone. Not for state crimes, he can’t. Say, what state do Trump and Kushner and his cronies live and work in? Oh, that’s right.

Fourth, he indicted Flynn—whom he could nail on anything from obstruction to kidnapping—on the lesser crime of lying to the FBI, sending a message that he could have thrown the book at Flynn and his dumb kid. He didn’t, because Flynn is ratting on Trump or someone close to him.

Fifth, he interviewed everyone except those most endangered by his probe: the president, the vice president, and the attorney general.

Sixth, he has subpoenaed Trump’s bank accounts and likely has his tax records, in defiance of his demand to stay away from his personal finances.

Seventh, he left sealed indictments hiding in plain sight, and painted his indictment of Manafort and Gates as “indictment B,” leaving everyone to wonder who is the target of “indictment A.” (Flynn isn’t, as he was indicted in a different court, and Papadopolous wasn’t indicted at all.)

Finally, he has said almost nothing.

That is a stone-cold assassin right there. If the GOP thinks Mueller will swerve into a ditch to avoid being hit, it is fooling itself. Mueller will continue driving toward the bridge, because his job is to drive toward Schneiderman crashed and burned due to harassment allegations, but the Southern District continues its cases against Trump.

10

68

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

the bridge. The Mueller investigation is a self-driving car. It’s got a destination, and it’s going to get there as long as it has a mandate to do so. Mueller will take this threat in stride and unseal indictments against higher and higher ranking officials.

Some bright bulbs in the GOP think they’re playing chicken with someone else: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. With his boss Jeff Sessions recusing himself (and likely a target of the investigation), Rosenstein has the responsibility to decide whether Mueller continues. So, they hauled him before Congress to grill him about Mueller.

Wrong guy here too. He said he saw no reason to change course. Asked whether he was afraid of Trump firing him, Rosenstein laughed, “No, I am not, Congressman.” He has no reason to be, since a Saturday Night Massacre ends the Trump presidency.

He’s got more job security than his boss, by an Alabama mile.

Neither of these men are veering. They don’t fear the bridge. The only question is whether the GOP will turn their car aside. After the results of elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and most importantly Alabama, the GOP has to have the self-awareness to know it’s heading for a catastrophic crash. The words “2018 wave election” are now in the public consciousness.

Even Newt Gingrich understands that the party must adapt or be run out of town. This week, he dropped an editorial with the title, “My fellow Republicans, a Democratic wave election is coming unless we act right now.”

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

69

Newt doesn’t want the GOP clown car to crash. I expect most GOP senators and governors don’t either. But the House is filled with idiots hopped up on gerrymandering and brimstone.

It feels like they’re driving the car, doesn’t it?

Buckle up, America.

70

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: the game of chicken It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but nations get involved in the game of chicken from time to time. Though they don’t bristle with teenage machismo and strut around in leather jackets, they do tend to bristle with adult machismo and strut around in front of their very large armies. In a military sense, the game often gets called brinksmanship, and generals talk about the power of walking right up to the brink of war and watching the other side melt away into the shadows. It’s an enormous power move built through overwhelming threat, and it either works or...

Let’s travel back to 1962. In the Cold War, every nation seemed like a bit player in the political battle between the USA and the USSR. Endless military actions were completed by these two supergiants using the world as their chessboard. President Kennedy moved ballistic missiles into Italy and Turkey, putting Russia within easy range of a nuclear attack. Not liking that one bit, Chairman Khrushchev responded by moving missiles into Cuba to protect the small communist nation. Just like that, the world spent thirteen days preparing for complete nuclear war.

The Cuban Missile Crisis had one outcome that both countries rushed towards at ridiculous speeds, though neither wanted that outcome. The US prepared to invade Cuba to remove those missiles. The USSR prepared to launch as soon as the invasion began. Either action on this small island would lead to launching the entire nuclear stockpile of both nations—an unthinkable outcome. Yet, both sides knew that they couldn’t let the other proceed unchecked, as that would be seen as losing the game.

After a series of secret negotiations, each nation took small steps in unison, letting them back down from the brink while retaining a careful balance of power. Nuclear disarmament strategies continue this trend, favoring small milestones over large, sweeping actions. However, the Cold War and the threat of a nuclear apocalypse have given brinksmanship a new name, better representing how the game of chicken is doomed to play out for the rest of history—mutually assured destruction.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

71

The GOP is living in a fantasy world on taxes—specifically, Star Wars December 24, 2017 This week, Today host Savannah Guthrie noted New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s opinion that it was “pure fantasy” to think the GOP tax bill would lead to growth in jobs and wages. Guthrie said to House Speaker Paul Ryan:

“I’ll ask you plainly: Are you living in a fantasy world?”

Ryan sputtered out an answer that was quickly lost to the aether, but the real answer’s obvious: Yes, Savannah, the GOP is living in a fantasy world.

Specifically, a science fantasy world, one a lot of us have indulged in this holiday season. The Republican Party believes that it’s in Ryan’s beloved Star Wars, it’s Han Solo, and it’s about to win the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian.

Lando bet the Falcon in the last hand of the Cloud City Sabacc Tournament, some two and a half years before the events of A New Hope (a.k.a. Star Wars).

72

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

This passage comes from the Star Wars novel Rebel Dawn, by A.C. Crispin.11 Lando was holding two cards in his hand now. The professional gambler smiled at his friend, then, quickly punching a notation onto a data-card, he pushed it and his few remaining credit-chips toward Han. “My marker,” he said, in his smoothest, most mellow tones. “Good for any ship on my lot. Your choice of my stock.”

The Bith turned to Han. “Is that acceptable to you, Solo?”

Han’s mouth was so dry he didn’t dare speak, but he nodded.

The Bith turned back to Lando. “Your marker is good.”

Lando, who won the Falcon two years earlier at this tournament, bluffed Solo with an Idiot and a Two of Staves against Solo’s Pure Sabacc, which could only be beaten by Lando having the Three of Staves to fill out the Idiot’s Array but—okay, I probably lost you there.

As I’ve run Sabacc tournaments at Star Wars Celebration, I’m one of the few earthlings who knows how to play Sabacc, which is kind of like being crowned Most Valuable Seeker of your town’s Quidditch league. But just because I know it doesn’t mean you want to hear me explain it to you.

Maybe I should just talk about poker.

Because I’m fair-use quoting Rebel Dawn, I need to review it. My review: It’s… well, it’s not good.

11

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

73

There are two ways to handle the question of how much a poker player can bet. The first is called table stakes. This means that all players can bet only with money they have on the table. So, if a player has $500 in chips, he can only bet $500. But what if someone bets $1,000 to that player? Is he out of the hand because he can’t pay enough to call? Not hardly. He can go all in, meaning that he answers the $1,000 bet with a $500 call that amounts to all his chips. If the player loses, he loses his $500, and is likely out of the game. If the player wins, he wins $500 from the player who put him all in.

The key to this, is that no matter how recklessly a player plays, he cannot lose more than he has staked in the game. If he doesn’t play the hand, he’s not at risk at all. In a poker tournament, the key to success is not playing too many hands, especially with cards that rarely win. While other players bankrupt themselves on bad bets, the conservative player retains his chips for when the cards give better odds of success.

That’s one way to run an economy, and it’s a highly advisable way. At the end of a year, every law-abiding American files a tax return that delineates how much he or she is contributing to the government’s treasury.

In a table stakes economy, that’s what the government can spend for the next year. It then makes hard choices about what it will spend its money on, based on the money it has to play with. Some hands it will have to sit out. Turns out we’re not exactly playing table stakes, though. We have a thing called a debt ceiling, which limits how much the government can borrow. Its goal is to make us stay within our means.

It doesn’t quite do that.

74

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

“Since it was established,” says the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “Congress and the President have increased the debt ceiling roughly 100 times. During the 1980s, the debt ceiling was increased from less than $1 trillion to nearly $3 trillion. Over the course of the 1990s, it was doubled to nearly $6 trillion, and in the 2000s it was again doubled to over $12 trillion. The Budget Control Act of 2011 automatically raised the debt ceiling by $900 billion and gave the President authority to increase the limit by an additional $2.1 trillion to $16.39 trillion.

Lawmakers have since suspended the debt limit four times between February 2013 and March 16, 2017, when it will be reestablished at its current level of $19.86 trillion.”

Yowza.

I said there were two ways to answer the question of how much a player can bet, the first being table stakes.

The second is called out of pocket, the much more dangerous way to play poker. In an out of pocket game, any player can bet any amount greater than the number of chips he has. He can reach into his pocket for more money to back up whatever he has already put into the hand. In the movies, this is when the keys to the Aston Martin hit the felt. In Casino Royale, Bond’s opponent wants to bet his car, and Bond lets him. Spoiler: Bond gets the car.

Pulling money out of one’s pocket and trading it for chips takes time, however, so in this kind of game, a player may “drag light,” or pull chips out of the pot equal to the amount that he will exceed his stack.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

75

Should the player win, his debt to the pot is erased.

Should he lose, the light chips represent that player’s further obligation to the winner of the pot. This usually needs to be produced at once, though an IOU can be written to cover the light stack.

You can see how tempting this would be. With this option available, you might play a lot more hands, and you might not be inclined to fold a hand when losing it would cost you everything in front of you. You can always borrow from the future by reaching into your pocket. That’s why poker has its limits.

A betting limit is a minimum or maximum amount you can bet at any time. For example, you might play a $1-$2 Hold ‘Em game. That means that the minimum bet on any opportunity is a dollar, and the maximum is twice that. But some people don’t like limits, so they play no-limit, meaning there aren’t any betting maximums, so anyone can bet any amount he can cover.

It’s that last bit that’s the problem. Search all you like in the public card rooms of Las Vegas, but you will be hard-pressed to find a no-limit Hold ‘Em game that allows players to play out of pocket. You will find outof-pocket games, and you will find no-limit games, but almost never the two together.

That’s because the ability to reach into one’s pocket to cover a bet that’s uncapped in its maximum size means that anyone with a sufficient bankroll can buy any pot. You bet $10, and I raise $1 million. Chances are you can’t cover that, so you must fold. That’s untenable, and it’s not really poker, so it’s not played.

76

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

In that Casino Royale scene, the dealer tries to insist the criminal and James Bond play by table stakes, but Bond allows the criminal to bet his car. At least the dealer tries to enforce the rules. The Sabacc dealer doesn’t even try. Despite dealing at a 10,000-credit table stakes tournament, the Bith says Lando’s marker for an unspecified ship on his lot is good, if it’s cool with Han. That’s crossing the streams, and it’s madness.

For most of the 20th century, the federal government understood that you can’t play table stakes and out of pocket together. An expenditure might not have to be covered by the previous year’s taxes, but it had to be covered from somewhere, even if it was borrowing against future revenues.

This made choices difficult, and eventually all debts had to be paid. Investments had to be met with the expectations of future incomes. This gave an economic weight to paying for public schools, since an educated workforce makes more money down the road. Some administrations spent more on defense and less on social programs, and some did the opposite, because choices had to be made.

Until September 10, 2001, the US was playing reasonably conservatively. The budget was running a surplus under President Clinton. We were starting, ever so slowly, to eat into the national debt. The nightmare of September 11 set all that ablaze. We hit a recession, began the cleanup, and mobilized against the Taliban. It wasn’t cheap, but it was within America’s budget—at least, one with a few overdrawn credit cards.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

77

Since then, though, the “Party of Fiscal Responsibility” has gone bonkers with spending— they’ve been on tilt, as the poker players say.

The Bush administration racked up insane deficits (especially as the economy crashed in 2008), the Obama administration slowed them down, and now the GOP has passed a bill that adds one and a half trillion dollars—more than $50,000 for every American man, woman, and child—to the debt. Our so-called president gleefully signed it on his way to Mar-ALago, keenly aware that he makes out like a bandit under it.

Like any poker player, we cannot afford this. Even a few hundred billion can be spent down eventually, but one and a half trillion cannot. Eventually the interest we pay on the deficit will overwhelm the budget, then we will go bankrupt for good. Sometimes, no matter how much you want to win, you must stand up from the table, or you may not get to play another hand.

Unless, like Star Wars superfan Paul Ryan, you’re living in a fantasy world. Then you might get to be like Han Solo. That Sabacc story ended with an eyemelting, mystique-killing paragraph.

Han grinned, then threw both arms up into the air and whirled around in an impromptu dance, giddy with joy. “Wait till I tell Chewie! The Millennium Falcon is mine! At last! A ship of our own!”

Trouble is, I can see Paul Ryan doing just that.

78

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: limits I didn’t get exposed to poker until ESPN broadcast Chris Moneymaker’s win at the 2003 World Series of Poker. The subsequent boom—the Moneymaker effect—led me to take a deep dive, studying the probability of making good hands, table positions, and the wildly different betting rules and strategies in the wide range of games that make up the poker pantheon.

The craze coincided with the Bush II administration. In the 2000 election, Gore won the popular vote, while Bush claimed the electoral college. The talk was that the electoral college had to be disbanded, as it thwarted the will of the people. But which people? The electoral college was put in place to let small states have influence. It glorified small victories in place of sweeping only a few big outcomes. (The talk subsided after Bush’s clean victory in 2004, and didn’t return until 2016 went haywire.)

This debate paralleled the reality that some poker players love to play no-limit and others love to play with limits. No-limit looks really fun. Everyone stands up when a player goes all-in and the commentators go wild because someone is about to go home.

Limit players, on the other hand, rarely have to risk their entire stake in a single hand. They get to play again and again, building up their winnings throughout the competition.

Imagine a presidential election as sitting heads-up at a limit final table of the WSoP. The stakes could not be higher. The grand finale often drags on and on—say fifty nifty hands total. As you strategically give up a few weak hands to dig down and focus on the important wins, your foe does something mystifying. With a wide grin, they push all their chips to the middle. “All. In.” The referee says that if you agree, you can play the hand no-limit.

You sigh. You looked forward to those smaller wins, which aren’t crucial to the outcome, but let you make your positions clear to the nation. Now, your opponent wants to change the game.

You’ll have to focus your energy on just a few huge bets, like California, New York, and Texas. That is, if you decide to take the deal. With the future of America on the line, what do you do?

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

79

Trump is tanking the presidency

December 29, 2017 In the last year, I’ve funneled my rage into writing a bunch of pieces about game theory and politics, more than a few about President Trump. As someone who studies games and people for a living, I’ve wondered something I never pondered before this year: Is it possible to tank the presidency?

It’s not a crazy concept. Tanking—intentionally losing now to gain later—sure looks like what the president is doing. Consider this annus horribilis.

•

§ § 80

His approval ratings in 2017 have been catastrophic, consistently in the mid-30s. His first three quarters are the three worst first three quarters since there were ratings. At Christmas, he’s the least popular president ever.

He has avoided anything that could improve his approval ratings, such as being less racist, being less sexist, or being less lazy.

He has attacked members of his own party as much as the opposition.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

§ §

§ §

§

He hasn’t looked like he likes the job, spending more than 100 days in 2017 at his own properties rather than the White House.

He has backed losing candidates, even twice picking losers in Alabama’s Senate race, with a full-throated endorsement of an alleged child molester.

He hasn’t filled most of the jobs in his administration, and has had a revolving door on those he has filled.

Instead of leading with what could’ve been a popular infrastructure bill—because, y’know, he builds things—he started by failing to dismantle Obamacare and then backing a historically unpopular tax bill.

He’s probably going to fire his special prosecutor to keep his son and son-in-law out of jail, which could get him impeached.

This is remarkably unimpressive even for a boorish fool like Trump. It’s unclear that he wants to be president for a full term, despite launching his campaign for a second term immediately upon assuming the office. So, why would he want to behave this way? The Hanlon’s razor is that he’s just bad at everything and this is all that we can expect from him.

My tendency is to believe that, because I never attribute to malice what I can to incompetence.

But the more I look at it from a game theory viewpoint, the more I think it is malice. I think he’s intentionally not succeeding at being president. Why is unclear. There’s the Russian plant possibility, but that’s too spy-drama for me. Maybe he wants to destroy trust in institutions. Maybe he’s broken on the Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

81

inside. Whatever the reason, his behavior is consistent with tanking.

To learn why, it can help to see what motivates a sports team to tank. When you tank, you intentionally lose games to gain later. One reason to do so is to pick your playoff opponent. In an Olympic game versus Slovakia, the 2006 Swedish hockey team intentionally lost 3–0; at one point, they failed to log a shot on goal in a 5-on-3 with five NHL stars on the ice. In doing so, they avoided facing the previous two gold-medal teams and went on to win gold. If you can choose a lesser foe by losing, you have no reason to win.

But for the most part, teams that tank aren’t in danger of making the playoffs. They tank to gain higher draft picks. Drafts are ordered by loss records (maybe altered by the falling of ping pong balls), so having a lower win total means gaining better players, at least in theory. So, some teams intentionally lose to have a greater chance of getting more impressive players.

The NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers are this decade’s tanking poster child, securing four consecutive top-3 picks by posting a record of 75–213 over the previous four seasons. With those picks, they picked up injured college superstars incapable of playing in the short term, surrounded them with untalented understudies, and successfully failed to succeed for years.

Throughout this horrorshow, the Sixers kept saying “Trust the process.” Then the Sixers drafted consecutive #1 picks Ben Simmons12 and Markelle

12

Who called Trump an idiot and a dickhead.

82

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Fultz to go with the healed Joel Embiid and they’re now… slightly below mediocre. I guess that’s good?

Some tank jobs for consecutive top picks are legendary. The NHL’s Quebec Nordiques got #1’s Mats Sundin, Owen Nolan, and Eric Lindros after three straight years of terrible play, and then fled the country. The Washington Nationals were very bad at baseball and were rewarded with Bryce Harper and then Stephen Strasbourg. The Cleveland Browns tanked for the top pick the last two years, which they ended with a staggering record of 1–31. (Not every team that gets consecutive top picks will tank to get there. The WNBA’s Seattle Storm got Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird back-to-back, but played to win first.

However, they just did the double again, so we’ll see.)

Though the leagues always say they hate it, they’ve enabled a clear reward for intentionally losing, and game theory says that it’s the right thing to do, even if it feels morally bankrupt. A perennially mediocre team has precious little upside; being always-not-quite-inthe-playoffs or always-one-and-done demoralizes a fan base. Better to waste a few years and gamble on signing a transcendent talent, such as a Tim Duncan or a LeBron James. Right?

Well, there are some problems with this strategy. First, while ownership and general managers might be able to trust the process, coaches and players know their jobs are on the line, and they don’t want to be replaced. So, they do something their tankingenamored fans hate: they try very hard not to lose.

Second, if they do win, the fans start to like it again: Witness this year’s previously 0–9 San Francisco 49ers, Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

83

who just crippled their draft by joyously ripping off four straight wins behind new superstar QB Jimmy Garoppolo. But even if it does work and you lose a lot, you still have to draft well: If you’re the Cleveland Browns and you whiff on successive #1 picks Tim Couch and Courtney Brown, you’re still the Browns.

It turns out that sports analytics suggests you don’t win by losing. Of the NBA teams with 25 or fewer wins, just 10 percent got to 54 or more wins within five years; of the teams that had between 34 and 49 wins, 20 percent got to 54 or more wins within five years. In all sports, losers trend toward losing, and average teams have a better chance of being better than average. Finding one of those transcendent talents atop the draft is possible—a Peyton Manning, say—but there are a lot more non-Peytons up there.

Game theorists acknowledge that winning by tanking is theoretically viable, but practically nearly impossible, especially for bad organizations who can’t stop being bad at sports. So, it’s worth abolishing at any cost.

That’s how tanking works in sports. Can it be done anywhere else? There aren’t many places where being intentionally, unironically bad at something gets you rewarded. But politics might be an exception. There’s no standard for what constitutes success in politics, except re-election.

Iowa Rep. Steve King is patently a white supremacist; dude kept a Confederate flag on his desk even though Iowa was part of the Union. King has been re-elected seven times. It doesn’t matter to his supporters that he’s undermining America, so it doesn’t matter to him.

That’s what success looks like in Iowa’s 4th District.

84

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Even with all the racists who vote like Steve King behind him, Trump is probably not getting re-elected with a 35 percent approval rating. But unlike a Congressperson, he’s got a four-year job. It’s got an arc. One aspect of that arc is that the incumbent party does poorly in the midterm after a president assumes office. Everyone knows that. Even Trump knows that.

Trump is a mean-spirited opportunist, one of the best ever. So, it’s not impossible that Trump’s goal is to maximize Republican carnage in November. He’s checked off the boxes that give his tank job the best chance of success. People in the executive branch like to do their jobs—EPA people protecting the environment, State Department people working for peace, and so on—and so not filling all those jobs means fewer barriers to getting less done. People want to like the president, so picking insane fights with war widows and popular sports leagues keeps his approval ratings down. Nothing needs to be said about “draft strategy” when you have Betsy DeVos running Education, Rick Perry running Energy, and Scott Pruitt running the EPA.13 A 2018 Democratic wave election tied to an unpopular and impeachable president amps the carnage. In that scenario, Ryan14 and McConnell likely retire, Democrats take over, and, facing liberal challenges from within, the Pelosi-Schumer bloc figures out it must do something to stay in charge.

While they’re working that out, with Democrats not

Not anymore. Apparently, even in this White House you can get fired for grifting.

14 Ryan saved himself the embarrassment and retired prematurely.

13

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

85

quite in possession of the 2/3 majority needed to evict him from office, maybe then Trump pivots.

After a GOP collapse in Congress, Trump now deals with a Democratic majority who wants him to play ball or GTFO. So, maybe he plays ball. Maybe he starts becoming more and more popular when he’s the only game in town for Republicans. Maybe his true centrist, what’s-in-it-for-me nature takes over. Then, with a 48 percent approval rating and a what-are-yougonna-do shrug, he runs in 2020. Essentially, he’s tanking to pick his opponent, and it’s his own party establishment. Maybe he wins. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I’m just speculating here. Hanlon’s razor says he’s just an idiot who can’t krazy-glue his yap shut. But my gut says he wants to destroy the presidency. If he gets to destroy the mainstream Republican Party too, so much the richer. Then he, Bannon, and FOX News have laid the path for the fascist party of their dreams.

It might work. In his mind, tanking to win forever could be the only way he comes out on top.

What’s the Democratic Party to do if this is his plan?

Play to win, that’s what. When they get a majority in one or both chambers, they impeach him at once.

They impeach Mike Pence too. They leave the Trump White House in ruins. They win in 2020. Because let’s be real, cats: The 76ers aren’t going to become a dynasty by tanking, and neither is Trump. You don’t win by losing.

To win, you have to be a winner.

86

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: tanking “Woe to the vanquished,” they said.

“It’s better to be the hammer than the anvil,” they said.

I’m not sure who they were, but they certainly weren’t talking about a best-of-five series between the weakest two teams, battling to determine who will be the very, very worst of the worst. To the teams, this might just be a utilitarian battle for the resource net granted to the league’s loser, but why do fans put up with this nonsense? Because humans just can’t help rooting for an underdog, even one who is entirely and artificially selfmade. [Mike says: Relegation matches are the best!]

Say you’ve decided that today is finally the day for you to get into the wild new craze, Sportsball. You eventually focus your fandom on two teams: one is last season’s champion, while the other is local but has a losing record. Backing the Champs comes with the utility of already winning and having a solid chance at ending the new season as a winner. However, when surprises come to the Champs, they are seldom positive because, to you, positivity is routine. Backing the Locals means that you live for those moments when your team claws their way to victory over the backs of the usual winners. This joy comes less often, but seems all the sweeter.

So, what happens when a third choice comes along? The Greats are tanking hard, losing like professional losers and posting everywhere about their grand rebuilding plan. The Greats are widely mocked, but they talk a good game and that catches on.

Imagine a Greats fan. “We’re such a Great team, we’re just choosing to be bad. On purpose, I swear! Have you heard our master plan? Any minute now, we’re gonna start winning. You won’t be able to handle all the winning. So much winning, any minute now...”

Yeah, I hate those guys too.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

87

Targeting the Clinton Foundation is Trump’s dumbest move yet

January 8, 2018 I’ve chronicled why many of Trump’s maneuvers are logically flawed. On a game theory level, they are, to use a scientific term, dumb. I’m particularly impressed with how dumb last week’s strongman attack on the Clinton Foundation is. It’s probably the dumbest.

To be clear, I don’t mean dumb on the merits of the case. I don’t know whether there was a pay-for-play operation in the State Department or not. (I’m lying.

I’m sure there wasn’t, like I’m sure Trump is doing it because he can’t let his popular-vote loss to a woman go. But work with me.) Attorney General Jeff Sessions should drop the probe for one reason: The statute of limitations on federal non-capital felonies is five years.

Hillary Clinton left office on February 1, 2013. Unless they can prosecute Clinton in the next 23 days for something she did specifically in January 2013, this dog won’t hunt.15 (I assume that’s an expression Sessions uses. I have no particular knowledge of which dogs would or would not hunt.)

15

It didn’t.

88

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

But let’s charitably presume that Sessions knows that dog won’t hunt—he said it wasn’t a good idea as recently as November—and is only doing this because his boss insists on it. Sessions wants to keep his job, because it allows him to imprison and deport darkerhued people, which makes him giggle at night. So, no matter whether he knows that it’s not worth it, he’s probably gotta do what Trump demands he do.

Should Trump demand he do it?

Game theory unequivocally says the answer is no.

Whatever the merits, the administration would be wise to “let this go,” if it wants to live out the year. But the administration doesn’t have any game theorists in it, so they’re probably not reading this article. I’m not too worried they’ll listen to me and make the smart decision to drop the case. But here’s why they should.

Many game theory issues are built around coalitions.

For each game, there’s one big group called the grand coalition, which includes all the individuals who are playing and have agreed to play by the rules. Inside that grand coalition are several smaller coalitions, called factions, each of which has its own agenda and strategies against the others. In coalition theory, it doesn’t matter much what individuals in factions do; it only matters how each faction acts as a group, and if that group has an incentive to stay together.

To achieve their goals, factions pay costs in terms of labor, political capital, and so on. Work is hard, so factions look to merge with other factions on issues to reduce the costs. This assumes the factions’ payoffs are superadditive; that is, if two factions align, their total payoff exceeds the sum of their personal payoffs.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

89

tl;dr: People have reasons to act in groups and unite their groups into bigger groups if they can agree on outcomes.

The endgame of the Mueller investigation is the potential impeachment of Donald Trump. The only way to assess the likelihood of that outcome is to look at what those factions that can affect it want. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a small set of factions. No matter what the voters want, no matter what the White House wants, no matter what the media wants, none of them have any say in whether the president gets impeached. Only three factions have a say; they are the grand coalition of impeachment. Currently, they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a strong reason to work together, so there are lots of ways the Trump regime can go through and around them.

Lots of gaps through which the Trumps can escape justice here.

90

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Faction 1 is the evidentiary faction, formed of the FBI and the Special Counsel. They provide the external basis for criminal charges against the Trump family and its cronies, and for a Congressional impeachment hearing. (The Congress has an internal basis for those, which I’ll get to in a second.) What Mueller’s team and the FBI want to do is discharge their obligations to investigate. With the Trump-Russia investigation, they have a clear mandate from their supervisors, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray, to leave no stone unturned. This is good work, and law enforcement people like to be perceived as being on the side of good.

The Clinton Foundation investigation is not good work. In 2016, the FBI consolidated its cases and concluded there was no there there, and it looks like only the howls from the president and his sycophants have stirred it up again. This is what dictators do, and what the FBI does not want to be doing. It can’t prosecute anyone, it doesn’t appear to have much evidence, and it hates being used as a political football.

The FBI’s goal is to make this case go away, and there’s only one way to do that: make the president go away. I don’t believe anyone in the FBI consciously would do anything to push the Russia case a way it wouldn’t go, but I do believe they’d want to accelerate it going that way. So, by investigating Clinton’s foundation, the administration incentivizes Faction 1 to get further down the path toward impeachment.

Faction 2 is the Democrats in Congress. Pretty impressively for them, they haven’t broken ranks over opposing Trump. But they do have a major internal disagreement over whether calling for his Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

91

impeachment is good for them. What they want is power, and one way to get it is to portray the Trump administration as the enemy of American democracy.

Since prosecution of political opponents is a hallmark of totalitarianism, this is what Democrats are saying Trump is doing with the FBI. Trump didn’t make his case any better by saying “I have the absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.”

Hoo, that’s chilling, and may tear down Democrats’ qualms about running Trump out of town.

There are two types of Democrats in Congress. The larger group is “establishment” Democrats. They love Hillary Clinton and think it’s their job to defend her.

The smaller group is the “progressive” Democrats.

(I’m putting these words in quotes because they’re basically all liberals and just disagree on tactics.) The progressives don’t think much of Clinton, and would love to sweep entrenched Democratic operatives away. The key here is that establishment Democrats are the ones who oppose impeachment. Prosecuting Clinton makes them form a coalition for impeachment with their progressive allies, who overwhelmingly approve of it. So, by investigating Clinton’s foundation, the administration incentivizes Faction 2 to get further down the path toward impeachment.

Faction 3 is the Republicans in Congress. They have tenuous majorities right now, but face a potential wave election which may bounce many of them back into the private sector. Their goal is to minimize the damage Trump will cause them in November.

Impeaching a president from their own party isn’t something they want, as shown by their internal investigations into basically nothing of consequence.

92

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

But it’s not like they’re saying nothing. In fact, a coven of GOP politicos is mad at Sessions for recusing himself on Russia and not investigating Clinton… oh wait, now he is. To keep the Clinton investigation going, they’ll need to be in favor of Sessions staying.

As long as Sessions is there, he’ll have to stay away from the Russia thing, and his deputy Rosenstein has already made it clear he’s not firing Mueller. So, by supporting the investigation of Clinton, they’re supporting Sessions, and by supporting Sessions, they’re supporting Mueller. Mueller will give Americans even more reason to turn the GOP out on the street. If they suffer a November bloodbath, they’ll likely turn on the president.

No gaps through which the Trumps can escape justice here.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

93

The only way to avoid that bloodbath is to creep toward punishing Trump and his kin for the illegal acts they committed. So, by investigating Clinton’s foundation, the administration incentivizes Faction 3 to get further down the path toward impeachment.

This is extraordinarily poor tactics even for an extraordinarily poor tactician. It’s not going to work on any level: no one named Clinton is going to prison, and no one named Trump is helping themselves avoid going to prison. It’s just creating a true grand coalition working toward impeachment. The factions’ wildly different payoffs are superadditive; working together on impeachment reduces the personal cost each faction feels for getting it done. Not only is working toward impeachment easier for all factions, but it’s more likely to get done because the administration has united the grand coalition in support of that goal.

Now they can all win if Trump goes.

My advice to Chairman Trump: Drop this Putinesque foray like it’s a toxic bomb. Oh right, you’re not reading this. You’re probably deep in your Wikileaked copy of Fire and Fury right now. I hear it’s a ripping good read.

94

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: grand coalitions Have you ever lost a game so badly you never wanted to play it again? I was playing a sci-fi wargame called Twilight Imperium, and a “friend” attacked me on the first turn, taking me all but out of a six-hour game in the first ten minutes. It’s a good game with great game theory exercises built in, but then and there, I decided that I would never again lead the Universities of Jol-Nar into a mythic age of technology and galactic peace. I was done.

The truth of any game is that we play under the guise of a grand coalition. Every player pledges to follow the rules, and thereby gain some measure of utility. Maybe that’s the joy of the game, the thrill of victory, or mountains of money, but all players must accept these strictures. Though a lineman is usually attempting to put the opposing quarterback on the ground, the rules of football do not allow them to do so with an axe kick to the head.

Everyone in the grand coalition knows it is in their best interest to keep the game going. As such, each game has an algorithm that describes what each player should gain in the coalition, known as the Shapley Value. In some leagues, a winning team gets a ton of money for winning. Losing teams get much less. To avoid this, revenue sharing blunts this outcome so all benefit.

Losing is a part of any game, and players who benefit the competition less are still accounted for in the Shapley decisions.

However, they must earn something, or losers may leave the league or even become trolls and bad actors. We see this often in computer games when one team loses all hope of victory and just starts spamming dance emotes. When we sit down with a group of friends to play board games, what kind of outcomes are a losing player likely to accept without leaving the game?

I’m not saying that you should determine the Shapley Value for your grand coalition of friends. But you should certainly consider the utility of those who are cooperating with you. If everyone isn’t getting something they want out of your coalition, they might consider showing you the door.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

95

For Trump, everything ends when the Wall comes down

January 16, 2018

“If the Wall should ever fall, all the fires will go out.”

– Qhorin Halfhand in book two of “A Song of Ice and Fire” At OrcaCon this weekend, I had to confess to a nerdcred-killing admission: I haven’t read George R.R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire or watched Game of Thrones. While I enjoy Martin’s writings, I don’t like unrelenting displays of misery and brutality, especially ones that don’t look like they’re going to end on any sort of schedule. When challenged to put these concerns aside and give the epic property a chance, I was inflexible. The Thronies just had to accept that I was not, and would not be, one of them.

Besides, I already watch an unrelenting display of misery and brutality: the Trump administration.

Because while I don’t like it one bit, it is fascinating, and while I don’t know how or when it’s going to end, I do expect the end to be satisfying. I feel that we are watching a regime at a crux: It’s either going to get a 96

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

lot better in Season Two, or it’s going to get cancelled sooner than anyone involved with it expects. My money to date has been on the latter.

No issue defines this crux more than immigration, Trump’s signature soapbox. Here, his dog whistles are dragon shrieks. He doesn’t even hide his racism, with last week dominated by his reputed depiction of Haiti, El Salvador, and the nations of Africa as “shithole countries.” It’s a shame, because that crisis overwrote a fascinating one-hour open session of Trump and Congressional leaders negotiating over immigration.

That session was the happiest I’ve been with Trump.

Sure, one day later it was all on fire, but for a shining moment, the “Great Negotiator” was in view. It was weird. And cool. And a sham. But on a game theory level, we can look at what happened and suss out who in the room was likely to come out with what they wanted. It all comes down to the value proposition of flexibility, the willingness to change strategies when faced with new realities. Here’s what I saw.

First off, seven rich white men express concern, then a rich white woman express concern, and—oh hey, it turns out there aren’t very many non-rich, non-white people in this room. What a shockingly nonrandom… oh, forget it. I can’t even feign surprise. These are the people who stand between thousands of Dreamers and deportation. Lord help them.

Anyway, Trump starts flexible. He lets everyone talk, fails to hold onto a single opinion for more than a minute, and states his intent to sign whatever Congress passes. This is one of the (many) knocks on Trump: he is perceived to not have a central set of Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

97

beliefs, wisping on whatever wind blows his way.

Whether he does or doesn’t believe anything after “everyone must love me,” he’s been remarkably consistent in his post-election choice of positions. His position is almost uniformly “the least humane thing I can do at this very minute.”

Let’s not forget: The only reason these people are here is that the Department of Justice terminated the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, likely the most inhumane move of Trump’s presidency.16 This is a negotiation at gunpoint. Yet here, he comes off as the reasonable one. His flexibility is the dominant strategy in the room.

Flexibility in game theory has both positive and negative ramifications. There’s a game called hawks and doves, where hawks always fight and doves never fight. There’s food at stake. Two hawks will always fight each other; one will always take the food while the other will always be injured. Two doves will have a non-violent displaying contest which one will win, but neither will be injured. A hawk that goes up against a dove will always take the food from the dove, but the dove will always leave before it can be injured.

Hawks are hawks and doves are doves: They can’t change who they are. Hawks get bloodied up a lot; doves never get hurt. It’s nice to never get hurt. But a dove needs at least one other dove out there to display against, or it will never eat. If all contests are against hawks, a solitary dove will lose every time and die of Though the time Trump endorsed horse-soring gives DACA a run for its money on the unbelievable-inhumanity leaderboard.

16

98

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

malnutrition. That’s not a strategy that’ll work. So, Trump is displaying like a dove. He wants a “bill of love,” he says. But he’s in a room full of hawks. The Congresspeople say they have bipartisan agreement on many issues, and just disagree on tactics. They are lying.

The Democrats must act on DACA before a March 5 deadline sends innocent kids back to places they don’t want to go. They can’t give up on the children, but they also will not give away basic immigration policies like chain migration and the visa lottery. Sen. Dianne Feinstein wants a clean DACA bill now; she intones “March is coming” like it’s “Winter Is Coming.”17 Meanwhile, the Republicans are mostly feigning concern for the children; what they need is border security and a limit to the size of families who can come in under one admission. Everyone except Trump is, for the most part, inflexible. Watch Rep. Steny Hoyer call some of Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s proposals “controversial” (a.k.a., dead on arrival); watch Rep. Kevin McCarthy tell Trump that Feinstein’s clean DACA bill means no security agreement. These are hawks in dove clothing, when they bother to dress up at all.

By the end, Love-Dove Trump is losing badly. But he holds out up to the point when he’s ready to send the press off to write more “Fake News.” I doubt he grasps how far apart everyone is, but he commits to the peace-and-love approach. He knows he’ll take a ton of heat (“I like heat,” he fluffs). He sure does take March came in like a lion, but it went out as a toothless lion. Like in every other arena, Trump could not back up his threat.

17

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

99

it: When interviewed by professional ogre Lou Dobbs, professional troll Ann Coulter calls the meeting the lowest day of the Trump presidency, confirming all the claims in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: “He doesn’t listen. He has no command of the facts. He agrees with the last person who speaks to him.” This is from someone who supports him. (Yes, I watched Ann Coulter so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.)

But wait… watch the end of this remarkable meeting.

As Trump is dismissing the press, one intrepid newshound spurts out, “Mr. President, is there any agreement without the Wall?” The Wall, of course, is the always capitalized—sometimes ALL-capitalized— principle that America will be made great again once we put a barrier between us and Mexico. Because, you see, a Wall stops the bad guys. (To go back to Game of Thrones, the good guys in Westeros feared the White Walkers on the northern side of their Wall. That’s where we are. Hold on, Hans, are we the baddies?)

It’s not clear Trump believes a Wall will work.

Throughout the meeting, he undercuts the idea that a Wall needs to be 2,000 miles of three-story concrete.

Mountains and rivers will take up part of it. Fencing is fine in some places. Need for it is declining since Trump’s tough talk scares away border-crossers. It’s clear that not one of these Congresspeople—not one Democrat, not one Republican—is buying that it will ever stop determined illegals. After all,

“The Wall can stop an army, but not a man alone.”

– Mance Rayder in book three of “A Song of Ice and Fire” 100

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

But when a reporter asks Trump if there can be a deal without the Wall, he says, “No, there wouldn’t be.

You need it. I’d love not to build the Wall, but you need the Wall.” Let that sink in for a minute. “I’d love not to build the Wall,” he says. This is a man whose job is to build things. He should love the idea of building a Wall. He doesn’t love it. He has to build it.

He has gambled everything on the Wall; building it (and getting Mexico to pay for it!) was the heart of his racist campaign platform, and the #MAGA folks won’t ever let him forget it. He thinks they will drop him like a stone if he gives it up. Coulter’s reaction says he’s almost certainly right. So, there will be no DACA deal without a Wall. He is suddenly, resolutely inflexible.

What Trump does at the end there is turn into a hawk.

He’s latched onto a strategy called evolving. In an evolutionary game, a competitor can adopt different strategies when new information presents itself. In Hawks and Doves, such a competitor can be either a hawk or a dove when he needs to be. This is a lot easier if no one knows what the player wants to be, and for the first time, Trump’s inability to hold a consistent position is an advantage. Everybody thought they had him pegged; he’s now someone else, and they must adapt their strategies to a new reality. Maybe it’ll work on immigration.

But in the long term, it probably won’t. I mentioned that flexibility can be a bad thing. People might say they like doves, but they elect hawks. People who have strong opinions elect leaders who will represent their opinions fiercely; the compromise they want is from the other side. “No Dream, No Deal” isn’t a slogan you Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

101

compromise on, and the Democrats aren’t doing it.

Trump put the Dreamers’ lives into play; the Democrats will hold the line for them, because they can smell blood. Trump will learn that if you have no real positions, politicians with real positions will take voters who believe in those positions away from you.

Flexibility can kill you.

So, no Wall equals no Trump. The Democrats’ goal is to get a clean DACA bill and tear down the Wall. It’s not going to be easy to get, since the President has veto power. Even though he said he’d sign anything the people in that room came up with, he’d be a fool to do so. It’s possible he was going to do that anyway, but on Thursday something happened between 10 am and noon that turned him from a dove to a total hawk. Sen. Lindsey Graham said Trump got really bad advice from his staff, because several Congressional hawks seemed to turn into doves toward the end of the negotiations. Yet the hawks inside the White House won, and Trump lost. Good luck with that, pal.

Still, I just spent 1,700 words saying relatively nice things about someone I despise, so I guess Season Two of this unrelenting display of misery and brutality might have some interesting moments after all. If Trump can turn the narrative away from his racist outburst, he might get something done. We’ll see if the Democrats try to destroy him if he doesn’t.

Because

“On the Wall, a man gets only what he earns.”

—Benjen Stark in book one of “A Song of Ice and Fire” 102

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: evolutionary strategies Down here in the game theory bullpen, we often ask questions like “what even is a game?” We point at random objects and ask “is this a game?” And obviously the right answer is “stop gatekeeping games and just let people have fun.”

Yet, the question is useful in terms of analysis. A game theoretic game must have two players capable of changing their minds and evolving their strategies over time. Many modern co-op board games have learned to create dynamic AIs which adapt to player choices to simulate this evolution. When my opponent is malleable and can change tactics, I lose certainty about my own actions. At best, all I can do is hope to find a series of probabilistic actions that keep my opponent on their toes.

Sorry. Here in the game theory bullpen, we talk a lot about probabilistic actions.

Say my opponent and I each have two possible choices. Option A gives me 10 points, but it can be countered by my opponent netting me 0 points. Option B is a sure thing but only gives me 3 points. Should I only choose the sure thing when that huge score is on the table? Of course not, but choosing Option A every time is clearly a losing strategy. The goal is to determine how often I should test those waters while generally choosing to gain 3 points. Once I build up my zig-zag pattern, I run it as hard as I can until someone else changes the game.

On the other hand, I could also develop a savvy media campaign painting my opponent as weak on Option B, forcing them to choose Option B again and again while I merrily take my 10 points without any risk at all. Or maybe I could cause some Congressional chaos, stalling any kind of change to the status quo so I can quietly take Option A while claiming that my opponent can’t counter me because that would be dirty politics.

At times like these, players need to reevaluate their situation and change the game. I’m looking at you, DNC. Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

103

How to make a weak man feel strong: Throw him a military parade February 11, 2018

“Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.”

—Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War It was January 1991. We’d just decided to do the war thing again. We launched an attack on Saddam Hussein, a weak man who made a show of strength by invading Kuwait. Saddam was a “strongman”—a dictator who harmed his own people. Like all strongmen, he was not a strong man inside.

At the time I was Mayor Daley’s research director at the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, helping to catalogue and combat hate crimes in the city. It was my job to tell the Chicago Police Department and other agencies when and where the bad guys would strike. I memorized and detailed the census tract of every mosque, synagogue, and veteran’s hall in the city, and shockingly—given that I was all of 24 years old at the time—they actually 104

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

listened to me. After a few very bad nights, the good guys in blue chased our particular breed of racist thugs back to their warrens. It was glorious.

What the department wanted to do was show strength where they were weak. Mind you, I never thought of the CPD as weak. But they did have limited resources and limited response time. They needed Chicago to believe they had more capacity than they did, and targeting those hotspots meant everybody was confident the cops had this situation on lockdown.

Acknowledging one’s own weakness is the heart of strategic decision making. Only when you have a true assessment of your strength in relation to your foes can you form an effective strategy against them. When you do, you can think like a poker player. In poker, you feign weakness when you have good cards, betting light and hoping others will fall into your trap.

Similarly, you feign strength when you have bad cards, betting heavy and hoping to chase those with better cards away. This is basic Sun-Tzu, and it works.

We have a president who cannot admit weakness. It terrifies Trump; it makes him a lesser person. He is under assault constantly, for reasons of his own making. He rails against the manifest unfairness of it all; he only wants to be loved, despite his unending run of hateful, mean-spirited, and unconstitutional actions. He is portrayed as weak. He cannot handle it.

He must show he is strong, because he is not strong.

For once, I think he’s right. Politically, he really does need to show strength in the face of his own weakness. It’s the only way he can win with his own Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

105

base. The only problem for us is, he has control of the nuclear arsenal. If he wants, he can show massive strength. It’ll just get him deposed and maybe worse if he does. Deep down, he probably knows that. So, he doesn’t start a war… yet. (Never mind the loss of life.

That’s not something that registers with tyrants.)

So, imagine Trump’s delight when, thwarted in making any real display of strength, he went to Europe and saw another way. In France, they make a big deal of strength displays in the form of military parades. France’s track record in modern wars isn’t exactly stellar, so showing strength when they have a history of perceived weakness is a good move. The French forget the Maginot Line, Algeria, Dien Bien Phu. They just see those displays of weaponry go by, sing ”La Marseillaise,” and feel like they’re strong.

I want one of those, Trump said, and demanded it of his flummoxed generals. We don’t do that sort of thing here, Mr. President, and who’s gonna foot the bill? In a time when we’ve had two government shutdowns in a month, it’s not a great time to be wasting millions on parades. The generals hate this idea. Here’s retired Army Major General Mark Eaton:

“For someone who just declared that it was ‘treasonous’ to not applaud him, and for someone who has, in the past, admired the tactics of everyone from Saddam Hussein to Vladimir Putin, it is clear that a military parade isn’t about saluting the military—it is about making a display of the military saluting him…. Unfortunately, we do not have a commander in chief, right now, as much as we have a wannabe banana republic strongman.”

106

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Well now. But hey, he wants a parade. If we’re smart, we’ll give it to him. Because he’s a weak man who controls the nuclear arsenal. We should surrender to his need to show strength, so he won’t lash out in a show of real strength. One that could kill a whole lot of us. This is what we get for electing a weak man.

We’ll elect a strong person after we run this fool out.

For now, this is what we got. We win by feigning weakness.

But we don’t have to give him everything. We can deny him right up to his smallest moment of confidence, because he has to accept what we give him, as long as it makes him feel strong. That’s how it works. Watch, I’ll show you.

A few days after we began Operation Desert Storm, the director of the City of Chicago’s Advisory Council on Veterans Affairs had a terrible idea. Chicago’s beloved Casimir Pulaski Day Parade was coming up in March, and folks wanted to give it a pro-military theme. So, the director decided he wanted to run actual tanks down Michigan Avenue. That wasn’t his terrible idea. His terrible idea was telling me in advance.

See, I most assuredly did not want tanks rumbling down the streets of an American city during a war in which those of Middle Eastern descent were disproportionately victimized. I felt terrifying the citizenry of Chicago into submission was a wildly undemocratic idea. I planned to stop him.

But I knew that while our men and women hazarded their lives overseas, I’d never win a patriotism battle Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

107

with the director of veteran’s affairs. Not in front of the mayor’s staff anyway. I had a much weaker position than he did. I could not pretend I had more strength on the military front. I took a different tack.

I made it a physics discussion. I calmly explained that my objection to this plan was wear and tear on the city streets produced by a column of 60-ton tanks. I sketched out a bar napkin calculation of the damage downtown would suffer. When asked about putting the tanks on trucks, I showed the damage would be much worse, since (ahem) tanks don’t weigh less when they’re on trucks. Within minutes, the idea of driving tanks through the Loop was dead, and we went back to having a good old-fashioned Pulaski Day Parade.

The director was furious at me, but he soon cooled down. He knew as well as I did that no matter how passionate you might be about an issue in Chicago, the Department of Streets & Sanitation is stronger than you. That’s just how Chicago does Chicago. The director was satisfied that he got to make a fruitless display of strength, and that’s all that mattered.

We didn’t have tanks in the streets during the Gulf War. We don’t have to have them now. We can say no. We just have to remember that a weak man needs a show of strength. Unless we’re ready to remove him now, playing to his weakness is good for us. We don’t die in a blue-orange fireball, and we take away his toys in November. I’ll make that trade. We all should.

But seriously, no tanks. You don’t want potholes.

108

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: dominance When I think about Sun-Tzu and Machiavelli, the two historical giants of game theory, I picture them sitting quietly together, drinking tea, and loathing the other with unbridled passion. SunTzu, living in the Warring States period of ancient China, had to develop strategies to defeat unknown foes in a time of fierce honor and loyalty, all with his life on the line. Machiavelli was a diplomat who spent his free time writing plays and poetry, and his position of luxury allowed him to postulate modern theories like “the end justifies the means” without much worry for his own life. In particular, I expect the two would spend teatime battling over the nature of strength and tactical dominance.

Sun-Tzu focused on fighting wars, where victory can turn on a single moment. Crafting a strategic trap like feigning weakness is sound advice when you only intend to face a foe once. What’s important is earning a reputation for winning. In that case, a new foe sees all their own options as potential losing strategies.

Machiavelli, as a social animal, focused on fighting repeated battles for power against the same group of nobles. When he suggested cultivating a reputation for unpredictability, he wanted to create situations where his foes would always feel at a disadvantage, even if they were actually stronger.

Both theorists tried to develop a dominant strategy which would always lead to victory. The warrior believed in feigning weakness to create strict dominance, finding a strategy which is always better than any other by having the strength and tactics to back it up. The diplomat, knowing that he might be in an intransitive situation where both players had relatively equal strength, used confusion to create weak dominance, where at least one winning strategy would be among his options. He would then use manipulation to move an opponent onto his chosen path.

With two very different paths, the argument might last long into the night. While I’d pay good money to read that transcript, I’d expect those two giants would never let anyone know who won.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

109

The Democrats pick the right strategy (even though it hurts)

March 2, 2018 Where did the #Resistance go? In the last month, Democrats gave up a principled government shutdown and a deadlock on the Dreamers because of what? How dare they! Why did they sell out the…

Wait, hold on. What did they get?

• • • • • • •

Funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program for a decade $80 billion in emergency funds for hurricane- and wildfire-ravaged areas $6 billion to address the opioid crisis $4 billion toward the improvement of veterans’ hospitals and clinics $20 billion toward infrastructure $6 billion toward the Child Care and Development Block Grant $7 billion toward Community Health Centers

And so on. The Democrats (supposedly) sold out the Dreamers for kids, disaster victims, the elderly, 110

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

veterans, addicts, poor people, and those who need healthcare. Y’know, the people that Democrats have been saying they care about for years. Not just congressional Democrats, but their partisan base.

Without a deal to open the government, there’s no government. A government is what Democrats want.

So, they took a gamble and made a deal. They let one government shutdown lapse after a weekend, and another after several hours. They did not embrace the shutdown strategy as a way of life.

This enraged many liberals. What they wanted from Democrats was vocal resistance, which sounds great.

But a shutdown is a strategy that Democrats aren’t used to. In game theory, a take-ball-go-home tactic is called a scorched earth defense. Its cornerstone is that no matter who gets hurt, the enemy must suffer. This is often associated with wartime, such as the Russian Army’s decimation of its homeland to avoid resources falling to Sweden… then France… then Germany.

Russia is so proficient at this, they have ruined generations of their own people to save their nation.

It’s something we can hardly imagine in our country.

During the Obama years, the GOP got extraordinarily good at this. They stalled funding for Obamacare even though most Americans wanted health insurance reform. They stood against the stimulus despite it saving American businesses. They held the debt ceiling hostage, which ruined America’s credit rating.

When America drowned in grief over school shootings, the GOP made itself the face of killing children, guaranteeing that Generation Mass Shooting would overthrow them as soon as it was of legal age.

In (only) the short term, this strategy worked.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

111

Obstruction became the Republican brand.

Governance did not.

Liberals wanted the Democrats to adopt the GOP’s scorched earth defense and they couldn’t do it. They made a deal to keep the government open, without addressing the needs of the Dreamers, who were still facing a March 5 deadline for disaster. Then the Trump Budget—the thing that actually apportioned the money for the executive branch through 2019— was released and the Democrats said no thank you, sir.

Suddenly, the budget deal was no longer roses.

Everything that mattered got cuts. The Democrats blocked it. It went nowhere. Like Trump’s last budget, it’s DOA. Congress looks likely to ignore the administration as it crafts a budget. The result won’t be everything the Democrats want, but it won’t be anything the White House wants. Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are united in one belief: spend more on everything. Only the White House is left out of the dialogue. Despite ranting from Trump and grumbling from John Kelly, they will just have to live with it.

But in that chaos, what happened to the Dreamers?

They got caught up in the subsequent debate over immigration policy, and came out moderately well for a group that got used as human shields by a vicious president. The House and Senate figured out a strategy that saved the Dreamers, gave Trump his wall, and punted some of the thornier issues down the path. If Trump signed it, that is. Trump rejected the deal. He had a chance to get his beloved Wall, and he turned it down. He thought he had leverage. Then 112

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

suddenly he didn’t, as first a federal judge blocked the administration’s DACA ruling and then the Supreme Court declined to take up the case, blowing the March 5 DACA deadline to kingdom come. Trump had lost.

The Democrats won the budget standoff, even when it looked like they lost. Trump lost the budget, the Wall, the sword of Damocles over the Dreamers.

March 5 will come and go with DACA still in place, the government will be roughly the same as it was before (maybe bigger!), and the Democrats will go to their base with Trump firmly cast as the bad guy.

There is no rosier scenario possible for the out-ofpower party. The Democrats made the right bet in a rigged casino, and they won on all fronts.

How did they win? They stuck to their brand, and let the administration and the Republicans self-immolate by sticking to theirs. The Democrats could have gone a very different road, forcing a government shutdown on behalf of the Dreamers and casting themselves as the party of obstruction. To do so, they would’ve had to abandon everyone helped by government.

But holding kids and disaster victims hostage is how the Republicans work. The Republican brand is antigovernment. They obstruct, collude, and threaten to burn everything down. That’s their move. The audience that wants to burn everything down is mostly Republican. It has a lot of guns and a shortage of tolerance for those that are unlike them. In short, it’s not caring.

Democrats, on the other hand, have a brand that’s about caring. They support families, veterans, sick Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

113

people, people of color, the poor, workers, voters, and immigrants. But they don’t burn all those people to help one group of those people. They make hard choices. They do what they can when they’re out of power. That’s not as sexy as “burn it all,” which is why we have Donald and not Hillary in the big chair. But it’s what they do. They don’t do anything else well.

They just care about people. That’s their move.

Liberals who excoriated the Democratic leaders fell for a self-inflicted fallacy: that saying they cared about the Dreamers would be more effective than attempting to win the standoff. This is what game theorists call cheap talk, the communication that is costless to transmit, non-binding, and unverifiable. It sounds good, but it does nothing. There was no winning a standoff over the Dreamers with talk of a shutdown they couldn’t sustain, and that they didn’t want to occur. The Democratic leaders realized this, and took the short-term pain of looking bad so they could smash the opposition. It worked.

I’m a Democrat, and I know the Democrats must #resist. We need to focus on capturing Congress and bum-rushing Trump out of town. We do. But we won’t do it at the expense of families. We won’t do it at the expense of veterans. We won’t do it at the expense of disaster victims. We won’t do it at the expense of immigrants. That is, unless we have to. If we do, then we will lick our wounds, get back to work, and defend them the next day.

If we’re willing to give up all those people to win in November, we’re not Democrats. We’re just bomb throwers. Might as well be Republicans.

114

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: cheap talk Back in the year 2000, the mighty Morpheus was held captive by Agents in the matrix and needed a quick rescue from his besties, Trinity and Neo. As they reach safety, Neo returns to his usual befuddlement at his superuser/savior abilities and tells his mentor that he’d been told by the Oracle that he, in fact, was not the One. Morpheus, harkening back to old Socrates, says that “there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” Neo says something like “uh-huh,” and then immediately goes on to save the world.

Morpheus is describing game theoretic communication in perfect terms. All communication is an attempt to alter the game or persuade an opponent to change their strategy. As Neo realizes, meaningful commitments come from a synthesis of both words and action. Cheap talk refers to any statements that are costless to transmit, non-binding, and unverifiable. Some cheap talk leads to eventual commitments, but much of it feels like empty promises. Or, in the worst case, outright falsehoods.

Cheap talk is easiest to see in the turbulent course of social change. While there will always be some who resist or seem ambivalent to progress, there are important distinctions even among supporters. Are there folks who are happy to say they support change but do nothing meaningful to make that change a reality? Do they wish things could be different and more equal, yet secretly cling to the status quo? Or, even worse, do they fight to restrict change in private while claiming to be progressive in public? No matter their intent, without a quantifiable commitment, each of these are just different kinds of cheap talk.

The opposite of cheap talk is signaling, which has a cost to transmit. It might be a cost in reputation or commitment to action; it might even have physical costs, like the deaths of nearly all of Neo’s band of rebels. The choice and implied threat in Neo’s final phone call is a clear signal to the Agents that it’s time for things to change.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

115

The grim trigger: Trump declares a trade war on himself

April 11, 2018 Gary Cohn had enough. Oh, not when the President praised neo-Nazis. That wasn’t enough. But when Trump unilaterally announced steel and aluminum tariffs against every other country in the world, that was enough for the President’s economic advisor.

Cohn issued his resignation, possessed of the tax bill his vulture capitalist friends wanted and not wanting to be the face of protection. Although he said there was no one reason, there was only one reason: Trump is an idiot. For a while he was a useful idiot, but now one of them had to go. Fly, Gary, fly.

Rex Tillerson also had to go. Tillerson may have been the U.S. version of an oil oligarch, but he was a defender of free trade and one of the rare “adults in the room” in the White House. He found out by tweet that he was being evicted from the State Department shortly after Trump put him at odds with his oil buddies over the incipient trade war. In only one week, two of the biggest foes of tariffs were on the street and shaking their heads, along with a great many of Trump’s supporters.

116

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

This tweet may have had a lot to do with it.

Uh, yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there. The US has a trade deficit of over $500 billion, due to softness in the manufacturing sector, a strengthening dollar in the mid-2010s, and other factors way too complex for Trump to comprehend.

But not with virtually every country. We have a trade surplus with many of our biggest trade partners.

Our trade surpluses include the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Australia, the Netherlands, and Brazil.

Oh, Canada as well. Our commenter-in-chief has no idea that we have a trade surplus with the Great White North, as evidenced by his admission that he lied to Prime Minister Trudeau and hadn’t bothered to check if we had a surplus or a deficit. He doubled down on Twitter, making us the laughingstock of the world for the, I don’t know, 60th straight week or something.

And the $100 bil he says we’re down on China doesn’t mean Trump can just stop trading with them. That’s not how trade works.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

117

Foreign trade makes up a massive portion of states’ gross domestic products. You might expect states like California and Washington to have significant trade income, and they do.

But the states with the highest percentages of GDP derived from foreign trade (30% or more) are these: • Michigan (38.9%) • Louisiana (38.7%) • Tennessee (32.6%) • South Carolina (31.9%) • Kentucky (31.8%) • Texas (31.2%) All of those are states Trump won. Each of those states has China as its top export partner, or very near the top. They’d all be devastated if they suddenly lost hundreds of billions in trade with China. I can’t imagine that 2020 Presidential Candidate Donald J. Trump would like to lose all support in those particular states.

But I want to focus on Trump’s idiotic statement that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” They’re neither of those. But what might surprise you is that free trade is not the historical norm. Despite what Adam Smith taught you in Econ 101, protectionism was the standard policy of nearly every country prior to World War II. Only after the Cold War began did nations start to pull the bandages off and loosen tariffs around the globe.

That’s because on a game theory level, a trade war had a new parallel apocalypse: nuclear war.

118

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Both arms agreements and free trade agreements are functional because of a communal understanding of the prisoner’s dilemma, and how fraught it is with peril. The prisoner’s dilemma suggests that if there is a possibility of one side betraying the other, there is a certainty of both sides betraying the other. The payoff for betraying is always greater than the payoff for not.

Here’s a simple payoff matrix.

We both put in a dollar. If we don’t betray each other, I get $1 and you get $1. If you betray me but I don’t betray you, you come out much better: you get $2 and I lose $1. If we both betray each other, we both get nothing. So, if you don’t betray, me betraying beats me not betraying ($2>$1). If you do betray, me betraying beats me not betraying ($0>–$1). Betraying is always better.

Some people assume that the prisoner’s dilemma only functions when it’s a non-repeated situation, meaning you don’t have to deal with another opportunity where everyone knows you betrayed. This is also wrong.

The iterated prisoner’s dilemma, also known as the peace-war game, predicts behavior of participants in multiple-round negotiations. Imagine you and I have two identical dilemma situations in sequence, where we can pick either peace or war.

We both know both of us will pick war in the final one, because if there’s a possibility of betraying without consequence, there’s a certainty of it. Since we know that, then in the previous event, we both know that in the previous round, we should both pick war, because we do better in war and because war is inevitable. In two rounds of this game, it’s all war.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

119

This is the same in three rounds of this game, and four rounds, and so on until… well, that’s where it gets interesting. If we don’t know how many rounds there are, then we don’t know when war will come, so maybe, just maybe, we can bet on peace and expect war will happen well after we’re gone. Except that doesn’t work either. War is still always more profitable than peace, and since it’s coming eventually, we should always pick war. This is called the shadow of the future. We know that war will come, and war is always more profitable than peace, so we pick war.

Don’t worry, I’m getting to the hopeful part. There’s a possibility we haven’t considered: that the game will end with total annihilation at an unexpected point in our warmaking. This is mutual assured destruction.

War becomes too horrible to consider at that point, and so we never declare war.

Why this works is a simple construct called the grim trigger. It says that once a side picks war, it can only pick war until at some point everyone dies in a wave of annihilation. We don’t know when, but we can calculate the coming damage in the following way.

Let’s say the daily payoff for declaring war is two trillion dollars, and peace is only a trillion. Woo! I want that extra trillion dollars, so on day one I declare war. But after war is declared there’s some probability that the world will be consumed in flame the next day.

Let’s say for a minute that it’s 10%. I survive day one!

So, now day two comes, and my profit is a trillion dollars for day one, but only the day two result of a trillion dollars times 90%, with a 10% chance that I die.

120

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

If I live through day two, then my profit is a trillion dollars times 81% (90% of 90%), with a 19% chance I die by then. And so on and so on, until I get to a topend value of ten trillion dollars and/or death by fire.

But wait. If I declare war, my opponent will also declare war. They’re heading down this path too. For all participants, the game is finite. We end with ten trillion dollars and/or death by fire.

That’s ten trillion, which sounds a lot better than one trillion for peace. But in peace, we get a trillion dollars every day, and we don’t die by fire. A trillion dollars every day for a month is thirty trillion dollars. In one month, we’ve made three times the value of war, simply by being patient with each other. The grim trigger isn’t so grim, because it keeps us peaceful.

A trade war works the same way. We’re a little richer in the short term, and doomed in the long term. It’s an idiotic approach. Yet here we are, with all sides retaliating. Trump’s trade policy has made everything more expensive and less desirable. Farmers are hurting. Manufacturers are hurting. Retailers are hurting. Practically the only one not hurting is Trump.

That’s because he’s never thought long-term. Not about anything. Certainly not about trade.

Eventually, this trade war will hurt Trump. There is no immutable law of the universe that a president’s base will remain his base. At some point, he will damage the people who elected him so much that they will turn away from him. By then, his incompetence and mendacity will be so apparent to all that his defeat will be inevitable.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

121

So, now Trump’s policy—if it can even be said to have been one—has failed. The U.S. and E.U. will reach a deal to end Trump’s tariff wars. China and Canada should follow too. It will all be a massively painful stunt.

In a couple years, I hope we can say that about the Trump presidency as well.

122

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: the peace-war game The board game Diplomacy dubs itself “a game of international intrigue, trust, and treachery.” This makes it an inevitable conversation starter when two game theorists get together.

They’ll regale each other with stories of slowly building trust before finding the perfect moment to backstab their way to victory. I love to toss in a quick follow-up they should really see coming. “How did you do in the next game with that same group of players?” The wide variety of responses tells me exactly how they would fare in the greater game of peace and war.

Picture two households, both alike in dignity. In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, these families battle by throwing lavish galas. For each gala, they must decide whether to invite the other family. As these are major social events, a snub has dire consequences. Since neither family wants to miss an event, they cooperate by inviting their rivals, until Mercutio ruins a party with yet another pun and the rival decides it’s time for a snub.

How should the snubbed household respond? One house leader, an unabashed Mercutio fan, argues that by breaking the social contract, they’ve made an enemy for life—snubs eternal!

Another says that any retort would only make the situation worse, so they should continue inviting their rivals and hope it breaks the pattern. A third house member pleas for moderation.

They disinvite them one time as a punishment, which they should expect. If they fall back in line, life returns to normal.

Every war council in history has had this conflict. The first house offers only a battle to the death. The second hopes that by offering peace, the foe will return to mutual cooperation. Both options are losing strategies. If both houses fight forever, the sneak attack is still a tie-breaking power move. And the other household can manipulate the peacemaker as they see fit. But moderation, or tit-for-tat, is a winning strategy; it’s the simple choice to copy what the foe did last turn. This kind of measured, proportional response has been a mainstay of warfare for centuries, though the jury is still out when it comes to puns.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

123

#MPRraccoon and the puzzle of hope

June 13, 2018 Yesterday a bold raccoon scaled the UBS Bank building in downtown St. Paul, riveting the internet to their computers all day and all night. Minneapolis Public Radio adopted the raccoon’s cause under the hashtag #MPRraccoon. No human could help the raccoon without potentially frightening her into a deadfall. The St. Paul Fire Department declared it could not risk a firefighter’s life for a being it would chase out of the firehouse with a broom. Despite the viewers’ cries for everything from breaking windows to pizza, our little pal was on her own.

A cynic’s view of this is that America was watching an animal die in real time. Only one step back from Naked and Afraid, and only a half-step away from televised executions, watching an animal potentially fall to her death or expire from dehydration was something uniquely 2018.

That wasn’t how it was seen at all. #MPRraccoon was a tail—sorry, tale—of American industriousness, of perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, of 124

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

hope. Overmatched by architectural complexity and exhaustion, our furry hero—we named her Rabbit, after Thor’s name for Rocket in Infinity War—sussed out how to scamper up to safety in the dark of night.

Cat treats and cages were waiting for her on the roof, which she reached over 18 hours into her journey.

How she got there is worthy of the game theory analysis I give to events like the negotiations between North Korea and the US, which also occurred this week. And it was a lot less riveting than the raccoon.

That’s because Presidents Trump and Kim didn’t solve the world’s biggest level of Frogger ever played.

Yes, Frogger! You remember Frogger. It’s the classic puzzle videogame in which you play a hapless amphibian who foolishly hops across a crowded and deadly freeway. Up-left-up-right-right-right-down-leftup-up-freedom!

Despite having no speeding trucks, our bandit’s path was no less deadly than the froggie’s. It started from a seven-story roof, then straight up the north wall’s central column. Along the way, we saw closely how a raccoon climbs: claws hooked in from the side, belly stabilizing against the curvature of the column.

As Rabbit hopped from window to window, resting at times, it was obvious that the critter was born of millions of ascended trees through the millennia. To our heroine, the columns of the bank wall was just an astonishingly regular forest.

Which made it all the more terrifying when she got up to the 23rd floor and realized the last twenty feet were Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

125

a sheer, flat wall. There are no trees like that anywhere.

Suddenly Rabbit went from imperiled to doomed. For six agonizing hours in the dark of night, she pondered her mortality. Then she bolted up to the vent grates above and found no recourse there. She could stick her weary paw into the grate, but forcing herself through wasn’t happening.

Dejected, Rabbit clambered down one story, and two bright new possibilities emerged. The first was scaling down the entire building. Around midnight that’s what she began to do, descending from the 23rd floor to the 17th. That was a long, perilous journey down.

But then, another path to success opened up. In her descent, she moved three windows to the right and ended up on the corner column, which went all the way to the roof. Gaby and I could see it. Could our li’l buddy?

Resting on the first windowsill of the west wall, Rabbit occasionally looked up through the darkness. She had imperfect information about what lay ahead.

Who knew what was meandering through her nectarine-sized brain on a night like this?

126

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Triumph, that’s what. Around 3 am, Rabbit took off up the corner column—run, Rabbit, run!—then boop! over the rooftop. Rabbit could relax. So could an exhausted nation. In the process, I mapped her route.

I counted nineteen windows and grates over five columns and seven floors of the building. That was a strategy worthy of a Frogger high-score in every way.

I don’t know if Rabbit ever felt hopelessness in her epic journey. I know we all have felt it over these two years. The world is spinning toward a wholehearted embrace of corruption, regression, and aggression at the hands of a man-child president and his evil cronies. That picture of Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe, and the rest of the G7 exasperated at the unthinkable boor before them seems just like all of us who don’t wear MAGA caps. The President’s lobbying for Russia and warm embrace of the dictator Kim just cemented it, though maybe for some good? Maybe?

Probably not. Mostly we just got fleeced because our great negotiator is an unprincipled doof. Hopelessness is a reasonable response to all this chaos.

But Frogger tells us never to think like this, and for the most part, we don’t. I’ve described the difference between a puzzle and a game thusly: A game is an activity where, if fairly constructed, two sides given the same advantages will have a roughly equal chance to win. A puzzle is an activity where, if fairly constructed, one side will have all the advantages—preparation, skill, knowledge of the answer—and despite all of that, the disadvantaged side is expected to win.

Puzzle games are by their nature not unsolvable. They may be hard. They may be fiendish, in fact. But they Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

127

have at least one answer, or they’re not puzzles. Deep down, humans know this. But here’s what they also know: Some of us are not good at puzzles. We don’t even want to be. This is not what we do. Instead, we let others solve our problems. Presidents, say.

Well, we can’t always do that. Sometimes we’re presented with a puzzle and we just have to solve it on our own. There’s no help coming. We just have to think our way through to the answer, which is right in front of us. There’s a corner column somewhere. It leads straight to the top. We will find it soon.

Just remember, it wasn’t terribly great in 2008 either.

We responded to an attack on US soil by embroiling ourselves in two forever wars. Wall Street deregulation crushed the housing market, setting up a brutal Great Recession. We tortured people. A lot. It was bad.

A smart, kind man came by holding a little book called The Audacity of Hope. He’d solved the puzzle of hopelessness, and he had some ideas about those problems the Bush administration and its evil cronies inflicted on us. It was gonna be hard. Maybe fiendish.

But there were answers. There always are.

Till we find them, just make sure you’re on the right pillar, and keep climbing.

128

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: perfection of information In game theory, the definition of a game has led to one longstanding rule. Since a game must be a showdown of players who can make and change their strategies based on the moves of their opponents, playing against a computer doesn’t count. As anyone who’s ever exploited a computer glitch can attest, it’s usually possible to push a program into a corner and then low kick your way to victory. If an artificial opponent doesn’t have the cognition to properly respond to your actions, then they aren’t really an opponent. They’re just an obstacle.

That’s what we thought until computers made the best human players look like cheap hacks. Checkers was beaten by Chinook in 1994 and chess by Deep Blue in 1997, but it was a deep blow to humans when Scrabble fell to Quackle in 2006. Checkers and chess are games of perfect information, with nothing hidden from any player. Since everyone can see the complete board at once, a fast enough processor can find the absolute best move out of all possible moves. With its bag of tiles and hidden racks, Scrabble is a game of imperfect information, and humans believed they had an edge there. Until recently, they did.

But in a battle of calculating probabilities, the computer takes home the win. In 2017, a team of four poker pros lost more than $1.7 million to Carnegie Mellon’s Liberatus program. The 20-day event consisted of 120,000 hands, with Liberatus playing four simultaneous games of heads-up, no-limit Texas hold’em. The humans hoped that a combination of their cleverness, trickery, and ingenuity might win out over the AI. But the programmers had developed some tricks of their own.

Each night, Liberatus was trained to analyze every hand played that day to modify its strategy for the next. Which meant that as the four pros found algorithmic weaknesses to exploit, those prior missteps led to deadly bluffs the next morning. Liberatus had gained a devious poker face all of its own. As the grueling marathon came to a close, the only meaningful difference in play between the humans and the AI was the final chip counts.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

129

Seizing children is good policy (if you’re a complete monster)

June 19, 2018

“Some of them heard their children screaming for them in the next room. Not a single one of them had been allowed to say goodbye or explain to them what was happening.”

– U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal I have to commend the Trump administration. After 500+ days in office, it has finally crafted a policy so completely in concert with its goals that its efficacy cannot be doubted. A policy so horrifying and malevolent that it succeeds on every level desired by its creators. It does something I’ve never thought possible. It destroys the very appeal of America to foreigners.

Also to Americans, but let’s put that aside for now.

The Trump policy of seizing children from their mothers at the border—usually through duplicity like pretending to take the child for a bath—works on 130

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

a game theory level. It’s brilliant, in the way dropping a second atomic bomb on Japan was brilliant. It suggests there is no limit to American cruelty, and no shortage of resources to enact that cruelty. It is distinctly un-American, but Trump’s recent praise for Kim Jong-Un and Vladimir Putin suggests that the definition of “American” is slipping south rapidly. But being barbarous and being effective are not irreconcilable. You just have to be willing to live with the monster you become after you do it.

The administration is using a zero tolerance policy, which I’ll dissect in theoretical terms. “Zero tolerance” is an artificial construct—it exists basically nowhere in legal scholarship—that means that law enforcement and courts have no ability to moderate punishment for any crime in a particular arena, no matter what the severity of the crime is.

The game theory of zero tolerance is this: the penalty for failure is at its maximum, so the deterrent effect is supposedly high. That’s what John Kelly thinks, anyway. Jeff Sessions thinks so too, and he’s got the Bible verse to justify it. (It’s the same one the Nazis used to justify killing dissenters.) The most monstrous of the Trump regime’s thought leaders, Stephen Miller, crowed how proud he was for thinking of it.

In the case of American border enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division is hamstrung by new rules declaring border crossers criminals. Prior to the current policy, ICE would detain suspected border crossers, determine whether they had done so, and then send them back across the appropriate border.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

131

The act of staying in the United States was prima facie illegal, but it wasn’t an imprisonable act. It did not have consequences beyond the remedy of the act.

But with a zero tolerance policy, ICE officials have no choice but to imprison the entrants—and when the entrant comes with a child, that child gets put…

Well, it’s complicated.

Some of them go missing. Others are put in migrant detention facilities where they’re forcibly given injections of psychoactive drugs to control their behavior. If they’re babies and toddlers, they’re put in “tender age shelters”—you know, baby prisons.

We’re imprisoning babies.

Unfortunately for the administration, by embracing a zero tolerance policy, it commits the zero tolerance fallacy. When there is no variation in punishment, there is no limit to the severity of crime that will be committed. Any transgression brings punishment, so all who commit an offense might as well commit the worst offense, since punishment is unavoidable if caught. Don’t come alone. Come in droves. Come with families. Come with children.

The zero tolerance fallacy proves conclusively that increasing the severity of penalties has no impact on crime. If someone wants to commit a crime, they will regardless of the severity of the penalty, if a penalty exists at all. This is called the escalation of commitment, and it’s unshakable. Those committed to an action will continue regardless of whether the 132

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

action will fail. So, they continue to head to the border, with the intent of getting to the other side.

A migrant’s reward for success at crossing the border is potentially unlimited. The penalty for failure is fixed at its maximum, and therein lies the problem. Zero tolerance works only as long as you have unlimited resources. We don’t, of course. Our border courts are flooded. Our detention centers are overcrowded. Lord knows what’s happening at the “tender age shelters.”

Because we’ve decided to treat everyone as criminals, we must build and staff concentration camp after concentration camp, till they choke the Rio Grande.

They won’t stop coming as long as the America they envision is kind and just.

There is only one way to fix that. That is by being monsters. Separate children from their mothers. Lose children. Leave some wandering free to spread the story. Let them know America is a dark, evil place.

Tell everyone you know. You don’t want to come here. You don’t want to live here.

We don’t want to live here.

Laura Bush doesn’t. Rosalynn Carter doesn’t. Michelle Obama doesn’t. Hillary Clinton doesn’t. Melania Trump doesn’t. All the living First Ladies don’t want this policy to exist, and four had a say in whether their husbands pursued it. Maybe Melania does too. It does look like Ivanka Trump does, though the supposed “champion for women” has cowered in darkness instead of speaking out. Donald Trump is a monster, but maybe he doesn’t like looking his wife and daughter in the eyes and saying, “I’m a monster.”

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

133

Sure, he’ll falsely blame the Democrats for his racist cruelty, but he’s weak in the face of criticism, and weakest in the face of criticism from women.

No one wants this except the administration and its most racist supporters. More than two-thirds of the American people want Trump to change direction.

But there’s no guarantee he will. There’s no reason he should, as long as he’s committed to the destruction of America’s image abroad.

If Trump doesn’t abandon this unthinkably inhumane policy, we’ll know he’s committed to the reduction of foreign-born brown people entering the country, illegally or legally. He’ll be nothing if not consistent.

After all, the only way racist white people maintain their tenuous grip on power is if there are fewer nonwhite people in the country. It’s simple selfpreservation, KKK-style.

But if Trump follows through on his word and abandons this policy, he will surrender his signature accomplishment: convincing the world that America is the worst place on earth. At least until he thinks of something worse.

134

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: zero tolerance Zero tolerance policies must sound like a good idea to someone at the start. They remember bold, sweeping statements like “No new taxes!” or “You will never see that rotten kid again and that’s final!” and somehow feel like these come from a place of real authority and strength. As if we didn’t have an entire legal system to consider distinctions and render verdicts from human judgment. Also, as if they didn’t always fail.

Since these policies are always enacted to stop people from doing something they have chosen to do, people instinctively search for cracks in these arguments. “Sorry, that kid and I have to finish a group project for school” or “what if our ever changing world leads to new technology outside the bounds of our current tax guidelines requiring the establishment of, whatchamacallit, new taxes?” When someone decides to break these rules, what happens then? Well, we usually find out what someone really meant by “zero tolerance.”

Here’s some perspective. Your workplace enacts a zero tolerance policy for lateness. Someone in the office shows up late and is immediately fired. Same thing happens the day after that. One day, you start to run late and wonder what to do. Will they actually fire you? In that case, why just be five minutes late? If they decide to be monsters, you might as well make it worth it. Show up an hour late. Forget to wear your dress shoes.

Take personal calls at your desk. Embrace the chaos.

When philosopher Sheldon Wein invented the zero tolerance fallacy, he worried about proposing a new sweeping rule of rhetoric. However, he argued that zero tolerance policies were inherently harmful at every level, from police to policed, and must be cast down whenever possible. By removing the potential for circumstance and compassion to alter punishments to fit violations, Wein stated that even the police “may simply pretend not to observe relevant violations of the rule,” resulting in less deterrence than normal. If justice wins out, then a zero tolerance policy becomes just cheap talk from a weak leader.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

135

Trump gambles for resurrection

July 29, 2018 It happened. Not only did Trump take the side of his ally Vladimir Putin over the American government he himself heads, but he made it clear that he did not fear the consequences of doing so. Now media members and elected officials alike are openly using the word “treason”—you know, the crime punishable by death—to describe his behavior. Richard Nixon wasn’t accused of treason. Bill Clinton wasn’t accused of treason. Impeachment no longer seems like the worst thing that could happen to Trump this year.

How could this of all strategies be the right one for Trump?

Surprise! It’s absolutely the right strategy. Good on ya, Trumpy.

The Trump campaign colluded with Russia. Special Counsel Mueller may or may not have proof of it, but it happened. Vladimir Putin confirmed it. Michael Cohen’s tapes show Trump greenlit the Trump Tower meeting in advance. GOP lawmakers aren’t even 136

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

trying to defend it any more. They are just accepting that Trump lied and will continue to lie about it.

And he’s absolutely colluding with Russia right now.

We all have proof of that. This, it would seem, is highly dangerous for a sitting president who wants to stay in the Oval Office and out of federal prison. But there he is, cozying up to Putin, accepting a soccer ball, denying that Russia meddled in our elections.

He’s giving Putin everything he wants: Syria, the Ukraine, the fracturing of NATO, freedom from reprisals for his treacheries.

But it might be the only winning strategy. That’s because of a game theory strategy called gambling for resurrection. Gambling for resurrection is a strategy that involves continuing to fight a war which looks like a lost cause. The logic goes like this: The consequences for loss have been defined. There is nothing worse than losing. If you admit you’ve lost, you lose. So, you try to win. You may not have a very good chance of winning. It might be highly remote.

But if you do win, you don’t lose. So, you stay committed to the path regardless of what damage you inflict on yourself and others.

There’s an element in gambling for resurrection called the information gap. The citizens under a leader’s authority don’t know what the leader knows. They don’t know why the leader might pursue a policy; they only know the outcome that they can see. They may not know the good outcomes of success, but they can definitely see how it hurts them while it’s failing. They will act on this.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

137

Even if the leader believes he should stop whatever he is doing, if he conveys that the policy is going well, then the citizens struggle to reconcile what they see (things aren’t going well) with what they hear (the leader says things are going well).

When this occurs, the citizens don’t know if the leader was right to pursue the policy or if the leader is incompetent or self-serving. Since they don’t know this, the citizens assume the worst. If the policy leads to an actual loss, the citizens will kick the leader out at the first opportunity. Giving up creates the loss.

But if the policy somehow leads to a win, it doesn’t matter whether the leader was right in the first place.

He didn’t lose, and he has a chance of being rewarded for not losing.

In President Trump’s case, he can win in the following ways: 1. America comes to believe, as he does, that the investigation of him is a witch hunt.

In this case, his collusion with Russia to get elected is nullified by traitors attempting to overthrow the presidency, and his continuing collusion with Russia gives him resources to fight it.

2. America comes to believe, as he does, that Russia is awesome. In this case, his collusion with Russia to get elected was a brilliant move (despite betraying our election system), and his continuing collusion with Russia is even more brilliant, as it solidifies our relationship with our new best ally.

138

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

3. America’s election system is so compromised that future elections are cancelled. In this case, his collusion with Russia to get elected is a mere symptom of a much more serious failure on our part, and his continuing collusion with Russia succeeds in prolonging the time he is in office.

4. America is invaded by Russia. In this case, Trump is installed as the governor of a puppet regime in direct subservience to the country that helped him get elected.

OK, I put the last one in mostly to see if I could get you to shout “Wolverines!” I don’t actually think Putin plans to run tanks down Wall Street. But if he did, I could see President-for-Life Trump riding one of them.

Anyway, whatever the positive outcome for Trump, all of those outcomes are terrible for America. We’ve either suspended the rule of law, allied with murderous dictators, ended our democracy, or marched the United States of America into the dustbin of history. We should be smart enough to stop those from occurring.

And yet…

Brett Kavanaugh sits ready to become the next terrible Supreme Court justice. Mike Pence salivates at the idea of the Trump court overturning Roe v. Wade.

The Republicans in Congress are preparing tax cut for the rich number two. We may actually give John Bolton the war with Iran he lusts for in his dreams.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

139

Other than this whole giving-away-our-democracy-tothe-Russians problem, the worst Americans are getting the worst things for America done. Supporting the traitor until he hangs from the Senate rotunda is probably the right move for them as long as they remain in power.

So, the obvious thing that needs to happen is that we need more non-treasonous people in power. America has one shot to vote for Democrats in such overwhelming numbers that it swamps the election hacking that Russia is doing right now. It needs to overrun the gerrymandered barriers that keeps the GOP in office despite its corruption. All concept of protest voting (or non-voting) must be left at the roadside. We need to vote in massive numbers for candidates that can beat Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s allies.

Trump is gambling for resurrection. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s make sure he leaves the table a loser.

140

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: gambling for resurrection Unlike most terms we use to describe game theory, gambling for resurrection kind of speaks for itself. Resurrection tells a story of return from the void to reclaim life. Sometimes this is an attempt to reclaim victory in a game where defeat is certain.

Other times, like in politics or economics, there are significantly greater stakes on the line. The gamble is that a player can build an illusion so lifelike that opponents come to believe it as reality.

We may not see the chance for resurrection in our daily lives, but we do get an opportunity to see it on an annual basis in our sports. Let’s say that our favorite basketball team has just reached the playoffs as an underdog, and seems likely to drop the first series. Up next is a rebuilding offseason, as the team evaluates its players and looks towards the upcoming draft. A few players are looking at an expiring contract and suddenly need to find a way to convince management to renew them for a few more seasons.

In a 2014 study out of the Australian National University, researchers evaluated the choices NBA players made in their final games of a contract. The study notes that missing games makes it harder for a player’s contract to be renewed, to the tune of 10% less likely per absence. A player needs to create the illusion of health, so they get on the court and play through the pain, no matter the risk of a greater injury. When it comes to payday, it doesn’t matter much whether a player lost their contract to injury or team restructuring.

This behavior leads to another interesting result—a basketball team is 5% less likely to win a game for each player on the court who is playing during the last three months of their contract.

Most of this drop-off likely comes from the weakened play of a risk-prone player trying to make a lasting impression, and it’s easy to imagine the bleakness of the upcoming void making an impact. Meanwhile, as this oncoming gloom covers the court, it also provides a lucky player the perfect atmosphere to gamble on illusion and show up like a shining star.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

141

Mike Pence is the Werewolf

September 5, 2018 Today’s op-ed piece in the New York Times got tongues wagging. It was written by an unnamed senior White House official who scalded Trump for being an unmoored, untamable child. Entitled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” the piece stated that the #Resistance in the White House was the only thing keeping us from annihilation.

In the White House and the Twittersphere, the hunt began for the author. Trump tweeted “TREASON?” (to which I replied, “Yes, you did”), insisting the “GUTLESS” individual turn him/herself in. For what punishment is unclear, but whatever, Young Donny needs his pacifier.

Anyway, it’s obvious who wrote it. Either Mike Pence wrote it or someone is trying to convince Trump that Pence did.18 Either way, Pence is the Werewolf.

At the point we sent this to press, we had no idea who the writer was.

It’s possible that by the time you’re reading this, we do. If so, I hope I look like a freakin’ genius.

18

142

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Werewolf is a classic in the genre of social deduction games. Others include Secret Hitler, Coup, and, quite fittingly, The Resistance. These games usually feature two main tenets: everyone has a secret role and someone’s going to be eliminated. In Secret Hitler, the liberals are after Hitler, whose hidden fascists aim to pass terrible laws and assassinate the opposition. In Coup, multinational CEOs try to kill each other. In The Resistance, no one dies, but spies are trying to expose and neutralize freedom fighters in their midst.

In Werewolf, the villagers are beset by werewolves.

The villagers don’t know who the werewolves are; to them, everyone looks like a villager. The werewolves know each other and who’s a villager. Every day, the villagers (including the werewolves shape-changed to look like villagers) vote to kill one player; if they kill all the werewolves, they win. Every night, with the villagers closing their eyes, the werewolves collude to kill one villager. If there are ever as many werewolves as villagers, they win.

The Trump White House is a social deduction game.

No one knows who’s playing what role. Everybody gets eliminated. Pence has outlasted Sebastian Gorka, Omarosa, Rob Porter, Steve Bannon, the Mooch, Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Gary Cohn, Scott Pruitt, Rex Tillerson, Tom Price, H.R. McMaster, and Michael Flynn.

Let’s look at the latest night-time maneuver, this New York Times hit job. Media speculation is focusing on the wrong thing: motive. It doesn’t matter whether Jeff Sessions or Don McGahn has a motive to sideswipe President Trump. It only matters what the president does with Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

143

this information, because everyone in the chaos den has a reason to eliminate someone else. Dissent means the president is likely to terminate someone. That keeps the engine of government running for one more day.

If the president is blasting out pink slips over his public image, he’s not bombing North Korea.

When trying to figure out who has done a secret act, only one thing truly matters: who you want to die.

You may not know that another player is a liberal in Secret Hitler, but you know who falsely accused you of being a fascist, so you work to get them outed as a fascist. If you don’t want to die at the liberals’ hands, don’t accuse anyone of being a fascist. And if you’re Hitler, don’t start acting like Hitler, or everyone will know you’re Hitler. Just be the nicest Hitler imaginable, and you might live to burn the Reichstag.

Now let’s look at the suspects and how they act.

Specifically, we don’t care who has motive. What we care about is: Who sounds like they wrote it?

Specifically, who wants Trump to believe who wrote it?

Here is a list of candidates, rated by their odds on the Canadian betting site Bovada. Yes, you can bet on this.

Eliminated villagers Ivanka Trump (15–1): Oh man, would this be juicy.

But it’s not her, because there’s no compassion. Now, I think Ivanka’s as compassionate as a bear trap. But I can’t find any statements like “We came in believing in the president.” There’s no sympathy for a supposedly once-great man. No way she leaves her loyalty to her dad out. It’s all off-brand. It’s not Ivanka Trump.

144

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

John Kelly (4–1): While he undoubtedly believes everything in the article—and is an “adult in the room”—Kelly is the one person who doesn’t have to do this. He actually runs the White House, so if he wants something done, it gets done. Fundamentally, everyone knows muzzling Trump is exactly his job; it’s not even news if he does this. It’s not John Kelly.

Kellyanne Conway (50–1): The president’s jester is already in trouble for doing exactly this—except that it’s her husband George that does it. The two are miserable over his disapproval of her work. She’s unemployable if Trump crashes. She doesn’t care about conservatism, a bedrock focus of the piece. And it doesn’t try to be nice. It’s not Kellyanne Conway.

James Mattis (4–1): This is an eloquent piece, and the Defense Secretary is eloquent. But he’s eloquent in a different way. This man said to Iraqi commanders, “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.” Anonymity isn’t the “Mad Dog” way. He puts his name on it. It’s not Jim Mattis.

Dan Coats (15–1): Sneaky bastard, this one. The Director of National Intelligence could totally have written an anonymous letter after Trump sided with Putin over his dudes. Because the DNI is in charge of spies, you see. And that’s what makes it ridiculous.

Forget the Times; much more duplicitous approaches are available here. It’s not Dan Coats.

Donald Trump (25–1): Did not scream “NO COLLUSION!” Not even once. It’s not Donald Trump.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

145

Surviving villagers Jeff Sessions (5–2): Did you read the piece? OK, now try reading it in the Attorney General’s voice. Did you hear Jefferson Beauregard’s lilting drawl in the words “Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making”? It sounded good, didn’t it? It sounded …vengeful. It could be Jeff Sessions.

Nikki Haley (10–1) & Kirstjen Nielsen (unranked): Despite the Times’s slip-up suggesting the piece was written by a man, I buy both of these nominees. This is a desperately serious piece. Both are world-focused conservatives who desperately want to be taken seriously. But they’ve both been battered for rolling out Trump’s tirades of fear and hate. It could be Nikki Haley or Kirstjen Nielsen.

Mike Pompeo (unranked): The national security team is the only thing described in glowing terms in this full-on blast. The writer is capable of writing a campaign speech, and this sure looks like a campaign speech for 2020. The person on the nat-sec team that seems most like a candidate for president is the 54year-old Secretary of State. It could be Mike Pompeo.

Jared Kushner (15–1): You’ve heard him speak? He has no voice. He’s a pipsqueak, not a freedom fighter.

Still, running behind his wife’s back is what a pipsqueak would do. Espousing conservative principles he’s held for about thirty seconds is totally a Jared move. Dealing with Ivanka’s rationalizations is his full-time job. He owned a newspaper. It could be Jared Kushner.

146

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Don McGahn (15–1): If anyone’s ready to pen a “hope you die screaming” letter to Trump, it’s his White House counsel. See what the piece leads with: “It’s not just that the special counsel looms large.” That’s the first thing on this writer’s mind. McGahn’s been laserfocused on keeping Trump (or himself) out of Mueller’s grasp. It could be Don McGahn.

Melania Trump (50–1): The First Lady has trolled her deadbeat husband with her clothing choices and her support of those he hates. This is totally her style.

Admittedly, she doesn’t have the skills to write a piece this nuanced. Here’s the thing: Melania has no trouble with plagiarism. She doesn’t have to have written it to have submitted it. It could be Melania Trump.

But isn’t any of them. Here’s who it is.

The actual werewolf Mike Pence (3–1): The vice president believes every word in this editorial. He’s a truth warrior, for a truth most of us find wholly unpalatable. He’s run out of gratefulness to the man who elevated him within one chair of the job he wants, likely turning when he had to rationalize the idiotic “Space Force.” If motive were relevant, he’d be the most motivated of all.

It’s not, though. What is relevant are the words. Many have focused on the use of the word “lodestar,” a Pence favorite. There’s a whole lot more, though.

There’s the mention of the 25th Amendment, which only Pence can initiate. He must think about that a lot.

And also, get a load of these quotes.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

147

• • • •

“The root of the problem is the president’s amorality.” “the president’s leadership style… is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.” “his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.”

“We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.”

The author appears to be a crusader for a bygone America. The rough and tumble of Trumpistan is not for him. Unreliability is the devil’s work. Moderation is our only hope. We need courtesy back, and how better to regain it than the bland certainty of a buttondown dad from the 1950s? How better than Mike Pence? It’s perfect.

That said…

In a social deduction game, you want to convince everyone you are not who you are. If you’re sneaky— really sneaky—you can make people think you have a hidden role you don’t actually have. You can make others think someone else has the role that you have.

You can make people think Pence—the reliable, everuseful crusader—wrote this piece. A piece that you wrote. If you’re sneaky. You’d have to be a real rat bastard to get your boss to undercut his vice president.

The worst, in fact. Someone who’d be shot into the heart of the sun by President Pence for being so vile that the paint peels when he enters the Oval Office.

Nice work, Stephen Miller. Werewolves of the world, salute your leader.

148

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

Rich explains: social deduction games I don’t know if you can tell, but there’s a riot down here in the game theory bullpen. Social deduction games are like the purest form of game theory in Machiavellian overdrive. Each player tries to claw their way to victory, digging deep into dirty tactics, cheap talk, evasions, coalition building, and everything that makes the grand tapestry of game theory worthy of study. I’ve never been of a mind to think chess is beautiful, but a masterful move in a social deduction game leaves my jaw dropped in awe.

If you’ve never played a social deduction game, they may look strange from the outside. Initially, all players believe that they’re part of the same team with the same goal. Of course, they know some of their peers are part of a twisted fifth column, biding their time until they can strike and win in a cruel stroke. As the game progresses, each statement a player makes is dissected for werewolf-like tendencies. Those who fail to convince the mob that they are villagers are removed from play. Even if they were actually a villager just caught on a very bad day.

Did you breathe at the wrong time? Is that from feigning shock at an accusation because you’re secretly one of the dastardly werewolves? Can you convince the rest of the village you didn’t mean anything by it? Did you vote to take out an innocent last round, leading your fellow players to turn on you? In this time of trouble, the untrusting mob must band together, judging signals and actions to determine who is a villager and who is safe to trust. Without these signals, all hope is lost. Trust becomes everything, making an unexpected betrayal all the sweeter.

Is there a better feeling than looking down at your randomly assigned card and realizing you are the werewolf? In that sudden panic where you ask yourself “how do I convince everyone else that I’m just a poor, simple villager?” And then the calm that drops as you finish that thought with “... so that I may lie my way to the victory I so clearly deserve?” To a game theorist, the chance to test all the ideas found in this book is like getting an all-expense paid trip to the moon.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

149

Conclusion

What happens now?

March 12, 2017 Now that you’ve read all this, maybe you’re angry.

Maybe you’ve been angry since November of 2016, perhaps quite a bit before. Every day brings a new outrage, a new betrayal, a new moral low ground. It’s exhausting to think about fighting it, especially when you think you might be fighting your own like-minded friends about it. But why is that? Why aren’t you always in alignment with those who share your opinions? While hosting a JoCo Cruise panel about the 2016 election called The Night Everything Broke, I drew a chart to show why this happens.

150

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

The chart shows three phases of dealing with an outrage: reaction to something that has gone wrong, action to address the problem, and inaction to process what has happened. Each always follows the one next to it, as long as there are new outrages to react to. (Protip: There will be.)

The thing is, there aren’t any arrows on the chart.

That’s because people go through this loop in two different ways. The Reaction-Action-Inaction loop is when people jump to respond to a problem, act, and then rest afterward. (“Let’s do something before it’s too late!”)

But just as many people go the other way. The Reaction-Inaction-Action is a look-before-you-leap approach. (“Let’s figure out what to do and then make it happen.”) Both are valid approaches, but they are in conflict.

There’s no avoiding the Inaction step; no one can fight all the time. But when inaction occurs is important. Those who prefer the clockwise loop can’t understand why their friends won’t act immediately; those who prefer the counterclockwise loop can’t understand why their friends act without thinking.

Fingers are wagged on Facebook and Twitter, friendships are damaged, alliances are undermined, progress is thwarted.

There’s no need for that division. Fast actors gain attention and marshal supporters. Slow actors figure out strategies and implement them fully. Without fast actors, the slow actors will never get the attention to effect long-term change; without slow actors, the fast Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

151

actors will burn out and dissipate before accomplishing anything. Together we can act effectively, if not always harmoniously.

The Trump administration is something we have to fight. It is a corrupt, backward-thinking, violent organization, and it cannot be allowed to redefine the essence of America. We need everyone to do what they can. But only what they can.

Allowing your friends to fight in different ways than you do is the first step to accepting them as allies. If we could all accept that there is no right or wrong way to fight tyranny, we might be better at fighting tyranny.

From all of us at Basket of Adorables, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re glad youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re on our side.

Mike, Rich, Gaby, Wes, Liz, and Max

152

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

From the archives

An open letter to Speaker Boehner from a game designer October 6, 2013 Hello, Speaker Boehner. Thanks for reading this.

We haven’t met, so let me introduce myself. I’m Mike Selinker, a game designer from Seattle. I’ve worked on lots of games, mostly board and card games. It’s my job to entertain people, and it’s a far less important one than you have. But every now and then, my job can be useful for someone who has one like yours. I hope today is one of those occasions.

I’d like to talk to you about something you said on Friday, October 4. You said, referring to the government shutdown: “This isn’t some damn game!”

I would like to commend you for that statement, because as a game designer, I can tell you that it’s absolutely true. But I think you’ve only scratched the surface of why.

That’s because the shutdown your party caused isn’t a game. It’s a puzzle.

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

153

As someone who designs both puzzles and games professionally, I often get asked to define the difference between a game and a puzzle. There are many possible answers to this question, but the one I’ve settled upon is this:

A game is an activity where, if fairly constructed, two sides given the same advantages will have a roughly equal chance to win.

A puzzle is an activity where, if fairly constructed, one side will have all the advantages, except that the disadvantaged side is expected to win.

If you don’t mind, let me break that down a bit. In a game (say, chess or basketball or Hungry Hungry Hippos), both sides face each other on a more or less even playing field. They may or may not have the same tools, and they may or may not be able to access them at the same time (such as the 11 players on either side of the football having very different roles).

But if both sides show up with equal knowledge, skill, and preparation, there should be a reasonable question as to which will win.

One critical aspect of creating a fair game is acceptance of a set of rules. We can’t be expected to play hockey if my team brings hockey sticks and your team brings machine guns. Thankfully, the rules of hockey are rather strict on what equipment we can use. If someone breaks those rules, they’re not “negotiating,” they’re cheating.

If the shutdown were a game, your side would have broken the rules. The rules of the American 154

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

government are that if the Congress passes a law, and the President signs a law, and the Supreme Court upholds a law, the law should be enacted. As of last count, your side had decided 40+ times to stop playing by the rules.

Which, if this were a game, would be cheating. But as I said, this is not a game, it’s a puzzle.

In a puzzle, the field of play is horribly imbalanced.

The puzzlemaker has as much time as desired to prepare, a totally different set of skills, and knowledge of the answer. The puzzle solver has none of these things. She is expected to solve on the spot with no understanding of how the puzzle came together or what its solution is.

The puzzlemaker would, in a game situation, be favored to triumph every single time.

So, to put this in context, the GOP has placed this puzzle in front of the Democrats:

We have all agreed to fund the Affordable Care Act. However, the House has hidden the government’s funding. What is the set of actions that will get the government funded? Is it to capitulate? To threaten? To do nothing?

It’s a tough puzzle. But this gets me to the final piece of my definition, which is that, if the puzzle is properly constructed, the puzzle’s disadvantaged side is expected to win. In a puzzle, the puzzlemaker isn’t looking to beat the solver. Instead, the puzzlemaker gives the solver all the tools to beat him. If the solver Game Theory in the Age of Chaos

155

attacks the puzzle in the right way, she will defeat the challenge. So, the puzzlemaker must be comfortable with losing every single time.

That’s why you’re losing. The Democrats are figuring out the puzzle. When the House unanimously promised back pay to furloughed workers, you paid 800,000 government workers to do nothing. That’s counter to your side’s principle of crusading against wasteful government. The more Democrats encourage you to abandon your principles, the better off they are.

And—I hope this doesn’t come across as too judgmental—I don’t think you know how to solve your own puzzle. In fact, I’m pretty sure that a fringe group of maybe fifty Tea Party Congressmen designed it for you, and encouraged you to give it to the President. I would never present a puzzle I didn’t design and didn’t know how to solve.

So, here’s what I would suggest: Take your puzzle back and redesign it. Test it on some of your more rabid party members, threatening to block all their proposals until they adhere to the rule of law. Or maybe just shoot it into the heart of the sun. Either way, realize that you’re not playing a damn game either.

Thanks for listening, Speaker Boehner. I hope this helps.

Mike Selinker 156

Game Theory in the Age of Chaos