In our final Prisoner's dilemma discussion over email, Ulmer mentioned that we might want to think about Von Neumann's relationship to poker as a potential frame for the contrast of the CATTt. Rather than throw away poker and contrast it to another game, I would like to point to the most common strategy of poker: deception. Poundstone writes, "Good poker players do not simply play the odds. They take into account the conclusion other players will draw from their actions and sometimes deceive other players" (40). Now, a person's ability to deceive is also related to his or or her ability to seduce, a key concept that I will elaborate on in my posts on Baudrillard. There are a couple different deceptive strategies. The most popular one, and the one that game theory is predicated on, is the "bluff." Bluffing occurs when you try to convince your opponents you have a better hand than you actually do. You bet high and take the risk in order to maximize your profit.
Bluffing in History
Poundstone points to the 'arms race' as an example of the US attempting to bluff by pretending to want to cooperate in an 'open skies plan'. Though some may disagree, it seems clear that "the administration may have been so confident that the Soviet's would never agree that they felt they could bluff and not be called on it [ . . .]" (188). So this 'bluff' didn't really work because the Soviet's did seem to agree at one point. It seems that the administration wanted to save face rather than admit they were the "sucker" who would try and cooperate. . .or perhaps they were determined to "not negotiate with [Soviets]" (as we are unwilling to negotiate with terrorists--we will return to the problem of terrorism in a further post on Baudrillard).
"A form of argument involving an adversary in the choice of two (or, loosely, more) alternatives, either of which is (or appears) equally unfavourable to him. (The alternatives are commonly spoken of as the ‘horns’ of the dilemma.) Hence in Logic, a hypothetical syllogism having a conjunctive or ‘conditional’ major premiss and a disjunctive minor (or, one premiss conjunctive and the other disjunctive)" (OED).
As part of the system of Aristotelian logic, dilemmas are still within the old metaphysics of literacy. It is our task to substitute something for the dilemma. If Game Theory is our contrast, perhaps we should look at the way game theory uses dilemmas as a primary mode of engagement. Two assumptions come to mind immediately:
--Dilemmas are usually conceived in binaries--either/or. Even in 'volunteers' dilemmas when there are more than one person the choices that people have still appear limited and finite.
--The choices in a dilemmas may only "appear" unfavorable--they may not in reality 'be' unfavorable.
Dilemmas in History
Poundstone's commentary on Game Theory proper suggests that one of the problems with game theory is that it doesn't take into account how humans actually behave. Part of the way game theory portions off human behavior is that it structures things in terms of dilemmas. Poundstone claims that throughout human history the prisoner's dilemma (and the dilemma in general) is a primary mode of philosophical and literary engagement. He mentions Kant, Hobbes, Poe, Puccini, and Jesus (123-125).
Though not always, the dilemma is frequently conceived in terms of moral situations/examples, as Poundstone does in the first few pages of his book. Game Theory, however, conceives of dilemmas in terms of utility/value/choice/preference. Can we conceive of dilemmas in terms of other situations? Or should we ignore the dilemma altogether?
Poundstone argues the best solution to prisoner's dilemma is to avoidprisoner's dilemmas: "This is what we've been trying to do all along with laws, ethics, and all the other cooperation-promoting social machinery" (278). Thus, we have to find a way to conceive of the situation in which it would not be a dilemma. To a certain extent, it is only by framing situations in terms of dilemmas that they come about.
Contrast--Joke?
For our own project, the task I think is to find an electrate way to promote cooperation strategies. In a recent email, Ulmer suggested to me that we might substitute "Prisoner's jokes" for a Prisoner's dilemma. How can we make a joke out of the "prisoner" situation described in Poundstone? Jokes maintain a sense of irony and distance, a sort of extra something--"wit" (Baudrillard will go into more detail about the importance of Wit) in the way Freud understood it.
Going back to Walton's example of the Dark Knight (I also immediately thought about this--thank you Utopia class), the dilemma really comes about by not knowing what the other person is going to do, but attempting to anticipate their actions. This situation means that the two (or three or four) people are completely isolated from one another and their interests are opposed. My first question is--how "isolated" are we in our fatal strategy? Do we need to anticipate an opposition? Must we act without the assumption of either a) iteration or b) communication? In one sense, we are isolated because our blogs will most likely circulate within our class and other people who will eventually interact with the CATTt and Heuretics. Furthermore, none of us are going to come up with a definite decision or plan of action and send it to the powers that be (that could change something) or find a way to change something materially on a mass scale. So, perhaps we need to "keep" the idea that we are prevented from communicating. But, I ask again, who is our 'opponent'? Do we have an opponent?
Volunteer's Dilemma
Part of the difficulty with understanding the contrast is going to be distinguishing between what Rebecca referred to as the "metaphysics" of game theory and the particular manifestation of Game Theory that Poundstone chooses to focus on: the prisoner's (and other) dilemmas. Is there one dilemma that will work better than the others as a model? Are these the essential situations of game theory? I believe Todd suggested either in blog post or an email that we can think about his e-waste problem as the "volunteer's dilemma". I'd like to second this emphasis because its our unawareness/ignorance/apathy of the world that I think we are trying to remedy--the attitude that "someone else will do it." This loss of affect (in all senses--not just 'emotional') is our postmodern condition (Jameson). Lynn Worsham in an essay on violence and composition argues that part of the task is to get students to feel like they have some sort of effect in the world--to get rid of the "someone else will do it" feeling. We have lost a sense of community and solidarity. When Ulmer came into one of my courses last year, he spoke of trying to develop a "sensus communis"--a term deriving from Kant who uses it to describe the aesthetic sense that presumably all humans have in common (Kant's claim is questionable, but I think the reference is appropriate). Anyway, this is all to say that I think the volunteer's dilemma is particularly interesting--but I could be wrong.
The necessity of Finitness in game theory
Ok, so that last paragraph was a bit of a deviation (but, to paraphrase Heidegger, to err is an essential part in the quest for truth). But I want to get back to the this instantaneous discussion. Poundstone defines strategy as "a complete description of how to play a game" --which he also moves on to say that this is usually not written down in the case of chess for instance (Poundstone 48). This is how one will find the "rational" ways of playing. This notion of strategy is tied up with the idea that (even a game like chess) is theoretically FINITE. Meaning, that in this sense, a game can be described as "a table of possible outcomes" (47). However, there are many different strategies that one can play; indeed the idea that game theory is outside of probabilility theory but still does not rely on chance is something we need to hang on to when we get to Baudrillard who will deny pure 'chance' exists if I remember correctly).
But lets dwell on this notion of "all" possible outcomes. I wrote in my notes, thinking Derridianly (yes, I just make an adverb out of Derrida's name) that this leaves no room for the (im)possible, which is the possible that is unexpected. Now, whether Derrida is relevant in this CATTt can be debated and I'd like to know now if I'm off track with this one. Still, game theories insistence of finiteness is a key part of its "metaphysics." Poundstone clearly points out that if bidding possiblities are indefinite there is NO WAY to work backwards in these games (270). The real world example is that there is no way to know hwo much a nation is willing to spend on defense (271).
I think we might understand our own research (to use a Baudrillardian construction) as a "more pure than pure research." This, according to Von Neumann, leads to the degeneracy of research. Although, strangely enough, Von Neumann did once compare pure mathematical research to art:
"If the deductions are lengthy or complicated, there should be some simple general principle involved, which 'explains' the complications and detours, reduces the apparent arbitrariness to a few simple guiding motivations. These criteria are clearly those of any creative art" (Von Neumann qtd. in Poundstone 28)
Classical pure research
At one level, this kind of simplification is akin to our search for an image, but our image is not seeking to explain all of the complications, but to provoke people to complications. In that sense, we are more like the art that Von Neumann considers degenerate:
"In other words, at a great distance from its empirical source, or after much 'abstract' in breeding, a mathematical subject is in danger of degeneration. At the inception the style is usually classical; when it shows signs of becoming baroque, then the danger signal is up" (Von Neumann qtd. in Poundstone 29).
Baroque Pure Research
Baroque! The question is there some way that the Baroque relates more to Abstract Modernist/Avant-Garde Art (that we are interested in) than the "classical?" I think the answer is an unequivocal YES. Baroque recalls to my mind Deleuzian rhizomes proliferating in all directions and lines of flight--irrational? Perhaps. But this baroque style is much more related to our own work. It bursts with energy and passion, breaking out of all the lines that reign thought inside. The CATTt may direct us toward an image, but ultimately the image is going to look more like a Jackson Pollock painting:
And yet, we have the CATTt. . .is this a baroque mechanism? Surely our mode of research "documentation" is closer to the baroque accumulative aesthetic as opposed to the reserved classical?
I found an illustrated example of a simple 2x2 Prisoner's dilemma:
Game theory, developed by John Von Neumann and others is our contrast in our CATTt. The difficulty with the contrast, and really any of the slots of the CATTt is that we need to decide which parts to keep and which parts to throw away. In other words, what does it mean to do the "opposite" in terms of instructions for our own heuretic endeavors. I think that the key to finding this is to find the main assumptions of game theory
The most important assumption of game theory is that Von Neumann developed it on the model of the game where each opponents (for in this first stage there is only two opponents) interests are completely opposed: Von Neumann makes the claim that there is always a rational way for a two player game to be played if this is so (Poundstone 7). This kind of thinking worked well for Cold War ideology where, as Poundstone writes, "by 1950, many in the United States and in the Soviet union saw the other nation as an implacable foe" (131). While we still engage in this kind of Us vs. Them ideology, the more accurate description of this relationship would be something like "Us vs. them, them, them, and them, but not them, but maybe them. . .not sure about them or him or her." In the world of terrorism, it is difficult to pin point exactly what we are up against. Hopefully Baudrillard in our 'theory' section will be able to help us out with defining our situation a bit more.
A corollary to this first assumption is that game theory is predicated on individual interests. Poundstone writes that "the game demonstrates just what it was intended to; namely, that individual interests can overturn the common good" (Poundstone 277). Now, how do we contrast this assumption? Do we want to say that a fatal strategy will demonstrate that the common good can outweigh individual interests? But is this not another form of terrorism (totalitarianism)? Thus, we are going to have to rather say that a fatal strategy may allow individual interests to contribute to the common good.
As we have already pointed out in class and others have pointed out in their blogs, we also must consider that game theory assumes that human beings are rational. However, as Todd also pointed out, Poundstone takes the view that this is obviously not how human beings behave. In a prisoner's dilemma, for instance, the purely rational thing to do would be to defect every time given the conditions of the game. However, people did cooperate sometimes. Another assumption with the prisoner's dilemma at least is that it is a one-shot game. As Poundstone points out, most situations are iterated: that is, that they are repeated more than once.
I'm not sure exactly what to do for this contrast instruction. I'm not sure that we need to just flip the rational assumption and argue that we must be 'irrational'. Indeed, it is hard to decide sometimes if an act is rational or irrational in real human actions. To a certain extent, we need to do some things against what we think of as "common sense." In this sense (pun intended) we are actually like the RAND corporation, who, according to Poundstone "studied disturbing or bizarre ideas that occurred to military leaders or to RAND's own thinkers" (91). Furthermore, RAND "structures itself more like a university than a military body or a corporation" (88). The EmerAgency could be considered a kind of 'answer' to the RAND corporation. We are the new intelligentsia--the humanistic intelligentsia rather than the mathematic. However, like Von Neumann we are interested in "pure research" that, rather than having a clear application to the world is the application itself (more on this in a forethcoming post. I think we might understand our own research (to use a Baudrillardian construction) as a "more pure than pure research." This, according to Von Neumann, leads to the degeneracy of research.
Finally, we need to consider that game theory is ridiculously disembodied, completely removed from what Merleau-Ponty calls "the flesh of the world." The system is a pure abstract system with no room for fleshly beings, a system composed of pure mind and unrestrained desire, like Von Neumann himself who had the "best brain in the world," but who also only desired immediate sexual pleasures rather than emotional connection (Poundstone 26). Although one could argue that this makes him in touch with this body, it was clear that it was not a connection of the flesh in all its implications. Indeed, Poundstone notes that he was frequently away from Klara and would write love letters, but Klara was a cold woman. This coldness and distance is something I think we want to avoid. Furthermore, we should note that game theory helps Von Neumann develop computers and some of the later experiments using game theory were set up using computers as models. However, computers/robots have no emotional attachment to life or to anyone else--a key different from ourselves.
This difference between computers and humanity also crops up when discussing the specific definition of strategy:
