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I want something from you. You want something from me. How will we act out those agendas in a strategic situation? Unravelling and understanding this scenario is how game theorists make a living. Economist Roger Myerson, who co-won the Nobel Prize for his foundational work on game theory, defines it as "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers," and while the theory was born in the field of economics, it by no means stayed there. Today, game theory can be applied to everything from biology and international relations, to interpersonal relations like friendship and parenting. Here, philosopher and game theorist Kevin Zollman applies the science of strategic thinking to three questions: how can a parent get a kid to clean their room, how can we reduce the number of nuclear warheads in the world, and most pertinently in America at this moment: how would a game theorist respond to the Trump administration's corporate tax cuts? Kevin Zollman and Paul Raeburn are the authors of

The Game Theorist's Guide to Parenting: How the Science of Strategic Thinking Can Help You Deal with the Toughest Negotiators You Know--Your Kids

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KEVIN ZOLLMAN

Kevin Zollman is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also an associate fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, visiting professor at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (part of Ludwig-Maximilians Universität), and an associate editor of the journal Philosophy of Science. His research focuses on game theory, agent based modeling, and the philosophy of science. Zollman is the co-author of The Game Theorist's Guide to Parenting: How the Science of Strategic Thinking Can Help You Deal with the Toughest Negotiators You Know--Your Kids, with Paul Raeburn.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Kevin Zollman: So game theory is the science of strategic thinking. The idea here is that any time that you’re interacting with another person who has their own interests and is trying to achieve their own ends, they are trying to do the best they can given what they want, you’re trying to do the best you can given what you want, and so you’re interacting in a strategic situation. One of you is trying to achieve what you want, the other is trying to achieve what they want.

Game theory is a mathematical theory that attempts to make sense of how it is that people interact in these strategic situations. It was originally developed in economics in order to try to understand economic behavior like why people buy certain things or why they’re willing to work for certain wages, but later on it was expanded and applied to a variety of different situations including biology, international relations, and even interpersonal relations like friendships and parenting and family relations.

So one of the big problems that parents constantly confront when they’re raising two kids is that the kids will sometimes compete with one another in order to get out of doing family chores, leaving them to the siblings. But the problem is, of course, the other kid, the sibling or friend, is going to figure that out too and so will try and shirk as well. In the end the parents are left for a messy room, the kids are upset with one another, and nobody is happy.

One of the things that game theory has tried to deal with are these types of situations—they’re sometimes called social dilemmas or prisoner’s dilemmas. These are situations where each individual has a private incentive to do something, but when both of them follow their private incentives the group or the two siblings are worse off than if they had ignored their private incentives and just worked together.

One of the seminal discoveries in this area is that by teaching kids or countries, or anyone for that matter, that you can break up that interaction into a bunch of little, small interactions where you can cooperate with the other one—but just on condition that the other one cooperated with you before. You can change a bad social dilemma into a positive interaction.

This was put to its biggest use during the Cold War. Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated the START treaty with one another, and one of the big problems that they had is: how can you be sure that while you’re eliminating nuclear weapons your adversary is a...

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