Game Theory and the “Philosopher’s Dilemma”

excerpt from “Goldman Sucks“, Armageddon Conspiracy Website
Published here: Friday, April 23, 2010 @ 5:47 AM

Game theory is a product and reflection of human behaviour, not the other way around. To engage in collaborative/corruptive/collusive practices is precisely to engage in a conspiracy, which has as its precise objective to maintain the power of those in power. All that game theory does is place conspiracy theories on a mathematical basis. Why call it game theory at all? Simply by applying a neutral, mathematical label to something does not explain it away as a neutral, mathematical phenomenon. Don’t you think there are obvious, predictable, quasi-mathematical rules to describe how conspiracies are conducted? They’re not random. They’ve been tried and tested for millennia.

In a previously article, we mentioned a gameshow based on the famous philosophical problem known as the Philosopher’s Dilemma, one of the central conundrums studied by Game theory. In the gameshow, two contestants have earned a lucrative pot of money between them. At the final stage of the show each contestant has to secretly decide to “split or steal”, and the other person has no knowledge of what decision they have taken. There are three options: a) if both contestants choose to split then they each go away with a fair split of the spoils: 50-50 each b) if one wants to steal and the other wants to split then the thief takes the whole lot and the other leaves with nothing c) if both choose to steal then both get nothing.

Prior to the final decision, the two contestants have a little chat about what they intend to do. Of course, anyone planning to steal is never going to admit it, so the chat always involves both parties swearing that they will split and have absolutely no intention of stealing. But can you trust what the other person is saying?

This is a classic Game theory scenario. What decision will you take based on no sure knowledge of the other’s intentions?

Now, there are those who regard the OWO as a product of some quasi-mystical Game theory influence that mysteriously shapes our world and society, and which leaves them blameless as the authors of humanity’s misfortune. Let’s be absolutely clear about this. There would be no game if the two contestants were true to their word and split the money. There would be no game if one or both contestants didn’t have the intention of screwing over the other and stealing all the money. There would be no game if one or both contestants weren’t willing to lie through their teeth to the other to disguise their true intentions. In other words, it’s not game theory that determines human behaviour but human behaviour that determines game theory i.e. it’s the fact that some human beings are liars, cheats and thieves that creates the dilemma, the “game”.

The thieves, liars and cheats are those with a “winner takes all” mentality, exactly the same mentality that underlies capitalism and the OWO [1].

We would assume that anyone who joins The Movement would be the sort of person who would never contemplate lying to and stealing from another person i.e. game theory does not apply to The Movement – every member always chooses the “split” option, to fairly share any windfall. Imagine a society based on the values of The Movement rather than on those of the sort of people who eagerly lie, cheat and steal to secure a decisive advantage for themselves; those like the bosses of Goldman Sachs!

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
Martin Luther King

In our world, the liars, cheats and thieves are the OWO. They have no compunction whatsoever about lying to us, cheating us and stealing from us. Who are the thieves of our world? They are those who have all the money, of course. Doh! How did a tiny Elite manage to commandeer an absurd proportion of the world’s wealth? Did it happen by some miraculous accident or did they relentlessly go out of their way to make it happen? Did they lie, cheat and steal at every turn to consolidate and expand their power? How else could they have come to be in a position whereby, for example, just twenty-five staggeringly greedy hedge fund managers have the same amount of wealth that could pay for thirteen million children to receive an education.

You seriously imagine that such a thing comes about randomly, through no design on the part of the Elite? What planet are you living on? How naïve can you possibly get? The whole basis of our society is that of the Elite conspiring against everyone else, with the intention of placing themselves in positions of unassailable power and wealth that they will then pass on to their children, and they to theirs, in perpetuity.

Our world is ruled by privileged family dynasties and only the most stupid people on earth could possibly conclude that the Elite have not actively conspired to make this happen, and to maintain this condition indefinitely, at the expense of all the rest of us.

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Endnote:

[1] OWO stands for Old World Order in contrast to NWO, New World Order. According to this author, the OWO is the current world system, while the New World Order is the positive change his group is trying to accomplish, where there is no greed or hunger and the society is based upon Meritocracy instead of Capitalism in its overt and covert form. Wes Penre’s comment.