Rock-s, Pay-pers, See-sors!

 “Game theory is all around us. Despite its name, it is not just about games—it’s about the strategies that we use everyday in our interactions with other people.” (Fisher, 2008)

                Game theory. A mathematical theory. We normally don’t connect Math to Language or Communications. Seeing this, how can math be able to aid or cooperate with language to solve the greatest problems man had ever encountered? How can math improve communications or vice versa to be able to survive daily living? And how is cooperation ad self-interest connected to how people work, earn and live? Understanding each of these thoughts was summarized in a book by Len Fisher called “Rocks, Paper, Scissors”. Seeing the book, specifically the cover, the first time would make you think that it can possible be a book for strategies or cheats to games we usually play, but reading it gives you more satisfaction than that.

                The book showed common situations or problems which can be expounded and be connected to other fields like medicine, car racing, marketing, territory and many more. It gives you situations that would actually reflect to your personality, whether you value your self-interest more to gain something for yourself or to cooperate with a group to equally bag the prize.

                Game theory is the study of decisions in situations that are dependent to other participant’s strategies. It means that the outcome or the possible result to a certain problem may depend on your interaction and strategies plus the possible plot twist where the other participants might cooperate to your strategy or leave you up to pursue his own interest. Game theory also pointed out that the possible maximum gain, when we talk about self-interest, that they can get from the situation can control people’s plans and decisions. Reading the introduction already gave me the hint as to what the book is about, showing a smaller scale problems and relate it to problems, mostly about politics and economics, and show how each strategy can be used to solve a bigger problem like territorial claims, use of drugs, nature, stocks and the like. It is a science that connects everyday situations and gives us several ways to achieve cooperation.

                The first part of the book introduced us to the Prisoner’s dilemma where the test for self-interest was being exposed. It shows consequences to actions done by the prisoners whether neither confess, both confess or the other one confesses and the other one does not. Even my self-interest was tested with this problem, where the words “I will certainly confess.” echoed through my mind hile reading the problem since confessing was the only way to save yourself from being lock up, not realizing that the other prisoner might confess too, if given the same deal.

                The second part of the book highlighted the game “I cut and you choose” where real cooperation was shown and self-interest was subjugated. For example you want a cake for yourself and you have given the chance to cut the cake, given the situation that the other person will choose first after you cut the cake, how are you going to divide the cake? If you’re going to cut the cake unequally, a higher possibility would show that the other person would pick the bigger cake and you’ll be left out with the smaller cake. So the tendency to get the maximum cake that you can have is to cut it equally because you’ll get the same size of the cake no matter what part of the cake the other person will get.

                Chapter three gave us a glimpse of the seven deadly dilemmas and gave strategies as to how each problem will be solved like the game of the chicken and many more. Chapter four demonstrated the game “Rocks, Papers, Scissors” which served as a way to resolve conflicts or problems say if two teams tie on a game, how can we break the tie? The wonderful thing about this game is that you cannot dominate the other person/team since you are equally unaware as to what the other person would pick that would decide who wins or loses the game.

                The next chapters gave us a thorough explanations plus problems about cooperation and on how we can gain trust and even avoid the possible effects of Prisoner’s Dilemma in a certain situation. The notes gave us even more problems, jokes and trivia that are very educational, hilarious and worth reading.

                In totality, I found the book very, very entertaining since your decisions are also tested by the problem and it taught me how to deal with the consequences that I received by doing such actions. The book is very educational and very interactive and shows you how your decisions affect others, that what’s best for you isn’t always what’s best for someone or something else. I love how Len Fisher incorporated the strategies t nature, specifically in preventing the destruction of nature, and showed us scenarios of the wrongdoings of people and the effects it bring to others. I also love how he distinguished the benefits that we can get from cooperation more like the title that I gave to this essay where we rock on and decide, though uncertain, to every problems that we encounter, to pay our mistakes through the consequences that we receive and to see the problem in a bigger scope and apply the lessons that we learned in order not to repeat the same mistake again. (I highly recommend this book to everyone! =))