Monday, November 12, 2012

Schelling and Madness

When I read Schelling's "Strategy of Conflict" one particular example that he used stood out to me. It was the story of two armies, one slightly weaker on the run from the other. The smaller army comes to a river which can only be crossed at key points by a small number of bridges. They blow/destroy all the bridges but do not cross the river. The larger army is still approaching their position but the smaller army now has nowhere to run.

Initially this seems crazy. Why cut yourself off? The logic behind this is (as understood by the generals and not the soldiers of course) is that with no escape you will face your 40/60 odds instead of continuing to run while the odds of your victory continue to decline. By giving your army a dead end you there's a fight or die imperative. There is no running and because of this you may actually increase your odds of winning. A secondary implication is the fact that the opposing army might understand that and seek negotiations, wanting to avoid a pyrrhic victory.

So in a seemingly irrational situation there is a logic, and a logical reason to behave irrationally.

I think logical irrationality may be more common than we think, and that we may use it in our everyday lives. I know that after reading Schelling's book I noticed certain irrational ploys on my part to get what I wanted in my personal relationships (nothing terrible, just trying to get the last piece of cake or something). Have you noticed yourself using irrationality as a logical strategy? 

10 comments:

  1. I also agree logical irrationality is more common than we think and applicable in a number of situations. In Kimball's article, a former student discusses Schelling's cliff lecture. This lecture presents the situation of being chained at the ankle to another individual on a cliff. As soon as one person gives in the other will be rewarded and set free. Schelling argues the purposeful projection of "madness" can be a useful strategy in this situation. By dancing closer and closer to the edge, the other person is more likely to give-in due to the higher risk of both individuals falling. Although irrationality and projected "madness" doesn't always work, it can be beneficial.

    In general, people do not trust crazy people and thus projection of madness has its advantages. I have an example of this. One time Dan, an acquaintance of mine, arrived home from work only to find 4 men robbing his apartment. One was driving the car, another standing guard with a baseball bat, and the other two were making trips in and out of the apartment with valuable items. It was raining fairly hard and the men didn't notice Dan hiding just around the corner. With the element of surprise on his side, Dan picked up a hammer he found in a nearby toolbox and went charging at the car as the men continued packing items. The larger man with the bat began to walk towards Dan, who is now yelling and flailing his arms. After seeing this the bat wielding guard decides not to test his luck and runs back to the car. The three others after standing in shock, hurry to follow. I think this illustrates that no one wants to mess with a guy that seemingly has nothing to lose, since this insinuates that individual sees no risk in their actions.

    Although there are situations when irrationality is logical, if the man with the bat would have called Dan's bluff things might have turned out a little differently, as Dan is a smaller guy with no fighting skills and was clearly outnumbered.

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  2. Irrationality is often the wild card people use in difficult situations like the ones in the readings and the one Will mentioned. Somehow, doing the illogical thing in certain situations makes more sense than doing what is deemed the rational thing and people seem to be okay with that. We see this concept a lot in pop culture too when someone says to another, “I know this is crazy, but…” For me, these readings brought up a question about a topic we had read about earlier when discussing game theory. It is generally said that, although we like to think we are rational, humans are normally irrational. So is the “madness” being discussed in these readings at the extreme end of the irrational scale? Can we even have a rational standard, or is it all dependent on the point of view?

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  3. Thank you Sophie for that example from Schelling. This 'madness' of fighting for one's life would seem to elevate one's stakes as the payoffs are greater. This ultimate gamble brought up a couple of interesting questions for me.
    1. What if one (or all) of the players in the game believe in a afterlife? I know I mentioned this last class and it may seem I am fixated on the topic, but I think that the idea of one's actions in this life influencing his/her position in an afterlife would affect the payoffs and devalue the consequences of the current life.
    2. What role does glory have in devaluing death? In this case, I am thinking of war stories from Greece (Homer's works come to mind). A player would most likely engage in a fight to the death or a game where the odds are clearly stacked against them if they think their agreement to the game will give themselves glory (I am thinking of Hector vs Achilles).
    3. Finally, Sophie discusses how the general of the weaker army may engage the stronger army at the water to experience 40/60 odds rather than increasingly diminishing odds. One point from the "Will the Survivors Envy the Dead" reading is that losses become diminished in the human mind when they are expressed as percentages. Leaders (and I use this terms as officials that make the decisions and not necessarily those who motivate their subordinates i.e. Congress declaring war) seem to follow this mindset. However, when the problem is personalized (like the economic cost of war), the payoffs of war change instantaneously.

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  4. I really think that as people in generally we are really bad about thinking through the long term consequences of our actions. The first by Kahn just shows how war is one of the most selfish things we can do. The generation who gets in the war will suffer the initial losses, but its the next generations that will be the most affected. The future generations could have an increase in genetic abnormalities, and unable to do anything to change it. I feel that war has a very high cost to pay, that could never be outweighed by the benefits.

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  5. I sometimes wonder at what point can something be said to be irrational. In the example Sophie gave, the soldiers who cut off their escape route, hoping that this tactic will increase their odds of winning, probably thought that this choice was a rational decision. However, in the eyes of the opponent (assuming that the opponents knew that they were slightly better than the team that cut off their escape route) they probably thought that this was an irrational decision. From personal experience, I make irrational choices a lot of times (though the ones that can clearly stick out in my mind are times where I’m playing a game). I find that when I make a “irrational” decision, it’s usually when my back’s up against the wall, or that I want to surprise my opponent by doing something that they wouldn’t expect me to do. Regardless of whether or not my “irrational” decision works or not, my opponents still view my actions as “irrational”, despite the fact that I consider them “rational” seeing that they worked. So my question is, how does one define an action to be irrational?

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  6. The story of burning down the bridges reminded me of when Hernando Cortez ordered his crew to burn down the ship that they have used to come to the Americas. This seems irrational as it would be better to have the option to go back to Europe, but Hernando Cortez wanted his crew to give their %100 to their mission. I guess he was successful because he was able to conquer many Mexican cities and was able to eventually return home on his first trip.
    A lot of things seem irrational at first, but turns out to work well. For example, refraining from telling a child that he is gifted and smart may seem like a bad thing to do, but studies have shown that this leads to the child not working hard towards things.

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  7. Well unfortunately just about everyone has already laid out all the points of view I was going to bring up, but I will nonetheless add that I agree with Philip& in that the choice, in the story you proposed, was not in fact irrational at all. Quite the opposite, if the generals had been on the run long enough to reasonably assume that an encounter between armies was inevitable, the only logical decision they are left with is whether to fight now or later (when energy/morale would be lower). A better question would be why they didn't blow the bridges after crossing and perhaps prevent the larger army's pursuit altogether - course I don't know the circumstances so I can't really judge them on that.
    What really took me by surprise, though, was how surprised everyone was (particularly the Kimball article, I guess.. at least based on the tone he sure seemed incredulous) with the idea of irrationality being a logical defense. As Kimball said (though I don't think he did an adequate job of supporting it), this kind of thought isn't.... well, I mean it couldn't possibly be new, right? Granted, I grew up in a very post-PostModern world, but I've always known the irrationality ploy to be one of the best and most useful. Personally, in fact, I happen to use it most if not all of the time. In chess, for example; I am not the type of person who is willing to spend all hours of the day learning strategies and moves and practicing a board game over and over - I really only play chess for fun. So whenever I meet an opponent whom I have sized up to be a highly skilled and experienced player, I know that the reason I am outmatched is because they will more or less be likely to predict my every move, and in doing so understand my strategy well enough to win. Thus, when faced with a decision between taking a great risk and taking a sure loss, the only logical course of action is to be completely unpredictable [and hope that my subconscious is not using some analyzable strategy without my knowing]. In such a way, the odds of winning have been more or less reduced to 50/50, as opposed to the previous setting of, say, 20/80 that I might rationally outwit my opponent.
    Actually, to tell you the truth, I love that kind chaos strategy and, since I often find myself in situations where I am only in it for fun to begin with, I almost always use it. The best part of employing chaotic strategies all the way through [instead of as a last-ditch effort, when the opponent might see it as such and call you out on it] is that once the confusion clears, the battlefield often narrows just enough that you can make all the best rational decisions and neatly bring things to a close.

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  8. After reading Schelling's "Strategy of Conflict" and even while I was reading these post the thought that religious faith being a form of logical irrationality has been continuously floating around in my head. Many both accept and will claim that religious faith goes beyond rational thought, but does this mean having faith can’t be logical? Many including myself believe logic can play an active role in a person’s decision to believe or have faith. A great example of religious faith being a logical proposal is Pascale’s famous wager that involves the argument that believing in God can be thought of as logical even though there is scientific evidence supporting its irrationality. Here is the wager;

    A.)If one bets that God exist, then there are two possible outcomes: 1.) God exist (one wins the bet); one gains much – one enjoys eternal bliss. 2.) God does not exist (one loses the bet); one loses very little.

    B.)If one bets that God does not exist, the outcomes are: 1.) God does not exist (one wins the bet); one gains very little. 2.) God does exist (one loses the bet); the consequences are immense – eternal loss.

    When comparing the two, the clear choice is A, supporting that religious faith can be looked at as logical even though many will consider it to be an irrational characteristic and was only brought about through evolution. This is just an example I thought I would bring forth regarding religion being considered a logical irrationality.

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  9. Several people above also mentioned the points that I wanted to make. Namely, that very few things seem irrational in the eye of the beholder. Even a truly insane person would never think their actions or beliefs are crazy. Another good example of this is religion: every single religion looks crazy from the outside, yet certain religions (example paganism or mormonisms) often get singled out as being especially irrational.
    Furthermore, often times actions that seem irrational from the outside are actually quite rational when taken from the perspective of the individual doing the action. Therefore I am not sure if true irrationality even exists among humans because there is always some sort of logic behind irrational actions- even if that logic if flawed.

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  10. Several people above also mentioned the points that I wanted to make. Namely, that very few things seem irrational in the eye of the beholder. Even a truly insane person would never think their actions or beliefs are crazy. Another good example of this is religion: every single religion looks crazy from the outside, yet certain religions (example paganism or mormonisms) often get singled out as being especially irrational.
    Furthermore, often times actions that seem irrational from the outside are actually quite rational when taken from the perspective of the individual doing the action. Therefore I am not sure if true irrationality even exists among humans because there is always some sort of logic behind irrational actions- even if that logic if flawed.

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