Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Strangelove is a satire on the nuclear scare and Cold War politics that contains many sexual images and innuendos that make connections between war and gender stereotypes, and also situations/concepts that relate to material we have studied in class.  It is revealed to the war room that the Soviet Union has created a doomsday machine in response to a notion that the United States was working on a similar machine.  Dr. Strangelove, one of the president’s advisors, believes the doomsday machine would not be a “practical deterrent.”  All throughout the film, we see posters and banners that read “Peace is Our Profession” and a binder in the war room that reads “World Targets in Megadeaths.”  After the strike is called, the booming voice on the intercom states that the “commie has no regard for human life.”  Similar impressions have been instilled in Americans when a conflict with various other nations occurs; American society often promotes our society as superior and humane while the other is backwards and vicious.  General Turgidson later states that America can recall the attack, but if that doesn’t work the only other option is total commitment and gives two ultimatums to post-war environment.  The first being that merely 20,000,000 people are killed, the second, 150,000,000 people killed.  He also lays out six options or paths they can take in this nuclear scare with option number five being the path where the Americans catch the Russians “with their pants down.”  These choices and predictions relate to concepts in game theory we have been studying and mirror the attempts to predict outcomes of war.  When questioned about the doomsday machine, Dr. Strangelove states that “deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack, and so, because of the automated and irrevocable decision making process which rules out human mettling, the doomsday machine is terrifying, simple to understand, and completely credible and convincing.”  Another crucial statement in the movie is Dr. Strangelove’s assertion that the “whole point of a doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret.”  In the conclusion of the film, Dr. Strangelove presents an idea that relates to the reading by Kahn that was assigned earlier and is also discussed in the Kaplan reading on the film.  His method of preserving the human race also reinforces the ideas on sex and gender portrayed in the movie and brings up the ethical issues of using technology and mathematical reasoning to decide what will be most beneficial for the survival of the human race.

Demon Core vs John Cusack

The severity of nuclear research and weapons,
The Demon Core 1945

Starring: The Demon Core as The Demon Core
              John Cusack as Harry Daghlian

Yes it did glow.
No Harry (John) didn't make it (acute radiation poisoning, 25 days later).
Neither did the other(s) (Leukemia, all others present, decades later).

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? 

LITERALLY a tie.

http://what-if.xkcd.com/

Why I'm an Economics Major...

Game theory is one of my favorite concepts I have learned in Economics and the reason I chose to write about this topic this week.  We talked in class about "A Beautiful Mind" which is what my high school economics teacher used to explain game theory to us.  This is when I fell in love with econ.  This was the first class that I felt I could really use random theories or concepts from class for real life.  And that feeling continues until this day.

After reading these readings, the one I enjoyed the most was about "Classical Game Theory and the Missile Crisis."  I enjoyed this article because it was a new way at looking at game theory.  I have usually seen examples with producers gaining money, vigilantes getting a criminal sentence, or countries worrying about their GDP.  I thought it was interesting to see how they placed values on withdrawing of their missiles or maintenance of their missiles.  Furthermore, I thought the Chicken idea was a good way to look at this too.  The fact that they said that these decisions are not made at the same time was something that I agreed with, but always just assumed that they have to make it because that's how Game Theory worked.  I like how they took that decision making into account.  Finally, I thought that the Theory of Moves was a little more interesting because it calculated different outcomes rather than just what game theory showed.  The analysis of the numerous of cases just made me think a lot more about how game theory could be changed or pushed to new directions.

Game Theory

I found the articles on Game Theory rather fun to see the outcomes. It seems to me the natural flow of a Game and its termination rules, what the Brams article called Alternative, would be a natural assessment of how rational beings would play Game Theory. In the same article it also addresses that Kennedy and his advisers, as well as the Soviets, acted as rational players for the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is obvious since we did not attack with nukes and the Soviet players did not set up us the bomb  during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

One of the articles I believe addressed this by reporting that the U.S. advising committee for the crisis evaluated all possible out come with Game Theory and all possible avenues, effectively creating what Nash called a Game Tree. In the two by two schematics that the articles proposed the Nash equilibrium occurred when both sides had an equal ordinal value. Nash equilibria of the Cuban Missile Crissis occurred when both sides stood down, a compromise, or when nuclear war happened. Then if one were to take into account how the world views the actions one would change the dynamic of Game Theory into Alternative Theory. This involves even more rationality on both sides to show a dynamic flow of what choice will result to.

But suppose that neither side was rational, and that instead of nuclear warfare you have two prisoners. If both were rational beings and both are being interrogated for a crime they are suspects for then the rational outcome would be both "ratting" out the other. Both would get a reduced sentence but neither would be ultimately free. If both withheld snitching then both would walk away scott-free. The other 2 possibilities are one rats but the other doesn't. In 3 out of the 4 outcomes someone admits to the crime so the other, rational person, would opt for also admitting. This is all fun and games (theory) but what happens if humans aren't rational?

 In the post I made prior to this I referenced a web article on a Scientific American addressing the uncertainty of irrational people. It comes from a phenomena in real life situations of the prisoner's dilemma that there is a significant non-zero occurrence of both parties not snitching on the other party. Classical (rational) thought says this to be the least probable occurrence yet the article states it to happen about 40% of the time. That leaves the other 60% to be split up among 3 other options resulting in the phenomena opposing that of the classical thought. While Game and Alternative Theory are great tools to appraise an ordinal relation (to steal a term coined by Nash) between two cases there is a certain uncertainty due to human actions that it fails to encompass.

Which begs the question; was the game theory used during the Cuban Missile Crisis a lucky fluke? Or were so many lives and variables on the line that both sides were forced to be the most rational beings possible to make game theory work? Or is there a deeper side to game theory that has yet to be found/refined?

Somebody set up us the bomb...