ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and Game Theory
http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/08/ice-bucket-dilemma/
An interesting application of what we’ve learned from Game Theory so far.
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The author enlisted his daughters as prisoners and wardens with the following conditions: Each prisoner had the choice to go Green or Red. If both prisoners go Green, the warden will donate $100 to ALS in the name of both of them. If one of them goes Green and the other goes Red, the one who goes Green gets $250 donated in their name, and the one who goes Red gets nothing in addition to a bucket of ice on the head. Finally, if both prisoners go Red, then each gets $50 donated in their name, but a bucket of ice each. As with any other prisoner dilemma game, collaboration (both going Green, in this case) produces the best result for both prisoners.
However if we examine the options for each prisoner, we see that going Green can either result in $100 or a bucket of ice, whilst going Red can either result in $250 or $50 with a bucket of ice. For both prisoners, the dominant strategy is to go Red, since they’ll make more money either way. This assumes that the prisoners are unaware of each other’s choices, and aim to donate as much money in their name as possible. We can see that the equilibrium is point is therefore both choosing Red, and hence both having ice buckets dumped on their heads. This example certainly says something about the explosiveness of the ice bucket challenge phenomenon earlier this summer. Of course, the good people over at the ALS Foundation probably knew about this outcome, and the fact that watching your friends get dumped on is highly entertaining. Each time a person challenged other people, the outcome was almost always the equilibrium result, which explains the huge number of ice bucket challenge videos. However that’s not to say that many people simply did it for fun, and not for selfish reasons as would be modeled in the prisoner’s dilemma game.