Liar Game Theory
The Liar Game is a japanese comic book, or Manga written by Shinobu Kaitani, in which an honest college student named Nao Kanzaki is forced to participate in a series of games which heavily relies on players deceiving one another and profiting of their opponents losses. The penalties of the game affect the character’s real world situations involving them in debt. This leads to all the players (those in it to win money and those who aren’t), to take the game very seriously. It is through this analytical approach that Kaitani is able to apply many game theory theorems in a practical format all the while showing us the reactions and moves of real life players.
The game I found most interesting out of all the games Kaitani includes in his manga is the “Minority Rule”, a game which is close to the already pre-existing El Farol Bar problem which is already a popular game theory question. In the El Farol Bar problem, the people of the city want to go to the bar to have fun, however, if more than 60% of the population shows up then automatically the people do not have a fun time. Similarly in the Minority Game, people vote yes or no on a particular binary question. The number of yes and nos are counted and the people who voted the less popular answer get to stay while the rest are asked to leave. For example if the question is “Am I a boy?”, several people will answer yes or no, after the answers are counted the people who gave the less popular answer are allowed to continue playing while the people who gave the more popular answer are made to leave.
The solution shown to the readers in Liar Game is a unique solution because it defeats the restrictions of Game Theory and shows us exactly what a “rational” human being would do. This is because Game theory sets that no rational person would ever cooperate in such a game without the fear of being cheated but Liar Game explores solutions in which cooperation leads to a happier result. When the main goal of a game becomes survival rather than winning, cooperating becomes a highly rational move. Every player in the manga does their best possible response in every situation and yet it avoids losing to popular game theory notions like the prisoner’s dilemma where people eventually choose to sell each other out.
The true genius of this round is at the end when there are only 4 contestants left, and the seconds lead of the manga, Akiyama displays to everyone that he is voting yes regardless of the question and does it immediately after the question is asked. This is when Game Theory really fits in. Since there are only 3 contestants left to vote, the next player to vote must vote No if he or she wants to be the minority, however if all 3 remaining contestants vote No in order to be the minority automatically Akiyama will be the minority and win the game. This is when Akiyama drops his iconic line that is, “If everyone thinks for themselves, I will win the game”. In this situation no one would like to vote No, yet if they don’t they will not win leading the game to a stalemate that can only be solved if the players ignore their “rational” thought of game theory and cooperate with one another.
The article essential talks about how in Game Theory, the most rational approach is cooperation but we often get blinded by emotion and paranoia which leads us to a suboptimal outcome. Liar Game puts a practical view on Game Theory for people in desperate situations and is still able to show how the goodness of humanity sometimes is able to trump the deceitfulness present in all of us.
Source: https://liargame.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/liar-game-theory/