Game Theory in Batman
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohQY7kpOc50
An excellent example of the principles of game theory that we learned in class is the boat scene in the Dark Knight rises. In this scene, there are two boats. Boat A has criminals on it, Boat B has civilians. Each boat has a remote. Pressing the remote will blow up the other boat and save your own boat. If neither presses the button, the Joker will kill them both at midnight. The boats vote on their decisions. It can be expressed with this matrix.
| Boat B | |||
| Press the remote | Don’t press remote | ||
| Boat A | Press the remote | 0,0 | 1,0 |
| Don’t press the remote | 0,1 | 0,0 |
In this matrix, there are only two payoffs, living (1) and dying (0). It is also important to note that there is a significantly bad pay off in being the individual to press the remote, as this could warrant a lifetime of guilt and could be seen as murder. In this game, the players are acting simultaneously and neither is aware of what the other one is doing, resulting in no coordination between players. There is a dominant strategy to press the remote, because it best it gives you the opportunity to live, while preventing you from being the only boat to die.
However, in the film, neither boat is able to act on this dominant strategy due to the emotional outcomes that could be associated with pressing the remote. This should result in the payoff of 0,0 in the bottom right corner and both boats being detonated at midnight. However, Batman is able to break the circuits associated with the blowing up each boat, and everyone is able to live.