Donald Trump and game theory: Expert says no brilliant 3-D chess is involved
In this article, Chuancey Devega, the author is describing how Trump is modeling game theory strategies in his political campaign. Devega continues to describe politics as a game and describes how winning needs one “player” to have an advantage over the other. The article goes on to talk about how President Trump is unpredictable and compared his tactics to a game of three dimensional chess. Devaga also brings up the example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma and compares Trump’s actions to a one iteration and one move game. There is also a theory that repeated plays lead to different outcomes compared to single play games.
After learning about game theory in class, this article relates to the material that was discussed in lecture because of the many different aspects of game theory that is just used in everyday activities. Devega states, “An easy case is if you have what’s called a “dominant strategy” that’s unconditionally best. Whatever your opponent does, you always have a best choice. But most situations, including in the game of chicken, are such that your best choice depends on what the other player does.” This statement talks about topics that were discussed in class, such as dominant strategy and can be used to determine human behavior and influence individual’s decisions. There is a relationship between what one party decides and what the outcome would be if one thing were to happen over another. When introduced to game theory, it was related to many different things that happen in everyday activities, for example, the highway traffic. In this case, President Trump is playing the game to win and aims to kill the opposition to get full payoff.