Game Theory and The Pandemic
Link: https://indiacurrents.com/game-theory-explains-the-pandemic/
Scholars and journalists usually employ graph theory to analyze the pandemic as nodes and edges perfectly simulate people and the spread of the virus. The relationships (edges) between people determine who gets infected. However, people should not ignore the interconnectedness at the level of behavior, since whether we choose to physically contact each other largely influence the overall situation. Thus, the linked article is appropriate and creative to use the game theory to interpret the current COVID-19 situation.
In the article, the writer perceives individuals as players of the game. Players have two strategies: keeping social distancing or not. In a simplified case with only two players, the one who chooses to maintain social distancing receives a lower payoff. But if they both choose to break social distancing, they get the lowest payoff. The payoff matrix looks like “Prisoner Dilemma” and the Nash equilibrium is neither of them keeps social distancing. According to the analysis, the author proposes questions about how to make people switch from not social distancing to social distancing. Although the investigation is reasonable, it is oversimplified. First of all, not all people have the same payoff. For instance, someone who is really scared of the virus will have a much lower payoff for the situation where both players do not keep social distancing. Also, when the government and media keep emphasizing on the importance of social distancing and the severity of the virus, people’s payoff will change accordingly. The payoffs in the article cannot accurately reflect the actual situation. Moreover, a game of two players is significantly different from a game of billions of people. A person tends to keep social distancing when most of his friends keep social distancing.
Additionally, the article points out that we can think of countries as players of the game, and the countries’ leaders should decide whether to share innovative practices with others. Based on an individual’s intuition, a country’s payoff will not be worsened to share helpful practices with other countries. However, there might be some implicit political and economic effects that I do not have enough information and knowledge to evaluate. Therefore, it’s hard to calculate the actual payoffs.
Through analyzing these two kinds of games, I found that the hardest part of game theory is to summarize everything a player cares about in the player’s payoff as numerous factors, both personal and community ones, impact the final result.