The book: Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human BehaviorHidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior
https://news.mit.edu/2022/hidden-games-theory-book-0421
The resource I found was a book called Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior. I read the book after we learned the Game theory part in our course Info 2040. The book can be described using five sentences:People do things that seem weird; Don’t give proximate explanations; Game theory is a powerful tool; Game theory doesn’t require rationality; The game is often hidden. What impresses me the most about the book is the last part–The game is hidden.
In our course Info 2040, we learned a lot of types of classic games like the prisoner’s dilemma, the Hawks and Doves game, etc. However, this book gives me an insight into how to use game theory to analyze things that could more generally happen in our real life. The course Info 2040 let me know how to theoretically “solve” a game, but this book let me know that we can actually implement the game theory in so many scenarios in our real life and made me think of my normal life as a combination of different games so that I am able to make more rational decisions.
There is such an example in the book. In several regions of the world, men frequently develop long fingernails, particularly lengthy pinky nails. Although most of us don’t find males with long fingernails to be very appealing, when we questioned the men why they grow them, they indicated they find them to be lovely. We found that those with long fingernails worked indoor positions like secretaries, teachers, and mayors when we looked a little closer. These were the kinds of employment that not only let you grow your nails long but also had a little more prestige in the neighborhood. Long fingernails may therefore indicate a person’s occupation, which is one explanation for their presence in this instance. The game, however, was hidden. Another example is that in US, approximately 3% of the GDP is donated to charity annually. We only invest that much in R&D. But when we give, we frequently behave strangely. Most people agree in studies that they don’t even research a charity before donating to it. What motivates us to contribute, and why do we do it so ineffectively? Here, the game might have more to do with reputation. We’re not saying Habitat for Humanity volunteers sign up just so they can put some photos up on Instagram. They genuinely want to do the right thing and genuinely feel good swinging those hammers. But below the surface, there’s a hidden game going on that helps to shape those righteous beliefs and good feelings. And this hidden game, if we take the time to understand it, can help us understand why folks who want to do the right thing are the same folks who do it in such ineffective ways. There are many similar examples in the book, which bring me a new angle of seeing the world. I realized that the most stable things in the world are actually nash equilibrium, either pure nash equilibrium or mixed one. We don’t usually have the exact utility function for each choice in our real life, but as long as we could notice the hidden game around us when we made daily decisions, analyzing it using the “best response” method (we learned in class) could always produce a more rational decision for us.
I think what the book really brought me is that the book let me know how to implement what we learned in class our real life. We don’t usually have the exact number of utility, but the “game theory” method of thinking can always be used.