Tuesday, March 10

World

Idiots And The Games They Play

Every day we are presented with new evidence of the of the boundless incompetence of the Obama administration when it comes to foreign policy.  From giving a press conference detailing plans to retake territory captured by ISIS to chasing a deal with Iran that everyone knows they won't honour, the White House seems unable to put a foot right.

Why?

Russia, for example, and to some extent Iran, are in game theory terms rational actors.  In an uncertain world, they will look to their short term interest.  That means that unless you pose a convincing threat, they will cheat every single time, treating international politics as an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma scenario.

The West is both affluent and peaceful precisely because it has learned not to do that.  Except under extreme provocation, Western nations co-operate with each other every time, a strategy known as superrationality.

Superrational actors take into account not only their short-term interests, but the interests of the other party in the interaction, and that party's own reasoning.

If you know that another party is a superrational actor, by far the most rewarding long-term strategy is superrationality on your part.  This involves convincing them that you are superrational as well, of course, because superrationality can only work when it's known to be mutual.

Rational actors in a superrational world are shut out of the peace and affluence of the superational, because, as far as the superrational actors are concerned, the rational actors are a bunch of lying cheating back-stabbing murderous lunatics.

Where to the rational actors, the superrational actors are easy pickings and, frankly, soft in the head.

But if you can persuade everyone to take up the superrational strategy, everyone will benefit.  Defense budgets will drop to essentially zero, with the world's military turned into International Rescue.  No-one will be imposing economic sanctions on anyone else.  No-one will be starving or rioting.  There will be no need for spies or secret police.  For the cost of any of the recent relatively minor wars, we could have established a self-sustaining colony on Mars.

But while a rational strategy against a superrational actor throws away enormous potential in the long-term for real short-term gains, a superrational strategy against a rational actor always loses.  

Only a complete idiot would follow a superrational strategy against a known rational player.

And that's precisely what the Obama administration does.

Why?  Well, because they're complete idiots.  Why are they complete idiots?  For now I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

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