Sunday, September 24, 2006
Lol, this is to take your mind off the usual dry mugging. Having earlier posted on the Prisoner's Dilemma, a cornerstone in game theory, lemme present another variation. It is known as the 'Chicken'. In this scenario, you and friend are driving a car on a long straight highway. Both of you are driving your car straight at each other, in a line, at high speed. Oh dear, it looks like both of you are about to crash. At the last moment, your friend decided it was too risky, and veered away, therefore avoiding a bone-crushing death. As you drive past him, you laugh at him, calling him the chicken.
In this scenario, the objective is to be the person that stays straight on course. You want to laugh at the other loser who veered away. There are only 4 possible scenarios. Either both of you refuse to give in, hence meeting your untimely deaths as both of your cars smash together. Else, one of you veer away, be it you or your friend. The person who chickened out gets laughed at. Or both of you veer away, making the same decision simultaneuously not to play this dangerous game anymore. There's no one laughing.
Of course, quite a lot of us would definitely choose to chicken out, because it guarantees at least a lifeline. So if everyone thought like this, there will only be one outcome, that is, both of you veer away. This assumes that everyone thinks rationally, and values his life more than anything else. There will of course be cases where the insane guy has nothing to lose, and prefers to see you die with him. We do not consider this sort of people in our rational behaviour analysis.
More often than not, the leader of nations are not so rational. You can see examples of Chicken being played out between nations, each taunting the other to chicken out. A good example is the Cold War between America and Russia. Both were locked in the arms race. Neither wanted to both countries to crash into each other. But at the same time, both countries hopes that the other would "chicken out" hence gaining the chance to laugh at the other nation. And so both countries continue to drive their cars straight at each other, escalating the tension. It was finally that both countries decided to back down. Else, it may have been the 2 nations go down together.
So, how would you handle this situation?
Jing Hao
