RPS Chapters 4-5 (Jaclyn)
In chapter four, Fisher discusses the game theory behind the popular game rock-paper-scissors (otherwise known as bear-cowboy-ninja, which I’ve had the pleasure as using as a tie breaker during many soccer practices). He explains that rock-paper-scissors is intransitive game, meaning that their is no single option that out-wins the others. Thus, as long as each player of the game chooses their object in a randomized manner, the players should have a balance of victories and losses. Fisher suggests that this kind of balance amongst three options can be used to solve the Free Rider problem by creating a balance across all three options. In a free rider problem, a person’s three options are to cheat, cooperate, or “opt out,” which Fisher calls the Loner or Volunteer strategy. While I understand how the theory works in the experiments that Fisher provided, I’m not sure I understand how the volunteer strategy could easily be implemented into real life problems. I think that it’s rare for a person in a free rider scenario to recognize that he or she may have three options and that he or she will rarely considering the consequences of his or her actions on other people. The Truel that Fisher describes seems to be more prevalent in reality. I think that in conflicts across nations, the truel scenario definitely helps keep nations from making extreme actions against one another, yet increases tension and stress unnecessarily. Overall, chapter four left me mostly confused about how to effectively solve the free rider problem.
In chapter five, Fisher explains communication, negotiation, coalitions, and commitment. While it is easy enough to say that collaboration through communication is the key to solving many of the world’s problems, Fisher emphasizes that this is much easier said than done. One of the points that really stuck out me was that humans have the tendency to form cliques when they are apart of larger groups. Throughout middle school and high school, I’ve both been in cliques and excluded from cliques, and I think it’s unfortunate that this tendency continues into adulthood. I’ve seen cliques especially as a member of many sports teams, where the team as a whole is a family, but there are always smaller groups amongst the whole bunch who are a lot closer than the rest. The problem with cliques arises when people exclude others and talk badly about other groups. Within a team, this can be especially detrimental to a teams success and chemistry on the field, so I can see how cliquey-ness would harm the cooperation amongst members of a business. If only humans were genetically programmed to get along in big groups like animals are!
Another point that resonated with me was the fact that people usually cooperate with others only when they are guaranteed something in return, a concept which I follow all of the time. For example, when I go out to dinner with my family, I will sometimes trade some of my food for my brother’s food. I will go food shopping with friends but only if they come with me to the car wash. Little exchanges like this make it easy to cooperate with my friends and family, but I can see how it’d be harder to cooperate with those I don’t trust as much as my loved ones. I think reputation and history plays a big role in how much others trust a certain individual, company, or country. If a business is known for cheating others on deals in order to act in what they think is their best interest, then other businesses will be hesitant to cooperate with them in the future. Ultimately, this would be more costly than beneficial for the company, for if they cooperated on the initial deal, they would not have developed a bad reputation and would have many more opportunities to make deals in the future. I’m curious to see what Fisher has to say about how to build real trust in a real world in which people have so many differences in opinions and tendencies. I think that real trust could help solve a lot of the world’s issues, but I’m afraid trust may be extremely difficult to instill across such a diverse society.
You do speak true in that trust and communication play such vital roles, but another conflict arises, goals/ideologies. Even if people communicated and trusted one another to do the right thing, people would still come into conflict on how best to solve solutions. That is cliques form in the first place, not only is it people you trust, but most of the time similar goal focused people.