Comments on: Changing the Rules of Survivor

By: jlw

jlw — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 18:12:11 +0000

The Jervis piece—actually co-authored with his daughter, who was a fan of the show—can be found in this rather long pdf. (The pdf is worth downloading, as it gives you the entire Nov/Dec 2000 issue of The Sciences. Even if I am biased—and I am—I gotta say that was a great magazine.) Tidbit: This review was lined up at the last minute—it fell into our laps, really. But we had to round up tapes of the show to send to him, as he hadn’t watched it when the first season was broadcast. Does it show?

By: Henry

Henry — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 02:43:26 +0000

Alex John is actually right here. The penultimate stage in Survivor is the one where there are only two players left, whom the jury (composed of several previously eliminated players) chooses between in the very final stage. So he’s using the word in its correct sense – each player wants to end up at the penultimate stage with an unpopular player, so that he/she is the one chosen in the final stage. At this point of the decision tree at least, backward induction works just fine (although certain players don’t seem to have followed the game tree back, either through doltishness or sincerity/niceness).

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 23:36:25 +0000

John- Sorry, you brought up a pet peeve of mine. I hate it when people say penultimate when they really mean ultimate. Penultimate means second to last.

By: WeSaferThemHealthier

WeSaferThemHealthier — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 16:36:21 +0000

John, “Game theory does yield the non-obvious prediction that unpopular players [...] should do well” I don’t watch Survivor. Can that actually be observed most of the time?

By: Henry

Henry — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 15:04:21 +0000

Dirk – you’re probably right, and I should have dwelt on this more. But of course, games of incomplete information are relatively intractable – Harsanyi’s trick and others aren’t likely to lead us to be able to make very useful predictions. So really, game theory would direct us to the beginning point of network theory in this kind of situation. There was a special issue of Rationality and Society a few years ago on the complementarities of game theory and network theory – I really should dig it up. Lee – a very interesting point. A lot of it does come down to the personality – which is something that we’ve nothing useful to say on that Machiavelli didn’t say usefully several centuries ago. I haven’t read Jervis on this – would love the cite. I do know of at least one very prominent game theorist who is a survivor buff. Kevin – the method of picking the teams differed significantly from previous seasons too, and, I would think, will have some interesting long term implications. First, most obviously, it split up the sexes, by obliging women to choose men and vice versa. Second, it created the basis for dyadic loyalties rather than group loyalties – if x picked y, it suggests at least the foundation of a pair-based loyalty that may come into play later. Or not, as when the hairdresser whose name I can’t remember didn’t pick the bartender, whose name I also can’t remember. I do think this season looks promising – and it certainly won’t be hard to beat last season, which was the worst ever imo.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 09:01:31 +0000

Game theory does yield the non-obvious prediction that unpopular players (whatever that means) should do well, since each player’s optimal penultimate outcome is to reach the final vote along with a highly unpopular fellow-player. Of course, that assumes that unpopularity is an inherent characteristic. With perfectly rational players, perfectly capable of dissimulation, everything is random.

By: Lee Scoresby

Lee Scoresby — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 04:30:04 +0000

Henry, did you ever read the Jervis’ piece on Survivor and game theory? Anyway, an important point, and one I’ve been on about for a while (but haven’t published on, sadly, unless one of my current pieces actually sees the light of day). There’s a good deal of sociological argumentation – not just by Padgett and Ansell but also in various work on exchange theory, symbolic interaction, and framing – that suggests the virtues of ambiguity in strategic interaction. Indeed, Schelling even makes this point at various times in Arms and Influence: making it difficult to parse your interests and intentions can give one an advantage. In a lot of network theory, this advantage can be understood, P&A suggest, as deriving from network centrality within a segmented network. Indeed, one of the reasons why centrality is often used as a proxy for power is that it provides actors with asymmetric access to information (why, for example, the departmental administrator is often the most powerful person in an academic department). Yet there’s a systemic ambiguity (duh-duh) in empirical work, such as P&A’s famous piece, about whether robust action derives from structural location, personal attributes, or some combination of the two. I do find it interesting, in this respect, that a large number of important political actors have been described as, like Cosimo, Sphinxes (William the Silent, who was not silent but was rather difficult to pin down, is one example). Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. The important point: game theory doesn’t necessarily suggest the opposite of robust action – after all, information asymmetries are a big deal in a lot of formal models. The problem, rather, at least in IR, is that this fad for “credible commitments” and for seeing imperfect information as a source of conflict tends to obscure the older recognition in IR theory that ambiguity is a powerful strategic weapon.

By: Kevin Drum

Kevin Drum — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 01:53:00 +0000

“It’s shaping up to be more fun than last season, because there are new – and unpredictable – rules…” But that’s not really true. The 20-player thing was pretty trivial and lasted for only a day. After the first 24 hours, we were back to the standard 18-player, 2-tribe game. Seems to me that this counts as only the slightest of twists, not really anything genuinely new. But you’re right: past seasons have had interesting dynamics even with static rules. Last season was an exception, and maybe things will pick up this year.

By: Dirk

Dirk — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 23:59:22 +0000

Henry, This is very interesting, thank you. What I am curious about is whether your argument is a general critique of game theory as a methodology, or more of the way game theory is most commonly used (and taught). Assuming I understand you correctly, you are saying that there are many situations in which the subsequent parts of the game are so uncertain that any attempt to write down the “game tree” would be completely futile, and any notion of solution by backward induction would be pointless. I think this observation is certainly correct. But does this really invalidate game theory? I would argue that positioning yourself in a way that maximizes your flexibility and options is exactly the kind of “optimal response” game theory would prescribe in this situation. Hence I am inclined to interpret your post as saying that game theory should focus more on games of bounded rationality / lack of knowledge about the game structure, than saying that game theory isn’t the best framework of analysis.