(2018-08-30) Zvi M You Play To Win The Game

Zvi Mowshowitz: You Play to Win the Game. By far the most important house rule I have for playing games is exactly that: You Play to Win the Game. That doesn’t mean you always have to take exactly the path that maximizes your probability of winning. Style points can be a thing. Experimentation can be a thing

It’s easy to forget, sometimes, what ‘the game’ actually is, in context.

Thus, when we face a game theory experiment like Jacob faced in Player of Games, we have to understand that we’ll face a variety of opponents with a variety of goals and methods. (games theory)

Jacob explicitly wasn’t trying to win at least one of the games by scoring the most points, instead choosing to win the greater game of life itself, or at least a larger subgame. (Real World Game)

A key insight is what happens when a prize is offered for the most successful player of one-shot prisoner’s dilemmas, or a series of iterated prisoner’s dilemmas. If you cooperate, you cannot win.

the only way to win is to defect and convince opponents to cooperate