Game Theory
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
By Agatha Valencia
PROMPT—Never will I forget ...
In my second year of university, I did something most people would call ‘stupid.’
It was Microeconomics II and we were on the topic of Game Theory. Our teacher recreated a game, let us choose our groups, and then made us reach agreements between each other. I had no grasp of the theory part of game theory and, to be honest, wasn’t too interested in it. It was a theory made to maximize profits from games, to get the best possible situation, even if it meant a detriment to the other party. To be fair, most of the games talk about an equilibrium, so they aren’t all necessarily dependent on a lack of humanity, but the game we were playing was made to distinguish who among ourselves was clever and cunning enough to trick the others. I don’t like any of that because I know I’m not. I present myself as intelligent and do my best, but I rarely act as a strategist. Still, in my group of friends, the tacit decision had been to have me lead. That’s because even though I don’t feel like a strategist, I tend to be more of a strategist than they are. They were truly born pacifists. All of them. In contrast, I don’t mind dismissing someone I don’t like.
So we were in this game, had no idea how many rounds it would go for, and my brain did what it tended (tends!) to do when it is presented in competition with other people’s wits: pay little attention to the rules and misunderstand as much as possible. I don’t remember if there was a way for us to know how many rounds there would be. I wasn’t interested. We started cooperating with the other group. This group had in its midst two private high school finance bros wannabes who had been enabled all their lives by their rich families. It was intimidating: they had a confidence that every single person in my team lacked. I was leading, allegedly the most confident etc etc, and I lacked it so much. Besides, there was the added pressure of being of interest to one of the class’s assistants (a guy more advanced in the career). We had gone on a couple of outings (would rather not say they were dates) and, even if I didn’t like the guy that much, I didn’t want to look stupid. This was a person who thought I was pretty. Didn’t want them to think I could be easily manipulated or was dumb in any way.
Remember: I had refused to learn anything about Game Theory. I trash out information from my brain until it is important for my survival. I didn’t know what to do, so in round 4, I sent my most kind-hearted friend to speak to them. The kind of person you knew was incapable of harming anything (either a living being or your chances at something). She seemed incapable of bad-natured actions. I sent her to talk to their representative because I had decided we would betray them, here and now.
I still remember the assistant’s reaction. He was intently looking at me, now knowing well that I was an insecure person acting like someone who knows what they are doing. It was all quite patronizing. What I did was self-sabotage, of course. I had no interest in winning. What I was supposed to do was to wait until later in the game, when the earnings became an even bigger incentive for betrayal. But I didn’t want to let two wannabe finance bros beat me to it. I didn’t want to feel like an easy target. They made more money in the end, yes, because they betrayed, but it didn’t feel as bad because I didn’t let them win my trust. I didn’t feel stupid. I didn’t trust them from the start, showed them we were unpredictable, then my friends and I felt guilty and basically refused to betray them again because doing it had, in the first place, been against our nature. It felt like we gave it to them, not like it was snatched from us due to ingenuity.
Truth is, I don’t thrive in situations where I have to be wary of people. I don’t want to have to be bad to people. The wannabe finance bro who was leading the other group kept saying “everybody knows you have to betray at the end!” wishing to make me feel stupid, being all angry, kind of telling me “you should have acted the way rational actors do so I could betray you and win by a larger margin!”
I don’t remember the results. What I do remember is that my group got a good enough percentage. You could win up to 5%. We got between 3%-4%. It was done with classifications: groups would be ordered by the # of coins they had achieved, so the first group would get 5%, the last group 0%, etc. The group against us made more, yes, they weren’t the top one, but got more than 3%, but isn’t 3% good for an irrational player with zero knowledge in the matter and little interest in this sort of thing? Once we had betrayed them, we sort of relaxed (after that guy came to scream at me and I got to scream back at him). The fear of being made a fool transformed into guilt. It worked well for everyone, we even knew the moment they were going to betray, we were like: yeah, let’s give them that, we owe them that. But what does it mean for someone so resigned with self sabotage to get 3%-4%?
It means there were people who trusted in the good nature of the opposite group to get a better grade and were continually screwed. Again and again. Because being at the bottom is impossible with a single betrayal. I wouldn’t like to be the sort of person to do that, and I certainly refused to be the person on the other side of the spectrum. Getting the 5% meant stress for me. I didn’t want that. I was doing okay in that class. No need to screw someone over for it. Two of my friends weren’t doing so well, that’s true, but I knew they didn’t wish to be the kind of person who got 5%. They also made me lead because they didn’t want to deal with any responsibility… Sign enough they could rescind that 1%-2% we didn’t get.
The guy who screamed at me kept saying there were people on his team who weren’t doing so well, that it would’ve been better to cooperate so both teams could get the best results. God bless his soul, he’s such a hero. Except that this game made it hard for both teams to get the best results. For that, we would depend on the non-betrayal of every single team. The utopia of everyone getting 5%. It wasn’t going to happen. We study economics, some people suck. And no one was doing properly well in this class; we were, at best, okay.
This guy couldn’t control his feelings. He was hurt. But I didn’t feel bad, because he said it himself: everybody knows you have to betray at the end. His intention had been to win from the beginning; maybe not with constant betrayal, but I think he saw us as girls he could help until it felt detrimental to his goals. He wanted to feel great in every single one of his choices, and with what I did, he couldn’t. I’m not the happiest regarding my actions of that day, but now I know I wouldn’t have been happy either way. Getting the 5% wouldn’t have made me happy. For him, getting the 5% would have made him the happiest. That’s why I betrayed when it didn’t make sense to do so.
Agatha Valencia is a writer born and based in Costa Rica who studied economics to finance her passions. Her work explores women who move quietly against expectation. A newcomer to literary publishing, she has been writing fiction and essays for years. Outside of writing, she studies musical theater and, sometimes, performs in drag as euroraver_25.