Infinite games - Simon Sinek

Consistency > Intensity

Playing to play > Playing to win

Never winning or losing → Only ahead and behind

The Infinite Game: How to Lead in the 21st Century

Game theory as a dark art

Using game theory as a way to win and take advantage of situations.

• The evil plutocrat
  • Bribe the congress by saying you will fund the party that votes the most in favor of our bill instead of actually bribing the congressmen.
• Hostile takeover 1
  • Offer to buy 51% of the shares for 150$ and the other 49% for 90$, resulting in a deadlock that makes shareholders sell to you for the average price of 97.50$ instead of accepting your competitor’s 110€ offer.
• Hostile takeover 2 (not as interesting)
  • Get a board seat and ask for a board vote in such a way that board members have to protect their own self-interests as they believe the company interest to be lost already.
• The dollar auction
  • Set up an auction of actual money where people pay the bids regardless of whether they win or not;
  • People will outbid each other to the point of offering more money than you are auctioning because, if they win, they still lose less than if they stop bidding.
• The Bloodthirsty Pirates
  • (lol this now does make sense from a theory standpoint but would never work in real life (which bac also be argued for other examples))
• The prisoner's dilemma
  • In the game of “split or steal” you can look beyond the frame of the game and force the other to pick steal:
  • Say that you promise to pick “steal” and then split the cash after the game;
  • Remind him that the game just went from a coordination game where they choose to win everything to split to one where he and he alone is choosing to get half or walk away with nothing. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qjK3TWZE8&ab_channel=spinout3)

Game Theory As A Dark Art - LessWrong