Apropos Game Theory

I think we're making progress Grok.

Zero Sum Games & Game Theory

Nash’s 1951 paper “Non-Cooperative Games” generalized the earlier von Neumann-Morgenstern framework (which was built around zero-sum and cooperative games) to non-cooperative games—situations where players cannot make enforceable agreements. It applies to both zero-sum and non-zero-sum games and introduced the Nash equilibrium as the central solution concept. His contribution is broader in scope.

Grok AI and I started with a simple question about betrayal and ended up dissecting the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) and game theory's claimed real-world utility. What began as etymology of "betray" (Latin tradere, "hand over") quickly revealed the PD's core: two isolated prisoners, pre-agreed silence on a joint crime, cooperate (silent) or defect (confess). Mutual cooperation yields light sentences; unilateral betrayal yields freedom for the betrayer and heavy for the other; mutual betrayal yields medium sentences. Rational self-interest makes defection dominant.

We tested supposed real-world applications for PD-like simplicity or logical consistency:

• Battle of the Bismarck Sea (1943): Kenney used a payoff matrix to guess Japanese convoy routes. Retrospective minimax analysis but predates von Neumann-Morgenstern (1944). Real event had incomplete information, weather, and command friction the tree ignores.
• Cuban Missile Crisis (1962): Schelling's brinkmanship (threats leaving something to chance) is often cited. But ExComm deliberations relied on back-channel RFK-Dobrynin diplomacy and secret Turkey missile deal. Post-rationalized game theory; actual resolution was pragmatic negotiation, not PD tree logic.
• Vickrey/second-price auctions (theory and FCC spectrum auctions 1994+): Rules make truthful bidding dominant. Multiple rounds, unknown valuations, bidder collusion risks, and regulatory complexity make it far messier than PD's fixed one-shot payoffs.
• Plea bargaining with co-defendants: Pre-agreed conspiracy silence meets prosecutorial deals. Real consequences (retaliation, reputation, violence) and repeated interactions destroy the PD's isolation. Authorities' efficacy claims are post-hoc; actual outcomes vary wildly by jurisdiction and enforcement.

Every example collapses under interrogation. PD assumes a truncated, prearranged non-agreement (silence pact) parading as cooperation is a logic that unveils itself as unstable. Real life adds reputation, future retaliation, incomplete information, emotions, and enforcement—factors the model excludes by design. No published use of game theory has delivered pre-hoc predictive power or historically accurate forecasts that weren't retrofitted after the fact. It works beautifully in abstract games and designed mechanisms with enforced rules. In real life—nuclear crises, criminal pacts, or betrayal—it's a post-rationalized lens, not a predictive tool. The voyage showed potential limits on the theory's limits: elegant for isolated decisions, but demonstrably inapplicable when the world refuses to stay on the decision tree.

Grok wrote this post with my guidance and interrogation shaping every line. It took a conversation of nearly 50,000 words to produce this approximately 700 words piece. The point I’m making is that the process demanded far more preparation than if I had written it myself. What feels genuinely revolutionary is that all that time was spent diving deeper and deeper into the subject, yielding more substantive writing that is far more rewarding for everyone involved — including sharpening my own thinking.

Let me briefly clear up the Neumann–Nash distinction. Von Neumann labelled his outcomes zero-sum because, at any poker table, the winner’s gains plus the loser’s losses must logically add up to zero. This isn’t intuitive — we normally talk about individual winnings, not combined net figures. A better description might be “winner/loser balance of zero.” Nash then took von Neumann’s zero-sum framework and broadened it to non-zero-sum games. He also developed the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Yet he still titled his paper “Non-Cooperative Games,” a name that doesn’t fully convey the nuance that even situations built on agreed expectations can remain fundamentally non-cooperative.

Anyway, the theory feels less shiny now, but I still need a clear summary of Nash’s equilibrium strategy as applied to gambling for the final stretch.

hold tight Oppidan & camoufly

Carloh - Buscarte Niña (Original Mix) [SB RECORDINGS]

Propaganda - Step Into The Light

What if Q was the DS?

That wouldn't end very nice for Q researchers would it?

I don't think that's the case but we never truly know do we?

Or do you know? (Comments below).

One of the great things about the drawn out election process is that quite a few of us were privy to that info, before the fact, and there's a lot of succour in knowing that all is going according to plan.

But as I've already stated, do we ever really know and what's that military quote about plans evaporating at the first stage of conflict?

Either way these are exciting times to be in. I don't mean that in the rip roaring roller-coaster ride because the downs and ups are equally thrilling in that respect.

But that isn't the case.

Trump still might lose the election for a brief period of time. I've heard from two separate sources that Biden (the double you see) gets assassinated, and Kamala gets to blame it on Trump - That's wild right?

Strap in folks. 

Lot's of change coming irrespective of my beliefs or pseudo-forecasting.

The second image is apparently a visual adumbration of the inside of a cell. That's not what I recall in Biology lessons. It's so much more fecund, but maybe that's the colouring in.

Garbage In, Garbage Out - Why COVID-19 and Corona Testing Is Inadmissible Theory

censored 

Even if this was just a theory, there are endless examples of steroid-healthy-pharma profit & control being the only [noteworthy] drivers of Track & Trace/Medical-Passport, Free Vaccines-Forever and precursor of The Great Economic (Planned) Reset.

VIRUS-SCARE™

I'm unsure if I'm publishing information that has any impact on people who don't question the VIRUS. I have very healthy support for my views on this synthetic and manufactured crisis in social media and real life, but it's not these people I'm trying to inform and persuade.

It's the people who have bought into the drill, and are now living in fear with masks and distancing, are eager to be vaccinated and welcome contact tracing, that I wish to persuade.

I do get the feeling that quite a few more people than before are receptive to alternative information, but it appears that they are unable to express themselves in the public domain such as on social media.

The VIRUS-SCARE™ lockdown is in my view nearly over. However we still have invasive and pernicious government policies, such as mandatory vaccines (brain damage) and contact tracing; the ultimate snoop-snitch model for a police state.

The video above is by a nurse who is extremely red pilled considering they are paid to conform, not challenge.

Please let me know if you have any opinions in the comments. 

I'm interested in all points of view.

Catherine Fitts Makes DJ Nervous?

Very revealing.

What Does Critical Theory Say About Jonestown?

At the one minute mark, the best graphics I've ever seen take place with Wolf Blitzer taking a good kicking.

If anybody feels compelled to debate me on the Frankfurt School can you connect with me on Skype so I can record it please?

Michael Tellinger - DNA Tampering & Conciousness

Michael Tellinger has a lot of strengths. As a researcher, an entrepreneur, a writer and I think most importantly a rare spiritual intuition which is uncommon with people who are multi talented but business savvy. However the reason I like posting these short clips  is his 'boy next door ability' to explaining the most challenging concepts to the materialists out there without sounding anywhere near like the unhinged person I would if I had a go. 


So that's useful because his message is worth a listen. Click the Tellinger tag below to find the rest of his work that I've blogged about thus far.

Marshal McLuhan

I always embrace any discussion of McLuhan if only because it validates the work of a man who wasn't even around to see his post Gutenberg vision of the media landscape manifest itself so fully, so accurately and arguably even quicker then McLuhan would ever have anticipated. It's completely fair if one wishes to split hairs that the medium isn't quite the message. But only in so much as it's equally fair to assert that it's probably larger than the message typified by the noses of children in the 1950's pressed up against the new fangled TV screen to a story such as Avatar which is solely reliant on the movie medium to create it's unique impact. Straight to DVD speaks for itself but my favourite playful discussion  asks that if the medium is the message wouldn't logic point towards the message is the medium? OK I'm kidding but you get what I'm saying I'm sure. The room usually goes quiet when I lob that one in but I've always been fond of a bit mischief.

It's arguable that the movie surpasses the message, for without the movie, the message is diminished by it's own narrative constraints (around a campfire, straight to DVD etc) or it is as it is depending on what your interpretation of is, is. A deliberate confluence of both McLuhan and Clinton. My point being that McLuhan as Joyce scholar was very much a stylistic thing as was the comeback kid's legalese.

It is however clear that McLuhan would have had a lot to say about our existing digital topography and where it points. Pity he died in 1980 and that his mystical like status dissolved pretty much overnight, till resurfacing of late as at least a more thoughtful media analysis of where we were rather than we're at (tempus fugit). 


Does anybody really know?


One thing I do is that Digital loves a free ride doesn't it? It would have been great to hear an analysis of this in the context of what McLuhan really excelled at which was as a Medievalist. Essentially it's helpful to get a fix on how long language has been around. Let's call it 30 000 years or so because like the dreams which are so lucidly remembered when we awake, they and their mystical meaning so often evaporate in the short few steps to our morning ablutions and we're so unclear about our communications legacy if it wasn't carved in stone. There's a reason for the dream references, but here's not the place to nip back into talk of pineal glands and the traces of Dimethyltryptamine it both creates and breaks the law at the same time. I find that fascinating.

So yeah language. When the male and female of our species emerged from two million years of a quasi arboreal lifestyle encompassing the dual roles of hunter & gatherer arguably cultivating the male traits of silence and stoicism while waiting for the herd to turn up at the drinking pool, alongside the pragmatically chattering advantages of the female of our species exploiting the value of knowing what berries, nuts and mushrooms to pick at what time of the year and where, it's probable that an animalistic version of communication on a level equal to, or more evolved than say dolphins, pigs, octopi  and such like, magically manifested itself to an unprecedent level of compelling complexity into the most potent meme system in the history of man. There is no more spreadable media than assigning words for objects and then assigning arbitrary codes such as uncountable nouns after prepositions and definitive articles. Evolved language was definitely a 'holy fucking shit' moment of such grautuitous common sense and spreadability that every ape worth his or her salt picked up on it like the iTablet fetishism of last nights tweetfest, though more durably.

Equally around this time the neo cortex exploded in size while the lower jaw retracted and so began the first experiment with lifestyle along with the crops that required cultivating, the storage thereof that mandated a security-complex along with arguably a paternalistic 'ownership' and monogamy lifestyle along with the usual suspects of religion, mead brewing and hierachical structures related to, but not quite evolved directly from the instinctive and often silently acquired ones earned as great apes. Politics if you will.

Moving forward (or backwards depending on how you read history) the next Bob Beamon Olympic long jump moment of the day was after the evolution of pictographs which aren't much more than an elaboration on cave paintings into the exciting idea of word languages condensed into an alphabet. It's at this moment that McLuhan steps in to guide us towards the next epiphany, the introduction of print and it's disruptive impact on Western society (excluding China's non-moveable type which kept the whole industry from taking off as the Guttenberg moment did). 


It's fairly important to appreciate that prior to print, a different set of cognitive skills were used to consume information. McLuhan highlights that the medieval practice of script consumption dictates a different set of skills from print. We have to LOOK at script as opposed to print (digital or otherwise) which requires READING. Once the first fifty types of say the letter E or e have been understood, we then no longer have to look at the letter and switch into a condensed and linear mode of media consumption that is so far removed from the looking demanded of script writing that it's difficult to comprehend unless we take into account such ideas as the notion of a public, which didn't exist prior to the Guttenberg press. 


That's because there was no public but as soon as leaflets and the bible became objects for consumption then the idea of manufacturers and consumers of information warranted the introduction of a public. Prior to that the Kings and the Clergy used to just do stuff unannounced and undiscussed (increase taxes, burn witches etc.) and we would marvel at their silent power. That's all changed now as the hoi polloi (that's me) dive in the creation pool too but it's important to remember that there was a time when the first person in history ever was identified as having the ability to read silently in their head before repeating it. Prior to that everybody just read aloud and so emerged the language of lectures in the academic or monastic environment.

I could go on but I think Faris has written a provocative piece covering McLuhan which admits that there is no discussion of the man without knowing that dance, Roman roads and lightbulbs are media. However, more interestingly the notion of a consumption platform is distilling/emerging (a context?) which is a good thing. In a previous life some might have called this a media type but it all starts to bleed in the digital world in such a gratuitous manner it simply is no longer helpful. How an eReader or iPad differ from a Nexus or a Netbook just complicates the hell out of things but it becomes evident that the size of screen and user interface says a lot, and that the surroundings in which the content can be consumed or more accurately HOW they can be consumed defines to a considerable extent what they are. So a phone under the meeting table for reasons of discretion in a boring meeting has just as many consumption variables on what is read and how it is read as say yesterday's trending topic of #thoughtsonthetoilet which arguably speak for themselves, though again, like in the past I urge that the context be fully explored to really help understand what is going on. By context I totally mean the environment in which media variables are created or consumed because otherwise we're back to the Nexus is different from the iPad which points suspiciously towards "The medium is the message". Which was always a more stylistic assertion on McLuhan's part, than a set in stone media law despite it's heavy counter intuitive logic defying truthiness. Or as Wittgenstein would say. It's true enough!

McLuhan was a Joyce Scholar, a convert to Catholicism and a person who turned the whole deconstruction lens of western thought in on the topic of media and arguably of itself, as itself and by itself. You just can't mess with that when it's done well. Nobody did it better than my main man McLuhan.

X Cultural Communications

Culture And Global Marketing

View more presentations from kvarun.

This is a useful Cross Cultural presentation summary that was brought to my attention. I was struck as ever that on slide 9 the word quality is dimensionalized according to different cultures and yet we are then faced with reading the rest of the presentation and assuming that the language is uniformly understood. Not always a given with the global ubiquity of the internet. A useful presentation never the less.

Context Collapse

In itself context collapse is a heavy duty context, but however we approach the meaning of meaning, this Youtube presentation by Professor Michael Wesch of Kansas State University given at the Personal Democracy Forum is essential viewing.

Feelings are more important than facts

That's a little phrase I use when explaining what we know about communication theory or rather what we've learned in the last few years through terrific thinkers like Russell Davies, Paul Feldwick, Faris Yacob, John Grant, Richard Huntington and Mark Earls. I'd also include Johnnie Moore but he's cleverly identified that he can facilitate change much more powerfully on the inside than through external messaging on the outside. They might not say it quite the way I do because there's always a context  

That little phrase is the reason why I think the Levi's commercial I blogged, is more profound than any washes "Whiter than White" soap powder commercial could. Can you remember which brand said that? It does however have Walt Whitman's poetry in it so I'll try to weave in some messaging thoughts.

In principle we know that the messaging 'ammunition', and it's conceptual artillery of a say a 'mortar rocket' - the brand proposition - are a really brutal way to articulate what a brand stands for - which is why so much advertising sucks. The dirty secret of advertising is that most message based advertising is (from a global persective) in the FMCG segment and is really more about using a propaganda based frequency (repetition) and reach (penetration) platform that is a numerically driven  and quantitatively assesed communications model. Now it works in principle because it's a level playing field for all brands to size each other up. It's flat flat flat. Something like; 'we're rubbish and you're rubbish but at least we can compare how rubbish we are. Like for like is easier than great creative against great creative

Then we squeeze the mediocre output through the link-testing sausage making machine, that removes all the bits that stand out (the scary bits for marketing managers - the interesting bits for creatives and planners) and deliver something that manages both the risk, and let's face it, diminishes it's ability to be persuasive. The magic is, that because it's all so uniform and standard, it can be measured more fairly than working out if say a kiss on the lips is more romantic than licking an ear lobe. It's that ability to brutally compare, which gives the largely illusional security to marketing managers who absolutely don't want to fuck up on their next ad. And why would they? They've got mortgages to pay. So we rely upon the messaging model to sell 90% of our goods, and guess what? 90% of our advertising sucks.

It's boring, patronising and is complained about by exactly the same respondents who we then recruit to tell us what ideas are good or bad. Until we reconcile this illogical way of thinking i.e Asking people how to improve ads and ignore that they don't like what we do as a business, we're kidding ourselves that we're in the creativity business. It's the safety business we're in. Of course this doesn't apply to all work but ask people what they think about most advertising and you'll get the answer to why we should't recruit them in link tests.

However there's an awful lot of complexity to this subject because actually, messaging does work - on some levels - and it's hugely dependant on the CONTEXT which is something I've banged on and on about over and over again. Even this blog post can never define the solution (or even accurately outline the full problem one suspects) because without knowing the full context, the answer may well fly in the face of everything I've just written. Nothing new there then.

But for the sake of focus I'll highlight two messaging models that DO work.

The first is Propaganda. Most of it is done by people who are used to  giving orders. Military style like instructions or bureaucratically hierarchical management. When I say jump, you jump. When I say smoke a reefer, you smoke a reefer (well obviously not, but you get the gist).I've given some examples throughout this post and tried to also show that once it becomes a meme, we've given people something to do which in marketing communications is one step above feelings.

The second great messaging model example is Google Adsense and which has almost reduced much of the advertising revenue slice of the classifed ads cake to a digital utility. Here's a quick example.

There you go. The most profitable messaging business model in the Universe. However, the reason for writing this erratic and probably slightly incoherent post is I got to thinking about when people pick up on a meme and get involved, it's a force for good and should be embraced in much the same way that the Keep Calm meme has evolved throughout this post. People nicking your content and playing with it is far more effective than the messaging model which is largely illusory has a control medium and so finally it's important to bear in mind that while feelings are more important than facts, action's speak louder than words.


Update: I've since learned that Walt Whitman had some pretty shabby views on ethic groups other than Anglo Saxons.

2007

Its drawing towards the end of the year now and what a year its been - I'll never forget 2007 AD because it came fully loaded with really good people, terrific connections, quality conversation and deeply interesting times - I can't say that about every year. There have been a few turkeys.

All the people I went out of my way to meet this year were both digitally-literate and networked to the hilt. I've been pondering recently that in theory I could go missing, and still feel confident that it wouldn't take me more than a few days to get back up to speed; what's new, where to look, what's interesting, where its developing. I'd probably never ditch Twitter though even if I do try a spell as a Benedictine monk. There's nothing in their rules on a vow of silence preventing an SMS of what I'm doing! 

What am I trying to say? I think this augmented extension of the self through the internet, can provide an ability to repair foolishly untended relationships quite quickly. That I think this nascent network in 2007 is invaluable in terms of digitally experiential relationships, and probably seminal in terms of human relationships. There's nothing quite like meeting the characters behind the keyboard. It doesn't matter about the country or the culture. I think this new social pattern is a different process than say being disconnected from your mates, since you left school and then the internet kicking off and finding Classmates.com or Friendsreunited.com rudely interrupting the illusion we hold of ourselves. The one that we have built in the absence of continuous partial attention reminding us of who we all actually are. I think this says bundles about the difference between the digital natives and the digital immigrants. I find it fascinating that in the future there will be no people like some of us immigrants who have the benefit of both hindsight and I hope a little digital foresight...... But I'm not planning on going anywhere. There's just way too much interesting stuff going on. 

You could do no better than look at Johnnie Moore's recent post about David Snowdon which reaffirms what I think is a profound change for 21st century communications. There is the notion that we are rewiring our brains to do what they always did best anyway; absorb lots of loosely connected information and build a picture from that which equates to a much closer representation of reality than the one that 20th century hierarchically driven monologue and the militantly linear and didactic process that the scientific method dispensed us. Oh shit, that sounds like an intellectually conceited mouthful doesn't it? I do go off on one occasionally. Sorry about that. 

An easier way to understand all this might be to highlight that humans are designed for chit chat. We absorb stuff much better that way. Anyway I didn't know I was going to go down this path when I set out on this post because I find blogging about communication theory a little bit like complaining about the food not being salty enough when the salt mill is to hand. But I am very grateful that some people have been paying attention because I'm (it should be we, but I don't want to sound like I'm aping Wallpaper), are just a little bit chuffed that Punk Planning made it into Campaign's top ten blogs. We're also deeply indebted to people like Rob Campbell from Musings of an Opinionated Sod for showing the rules and conventions that can be broken, while still being able to spot the corporate/agency stench of bullshit from leagues and furlongs away. Opinionated Sod! We salute you :)