{"id":436,"date":"2010-04-11T14:46:54","date_gmt":"2010-04-11T18:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/?p=436"},"modified":"2010-04-11T14:48:22","modified_gmt":"2010-04-11T18:48:22","slug":"game-theory-general-semantics-or-the-strategy-of-conflict-ii-general-semantics-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/2010\/04\/11\/game-theory-general-semantics-or-the-strategy-of-conflict-ii-general-semantics-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Theory & General Semantics, or The Strategy of Conflict II: General Semantics Edition!"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1960, game theory formulator Thomas Schelling (later to win a Nobel Prize in Economics), published The Strategy of Conflict<\/em>.\u00a0 For me, when I read the book in the early Naughts, I was dumbstruck by his concept of conflict (pg. 5):<\/p>\n

‘<\/span><\/div>

To study the strategy of conflict is to take the view that most conflict situations are bargaining<\/em> situations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This sentence had an awesome impact on me at the time.\u00a0 At the time, I was trying to remedy how that in improv class, conflict\u00a0is taught to be avoided, which generally seems to be good advice, but conflict can creep into performance improv and be totally fine.\u00a0 The question was essentially, How was the good conflict created?\u00a0 My answer was in Schelling: Treat it as a bargaining situation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It would seem to me that the\u00a0typical, perhaps innate\u00a0conceptualization of conflict is as a fight<\/em>.\u00a0 When a typical person detects a situation he processes as conflict, he starts fighting.\u00a0 Through education to the contrary, people learn different ways to handle conflict.\u00a0 Schelling offers one way.\u00a0 His way takes the parties in conflict from disagreement to agreement.<\/p>\n

And at the moment the other day when I realized that, I realized that general semantics offers its own conceptualization of conflict.\u00a0 That is, that’s <\/em>probably what could be termed as a conflict in general semantics: A disagreement<\/em>.\u00a0 What ensues when a conflict is detected after a general semantics education is that the person starts\u00a0to seek agreement<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Seeing a conflict as a disagreement does not make it logical to seek agreement.\u00a0 Just as\u00a0in the typical, “innate” conceptualization of conflict the object is to fight, in the conceptualization of conflict as disagreement the object probably seems to disagree.\u00a0 For the object the conceptualization of conflict as a bargaining situation brings, in comes the seeking of agreement, because that’s presumably what a person does in a bargaining situation: ultimately seeks agreement.\u00a0 There can be selfish motives in that pursuit, and the desire to gain an edge in the bargaining situation, but it’s a step toward totally re-conceptualizing conflict away from more brutal concepts that lead to brutal outcomes.<\/p>\n

The conceptualization of conflict as\u00a0a bargaining situation\u00a0typically implies some sort of disagreement.\u00a0 Schelling points out that there is no conflict in a few games (he talks about\u00a0models of behavior commonly known as\u00a0“games”\u00a0in analyzing conflict), and that the bargaining is one of pure coordination between the two parties.\u00a0 (Think of two paratroopers landing in different places with no ability to communicate but the goal of rendezvousing.\u00a0 How do they unite?\u00a0 Where to do the meet?)\u00a0 In situations of pure coordination, the disagreement is somewhat impersonal rather than personal.\u00a0 But conflicts (disagreements) involving no conflict and pure coordination only are few, at least\u00a0in the field of\u00a0analyzing conflicts.<\/p>\n

But the conceptualization of conflict as a bargaining situation\u00a0nearly explicates the goal in conflict as reaching some sort of agreement<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Schelling’s is just as much a moral or even ethical philosophy of conflict as the object of fighting and the goal of domination are.\u00a0\u00a0Schelling’s is one presumably more fruitful for society, though.\u00a0 A society ruled by a conceptualization of conflict as a boxing match<\/em> ends up with a bruised, hurt, injured, and murderous society.\u00a0 A society ruled by conceptualization of conflict as a bargaining situation<\/em> probably doesn’t end up with this kind of outcome nearly as often, and instead generally ends up with a relatively healthier, less pained, more functioning, and more respectful population.\u00a0 This is not to say that bargaining situations never involve punching (they can!), but it is to say that that’s less often the rule and more often just one option of many.\u00a0 If the goal is a more fruitful society, the choice between these two philosophies of conflict is pretty simple.<\/p>\n

Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict<\/em> tends to fall\u00a0under the category\u00a0of game theory.\u00a0 General semantics had a sizeable impact on one prominent game theorist: Anatol Rapoport.\u00a0 Anatol Rapoport was a prolific author of both books on general semantics and books on game theory.\u00a0 He has the notoriety of winning the two rounds of games sponsored by Robert Axelrod and documented in\u00a0Axelrod’s famous and engaging book The Evolution of Cooperation<\/em>.\u00a0 Anatol Rapoport is not the first game theory formulator–that acclaim goes to John Von Neumann and a bit less to Oskar Morgenstern, who co-wrote and published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior<\/em> in 1944.\u00a0 But given that year, and its falling after<\/em> the 1933 publication of Alfred Korzybski’s Science and Sanity<\/em>, one wonders what effect, if any, general semantics had on game theory.\u00a0 As I first understand it, game theory was at first mathematical, but its applications were most visible in conflict analysis and conflict strategy.\u00a0 That is, conflicts\u00a0began being\u00a0conceptualized as games, maybe not right when Von Neumann and Morgenstern’s book came out, but more so at some point after.<\/p>\n

In recent days since seeing conflicts as disagreements, I’ve consciously restated myself whenever I’ve described something as “a conflict”: I’ve rephrased and called it “a disagreement.”\u00a0 Doing this for myself made it easier for me to see that it was an agreement that I would need to seek.\u00a0 Seeing the “conflict” as “a bargaining situation” would offer similar niceness, but seeing it as “a disagreement” makes it easier for me to see the agreement-disagreement component.\u00a0 That is, the term “bargaining situation” doesn’t explicitly contain the words “agreement” or “disagreement” so they’re not necessarily brought to mind when seeing “conflict” as “a bargaining situation.”<\/p>\n

But it should be noted here the choice involved.\u00a0 I choose to see a conflict as a disagreement.\u00a0 Another person chooses to see a conflict as a boxing match.\u00a0 Another person chooses to see it as a bargaining situation.\u00a0 Another person chooses to see it as a contest.\u00a0 Etc.\u00a0 People who conceptualize may not realize they have a choice in how they conceptualize.\u00a0 They don’t question the concepts that come to them.\u00a0 This may be okay, but it may also be punishing.\u00a0 A society that doesn’t question its barbaric concept of conflict is likely a society that will be ruled by barbarism.\u00a0 At least until the concept of conflict is reshaped by education in the heads of the people left standing.<\/p>\n

It would be interesting to trace the interaction of general semantics thinking and game theory thinking.\u00a0 Anatol Rapoport may be the key player in that interaction.\u00a0 Who knows.\u00a0 Who cares?\u00a0 Maybe I do.\u00a0 Stay tuned …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1960, game theory formulator Thomas Schelling (later to win a Nobel Prize in Economics), published The Strategy of Conflict.\u00a0 For me, when I read the book in the early Naughts, I was dumbstruck by his concept of conflict (pg. 5): ‘To study the strategy of conflict is to take the view that most conflict […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47,49,46,7,44,48,43,16,33,45],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-semantics","tag-agreement","tag-anatol-rapoport","tag-bargaining-situation","tag-concept","tag-conflict","tag-disagreement","tag-game-theory","tag-improv","tag-productivity","tag-thomas-schelling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":457,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions\/457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}