Comments on: Game Theory scene from A Beautiful Mind

By: A Day in the Life of a Game Theorist: A Tribute to One Year of Game Theory Tuesdays - Mind Your Decisions

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 06:09:14 +0000

[...] This is a very nice article: Keep up the good work. Susan in The Bar Scene from A Beautiful Mind and Buying Used Products (link) [...]

By: Every Story Has Two Sides - Mind Your Decisions

Every Story Has Two Sides - Mind Your Decisions — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:18:24 +0000

[...] article in the Mind Your Decisions “week of skepticism.” See the older articles on buying used products and self-serving financial [...]

By: Most Financial Advisers Don’t Put You First - Mind Your Decisions

Most Financial Advisers Don’t Put You First - Mind Your Decisions — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:17:30 +0000

[...] This is the second article in the Mind Your Decisions “week of skepticism.” All this week I am discussing misguided or crooked financial advice. The general theme is to be more careful about advice from people who sell you products or don’t consider strategic implications. See the first article on buying used products. [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 04:23:55 +0000

The single repetition of the game has the implicit assumption that the participants choose to go for the blonde or a brunette before everyone leaves the bar and never meets again. This means there can be no consequences of taking the blonde. Everyone going for a brunette is not a Nash Equilibrium as each player has a profitable deviation given this strategy profile.

If the game was played between friends then perhaps it would be better modelled with an infinitely repeated game or a finitely repeated game with an uncertain time horizon in order to reflect that the friends will meet again.

In this case, every player choosing a brunette can be an equilibrium as long as the future cost from a player’s friends acting to punish their deviation is greater than the gain from the blonde over the brunette.

Applying this to the bar scene means each guy should go for one of the brunettes unless they feel the blonde is so stunning that she’s worth losing their friends for.

By: Aaron R.

Aaron R. — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:46:45 +0000

This analysis is also incomplete.

The upshot of your post is, “While all the friends go for brunettes, you can go for the blonde.” But here’s the problem: “bro’s before ho’s.” What do I mean?

Sure, you can go for the blonde. But in the circumstance that we’ve painted, these gentlemen we are competing with are not random men, but our inner circle of friends. So if I go for the blond, I still lose, because while I won the blonde, I lost my 3 friends.

So if you are competing with strangers (such as your example of financial advice to buy used goods), you may have a point. But in this circumstance of close friends and treason, the person going for the blond will ultimately lose.

Bro’s before ho’s. http://youtu.be/Y_GgARlPcYk