Me Breddahs! Had a few minutes to do some more mathematical toiling and it gave me an idea. I know some of you are aware of the Predictive History YouTuber channel and the YouTuber Professor Jiang. If so, then you know that he uses Game Theory to, well, “predict” events (mainly political) that may happen in the near-ish future. For any of us Coach Gang wondering what Game Theory is, at least from a mathematical point of view, allow me to shed some light on it.
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One of the most famous examples of the subject is “The Prisoner’s Dilemma”. Imagine two suspects are arrested and held in the tank separately. Furthermore, assume they can’t contact each other whatsoever. Each one is offered a deal (option 1) betray the other or (option 2) stay silent. The twist is that what's best for each individual leads to a worse outcome for both of them together.

These are the possible outcomes:

1. Both stay silent = both get a light sentence (the best combined result)

2. Both betray = both get a moderate sentence (bad for everyone)

3. One betrays, one stays silent = the betrayer goes free, the silent one gets the worst sentence.

What makes this a dilemma is that no matter what the other person does betraying always looks like the safer personal choice. Yet, if both reason this way, they both end up worse off than if they'd cooperated.

You’ll notice in the first diagram that I’ve included it mentions the phrase “Nash Equilibrium”. This is a famous result named after John Nash, whom the movie “A Beautiful Mind” was all about. From Prisoner A's perspective: if B stays silent, betraying means A goes free (vs. 1 year). If B betrays, betraying means A gets 2 years (vs. 3 years). Betraying is always better for A individually — no matter what B does. B reasons the exact same way. So both betray, and both get 2 years, even though mutual silence would have given them only 1 year each.

Why is this important and how does it connect to Professor Jiang’s theories Think of the US/Israel and Iran as the two prisoners. Before the war, both sides faced a classic dilemma:

Cooperate (negotiate): A deal would have been the "both stay silent" outcome, which would cause painful compromises for each side, but the best combined result.

Betray (strike/retaliate): According to Claude, the US calculated that striking was individually better, since either Iran was close to a nuclear weapon (making silence dangerous) or it wasn't (making a strike low-risk). The attacks were launched after the failure of indirect
negotiations, allegedly. In this case, both
sides would be considered to have chosen to "betray." And, thus, current events are unfolding accordingly.

The second diagram summarizes what I believe to be the application of Game Theory that the professor is using, tying into the content of the previous paragraph.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you got something out of it!

Stay Mathy Coach Gang! 🫡🫵😎💪🦅🇺🇲

#TheShield 🛡