Thursday, March 20, 2008

Game theory at inter-personal relationships

I have been ignited by the idea of Game Theorists working out concrete predictable models on everything from Trade Negotiations to bargaining with taxi drivers.

I also have a book on Game theory at work. ( How to use Game Theory to outthink and outmanuever your competition , James Miller)

But what these theorists and models and books overlook is that no-matter how many effective variables they consider, there is always the unknown dynamic variables that come into play at the last moment. ( Who/what will take care of/account for these ?? ) ( especially when, all you see in this world is a series of interlinked zero-sum games where the variables are too numerous and dynamic that we cannot script the outcome - even if we wanted to. ( even inter personal relationships like friendship , love and parental care are not excused out of this general model )

After thought
A) Is it that the reason why we dont want to know the outcome is because we cannot do it - and not because we dont want to !!
B) Sometimes the same rules in interpersonal relationships work fine ( if not better ) at/in business/networking ..

( Read this tip from Business Week on business networking :
DON'T be an apple-polisher
Everybody likes a compliment, sure, but nobody likes a lap dog—especially not your fellow MBAs. And recruiters can always sniff out blatant bootlicking. Even if you think you're being smooth, being insincere will still come across extremely quickly )

See !! A simple extension in your rules of interpersonal engagements !

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"Florentino is so in love with Fermina that he eats gardenias and drinks cologne so that he can know her taste. He becomes drunk on the cologne, and his mother finds him the next morning, in a puddle of his vomit, in a cove of the bay where drowning victims are known to wash ashore" - Love in the time of Cholera