preface

Life is an endless game process, and the game is to achieve a desired result by choosing appropriate strategies. As a player, the best strategy is to make the best use of the rules of the game; As the best strategy of society, it is to guide the increase of the overall welfare of society through rules.

A never-ending game

People's work and life can be regarded as an endless game decision-making process. People have to make decisions when they wake up every morning. We decide what to eat for breakfast day after day until we form a fixed eating habit. Do you want to go to the supermarket to buy something crazy? Do you want to go to the movies, take a walk, buy a car, eat, turn red or black at the roulette table, or even read a book ... whether consciously or unconsciously, after careful consideration or on impulse, you have started reading this book-this is a decision.

There are more important things: what school to apply for, what major to choose, what job to do, how to carry out a research, how to run a business, who to cooperate with, whether to take a part-time job, whether to resign, whether to compete for the position of president. Even whether to get married, when to get married, who to marry, whether to have children, how to raise children and so on. These are just a few examples of major decisions in life.

In these decisions, there is a common factor, that is, you are not making decisions alone, making decisions in a vacuum world without interference. On the contrary, you are surrounded by decision makers just like you, and their choices interact with yours. This interaction will naturally have an important impact on your thinking and actions, and the choices and decisions of others will directly affect your decision-making results. Robinson is a desert island, and he has the final say in everything he does. But when a "Friday" comes, he will face the game problem.

Game theory was founded by two outstanding scholars-von Norman and Morgenstein in the middle of last century. In technical terms, game theory is "to study how people make decisions when the actions of decision makers interact directly, and how this decision can reach a balance".

In order to explain and understand the interaction of game decisions, we might as well imagine the difference between masons' decisions and boxers' decisions. When a stonemason considers how to cut stones, his "object" is passive and neutral in principle and will not show strategic confrontation to him. However, when a boxer intends to attack the opponent's key points, not only will his every step plan attract resistance, but he will also face the opponent's active attack. He must try to overcome these resistance and attacks.

In the game between people, you must realize that your business rivals, future partners and even your children are smart and independent people, living people who care about their own interests, rather than passive and neutral roles. On the one hand, their goals often conflict with yours; On the other hand, they contain potential cooperation factors. When you make a decision, you must take these conflicts into account and pay attention to the role of cooperative factors.

For yourself and for better cooperation with others, you need to learn a little strategic thinking of game theory. It is for this reason that the famous economist paul samuelson said, "If you want to be a literate person in modern society, you must have a general understanding of game theory."

Tips:

Game theory is a bit evasive, but the content is easy to understand, that is, when each player decides what action to take? We should not only act according to our own interests and purposes, but also consider the possible influence of his decision-making behavior on others and the possible influence of others' behavior on him, and seek the maximization of interests or utility by choosing the best action plan.

Games are the abstraction of life.

The word "game" sounds profound, but it actually means "game". More accurately, it is a game that can be won or lost. The literal translation of game theory is "game theory" It may be said that game theory is to gain knowledge of life competition by "playing games".

What happened? In short, the game is the abstraction of life.

Chess, for example, has several roles: king, queen, knight, bishop and soldier, just like a small kingdom where politics and religion are integrated. Of course, this model is too simple compared with life, but it can also reflect some truth of life. Moreover, only by being simple, these truths, which were originally concealed by the complicated appearance of life, can be more clearly seen.

In the face of complex things, people often fall into the trap of seeing trees instead of forests, being overwhelmed by details and unable to find the key points. In the game, it can reflect some real-world problems and minimize the interference factors, which is a very suitable way to make decisions.

Go is probably the simplest and most complicated game. It originated in China 4000 years ago, but until now, we may not really understand it. The simplest chessboard-a net woven with vertical and horizontal 19 lines (originally 17 lines); The simplest chess pieces (only black and white); The simplest rules (taking turns to play chess, playing chess with two vitality, winning empty-handed, plus some supplementary terms such as "robbery") can be learned by a person who knows nothing about Go in a few minutes, but its mystery is deeper than any other board game. If you have worked in Weiqi, you will certainly understand some philosophies, such as "losing is winning", "running water is not the first", "winning in chaos", "going too far is not enough" and so on. At this point, the game is a bit like the fable we saw when we were young. Didn't we learn the truth of life from these stories?

Don't underestimate the game, it is indeed a model of life. From an early age, we learn how to live, how to get along with others, how to adapt and apply the rules of this world, and build our own personality in the process. Therefore, don't underestimate the game, it can really reflect the real life.

Tips:

Zero-sum game: players lose and win, but the total score of the whole game is always zero. The whole game process is a zero-sum game.

From games to life

An American pilot who participated in the Gulf War was asked how he felt about the war when he returned home. He replied: It's just like playing computer games. In fact, many computer games have been applied to military training now. After "9. 1 1", a flying game of Microsoft attracted attention, because in the game, players can experience the feeling of flying over big cities such as new york and even crossing the World Trade Center. People are worried that terrorists can use this game to get a chance to practice. Maybe they have already done so.

Games are a good way to learn. The Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon, once said, "The Battle of Waterloo was decided on the playground of Eton Middle School." Usually practice skills and tactics diligently to avoid panic in times of crisis. This principle applies to most competitions or games.

The best part is: you won't lose anything during the game. Of course, except for some self-esteem, even if you lose, you won't lose anything. In the monopoly game, you can learn how to buy and sell real estate wisely from the experience of losing millions of dollars in the blink of an eye without paying any price afterwards.

Of course, different games have different requirements for players. Some people are good at thinking games, but different sports have different requirements for decision-making wisdom. For example, intelligence is not so important in boxing or sumo, a sport that divides the competition level by "heavyweight".

Playing games requires many different types of skills. One of them is the basic skills, such as the indispensable shooting ability in basketball, the accumulation of cases in legal work, and the need to remember a lot of "formulas" when playing Go (changes acceptable to both sides can be called "balance" on the board of Go). Once these skills are played, they may be useless. But the strategic thinking of game theory is another skill. Strategic thinking starts from your basic skills and considers how to maximize these basic skills. This is a universal principle and can be applied to all aspects of life.

Strategic planning and game theory are actually interlinked: your decision must be superior to your opponent, so that individuals, families, tribes or countries have a chance to survive.

Tips:

The famous French soprano Maria di maple has a large private garden. Every weekend, people always go to her garden to pick flowers and mushrooms. What's more, they will set up tents and have picnics there. Although the managers erected fences around the garden many times and hung wooden signs of "Private Garden, No Entry", all these efforts were of no help. After learning about this situation, Dimmespur ordered the managers to make many eye-catching big signs that said, "If someone is bitten by a poisonous snake in the garden, the nearest hospital is 15 kilometers away" and put them around the garden. Since then, no one has broken into her garden without permission. -If the habitual methods can't solve the problem, we should adjust our perspectives and concepts.

Inevitable contradictions in multiplayer games

Games are not limited to two opponents, and many games are played by many people. If the consequences are shared by many people, the whole decision-making process will be more difficult; Because you will face different members and different goals. As for multi-person decision-making, we can understand it through the mode of group confrontation. In this kind of competition, good decisions can create victory.

There are many different forms of realistic multi-person decision-making: sometimes many people participate in decision-making, but only one opinion is needed, which is an ideal Committee system; Some are two people involved in decision-making, but they are antagonistic, such as wrestling, chess, fencing, tennis singles and so on. In addition, there are many forms of decision-making, such as Congress, the United Nations, poker clubs, political parties and so on. Regardless of the quality of life, the ultimate goal of these decisions is to pursue the sustainable survival of human beings on the earth. However, although there are many extremely important decisions that need to be determined and put into practice, we do not have a set of rational practices to completely avoid the dilemma of "three monks have no water to drink". Every combination of decision makers and alternatives is self-contained, successful decisions are different, and some combinations are completely inoperable. In some cases, it is impossible to make a decision that is not contradictory.

Game is strategic interdependence: your choice? In other words, what the strategy will get depends on the choice of another or another group of purposeful actors. The decision makers in a game are called participants, and their choices are called actions. The interests of the participants in a game may be strictly opposed, and one person's gain is always equal to another person's loss. Such a game is called a zero-sum game.

But it is more common that there are both interests and conflicts of interest, so there may be a combination of strategies that will lead to * * * benefits or * * victims. In practice, the game may include some continuous action processes or some synchronous action processes, so you need to synthesize skills, use them flexibly, think and decide what your best action should be.

Tips:

If you leave the simple principle of mutual adaptation, then your cleverness will not have a good result.

Fairness comes from games.

The game is not necessarily a bad thing, and it is not necessarily impossible to achieve good results. The rich material life we enjoy today comes from the competition in the free market-it is also the result of the game.