Game theorists are needed more than ever. In a world riddled with political, economic and social and environmental crises, game theory — developed back in the 1950s, and widely applied in various fields such as economics and social sciences — could help come up with useful strategies for resolution.
Game theorists use the language of mathematics to study conflict and cooperation between different groups or ‘players’. The key lies in ‘strategy’: the more precise the strategy, the odds weighed in, the actions of others factored in, the better the chances of success.
This theory can be applied to, say, animals competing for food, countries bargaining over shared waters, or even people choosing to compete or cooperate in everyday life situations — any situation where the success of one participant depends on the actions of other participants as well.
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Game theory and climate strategy
Take for instance, climate change, one of the most pressing issues of contemporary times. According to game theory, the crisis can be analysed as an iterated game over common resources — that no one owns but everyone has access to — and exploring what interactions or behaviours between players (such as countries) can lead to better solutions.
But classical game theory assumes players are perfectly rational in any given situation. What happens though when players aren’t so? What if behaviours actually spread the way traits spread in biological evolution—through success, imitation, or adaptation? How behaviours/strategies survive, coexist or die out over time is studied using a subarea of game theory called evolutionary game theory.
Here, all players are constantly learning and adjusting their strategy, and their actions may eventually lead to a stable strategy for the group.
This theory has been particularly useful in management of public health events as they involve many interest groups, and the behavior of each subject directly affects how effectively and swiftly these emergencies can be controlled and their harm minimized.
For instance, how can the government encourage wearing masks in a public health emergency such as Covid-19? Studies done using this evolutionary game theory have explored various strategies that could be implemented by the government to encourage public participation and compliance in Covid-19 prevention mechanisms such as wearing masks.
Beyond fight or flight
The best strategies though, can be thwarted by challenges, or threats – some are direct, or more obvious, while others indirect.
Recent research done by authors of this article uses evolutionary game theory to examine how effective strategies can be developed to combat the problem of overfishing, particularly strategies that are designed to tackle indirect threats.
One of the major issues in the use of common property resources is the imbalance in ecology, and the depletion of fish stocks and other marine species due to overfishing in the open seas (a common property resource) by different countries.
Countries with permits to fish are players, and every country gets some of this common resource, by incurring a cost. The net gain or loss is the utility of the resource for a country, minus the cost incurred by that country.
In open-sea fisheries, a direct threat arises when a country overfishes and immediately gains higher profit, triggering a similar behavior by other countries and leading to rapid depletion of fish stocks. Regulations can often block such obvious deviations. However, even when no country can overfish at first due to regulations, indirect threats remain.
An indirect threat occurs when a small, seemingly acceptable change in behavior enters the system first and subtly alters the incentive structure. This initial change may comply with current regulations and does not immediately harm the environment, but it reshapes expectations, costs, or competitive conditions.
Over time, this shift can make way to more aggressive, harmful behavior of the countries, allowing it to spread and eventually leading to over exploitation of the open seas through a sequence of adaptations rather than a single violation.
A robust strategy would anticipate such problems: the mathematical concept underpinning this is called Robustness Against Indirect Invasions (RAII). Research has focused on RAII in symmetric games – where players have the same set of strategies to choose from, and the profit and loss are similar for all players.
However, focus is needed on situations when the strategic waters are further muddied. In such situations, termed as asymmetric games, players can choose from different sets of strategies, and the profit and loss incurred is not the same for everyone. The prolonged negotiations between US and India to work out a trade deal, for instance, could be termed as an asymmetric game.
Extending evolutionary concepts to these games is much more challenging. This is because here strategies are not simple options like “fight” or “flee,” but instead form a continuum — such as how much effort to exert, how much resource to take, or how much to invest.
In their work, authors of this piece have explored the RAII concept in asymmetric games with continuous strategy spaces. In the case of overfishing, for example, a country may introduce a small change (called neutral mutant strategy) to existing regulations that does not immediately outperform the prevailing sustainable regime but is still allowed to persist.
This marginal adjustment appears harmless and does not cause immediate overexploitation. Other countries follow suit; a small change couldn’t hurt, they reason. But as everyone starts to imitate this behaviour, the game environment is altered. The result is that everyone is now overfishing, leading to environmental degradation and extinction of fishes and other marine species..
Thus, a robust strategy would be one that is insulated against such indirect or subtle threats such as small shifts in players’ behaviour, and their incentives or motivations.
Game theory cues for policymakers
Studies on RAII deepen the knowledge of stability and robustness in asymmetric games with continuous strategy sets. This helps people such as policymakers understand which behaviours will survive evolution, and how subtle indirect invasions can destabilize strategies.
Such an understanding may be particularly useful in international negotiations or diplomacy, economic and ecological systems, human behavioural dynamics, and even artificial intelligence systems that learn and interact with each other.
In each of these contexts, understanding indirect vulnerabilities is crucial, just as cybersecurity professionals strive to protect systems against both direct breaches and indirect attack routes.
Studying RAII is thus an essential tool to understand how strategies persist — whether within countries, species, or algorithms.
Dr Aradhana Narang is Assistant Professor, Mathematics, School of Engineering and Technology, BML Munjal University. Dr AJ Shaiju is Professor, Department of Mathematics, IIT Madras. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info
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