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Comment by KevinKallmes | Hacker News Reader

This relates to the Nobel-prize-winning game theory of Thomas Schelling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling#The_Strategy_...), who argued that intentional handicaps could be strategically useful in negotiations.

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There's an example based on that work -- the game of Chicken, where you drive a car at another car, person who swerves loses.

Payoff table: Both swerve: both lose face Neither swerve: both die They swerve, you don't: you gain face, they lose it You swerve, they don't: you lose face, they gain it

So: you make it abundantly clear that you can't control your car, even if you wanted to. Tear out the steering wheel, or lash it down and jump onto the roof of the car. Now it changes your opponents options to:

Swerve: lose face Don't: die.

(It's a trolley-problem-like scenario, don't ask too many questions about the practicalities of tearing out the steering wheel)

I read an amusing analysis of Chicken, but I can't recall where, pointing out that playing against an omniscient opponent gave you an unassailable advantage. You just determine not to swerve come what may and your all-knowing opponent would have no choice but to swerve.

This is an example of the more general game theory advantage of commitment.[0, 1] An agent in a multi-agent game benefits from being able to commit to a strategy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precommitment

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/game-theory/commitment/...

There is great demonstration of this in action on a British game show with the players being in a prisoners dilemma situation;

https://youtu.be/S0qjK3TWZE8?t=72

Planners, of course, proceed on the assumption that the future is not 'already here', that they are not dealing with a predetermined – and therefore predictable – system, that they can determine things by their own free will, and that their plans will make the future different from what it would have been had there been no plan. And yet it is the planners, more than perhaps anyone else, who would like nothing better than to have a machine to foretell the future. Do they ever wonder whether the machine might incidentally also foretell their own plans before they have been conceived?

– EF Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered (1973)

A strategy once highlighted (more or less) in this game show:

https://youtu.be/S0qjK3TWZE8

This is also why you might send an envoy to negotiate a purchase instead of going yourself and only authorize a certain amount. They insist on a higher price, they get no money at all. The risk you take is that you lose out completely when you can’t offer anymore money, but you’ve changed their options.

”Swerve: lose face Don't: die”

Only if you are the only one knowing that the opponent cannot steer the car.

If you know that a bullet is coming and keep running into it, people will call you an idiot, not courageous. You also won’t lose face if you duck, if those judging your courage know that the bullet can’t steer itself.

Right, this is the same idea.

The current article seems to believe that this behaviour is in some sense irrational, presumably on the theory that "rationally" you should never prefer to remove a potentially useful option (which after all you could just choose not to use).

But I think that isn't the best way to look at it. What Cortés really needed was for his men to _believe_ that there was no option to retreat. As the only way for him to achieve that was to actually burn the ships, that was the price he chose to pay. But if he'd had another way to achieve that goal I expect he would have taken it.

The same goes for the chicken game: removing your control of the car is the price you may have to pay for causing your opponent to believe that you have no control of your car.

Looking at things this way, the behaviour is no more irrational than it's irrational for me to prefer a situation in which I end up with less money to a situation in which I end up with more, if I've bought something of value with that money.

The way I look at it this kind of phenomenon is like Liar's paradox; as soon as someone sets forth a system describing what constitutes rational behavior, it's human nature to think about that system and relate to it in various ways, which has the potential to generate preferences which aren't comprehended within the system (due to their ability to refer to it [explicitly countercultural preferences]). However since most systems of rationality are quantitative the system could remain valid as an approximation.

In similar vein, there is the "poison pill" defence in business where a company that does not wish to be acquired (typically by hostile takeover) makes itself unpalatable to potential acquirers.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_rights_plan#Common...

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