Category: Games
How to retaliate against foreign adversaries
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
Maybe Trump’s threat to attack cultural sites was not meant literally, but rather as a brash reminder that his retaliatory actions will not be constrained by world opinion, international law or the views of American elites. If so, such a signal, to be effective, has to harm the Iranian regime. Trump’s message shows that he doesn’t understand the calculus of retaliation very well.
Assassinating a military leader by drone, by contrast, is something the U.S. can do but the Iranian government cannot, at least not easily or without provoking even greater retaliation. That makes such a policy an effective deterrent in the short run, as it hurts the actual decision maker, and indeed that is what Trump chose to do.
By mentioning cultural sites, he in essence has decided to follow a very strong signal of action with a much weaker signal of words. If you are a hawk, you should understand that Trump’s talk of cultural sites is weakening his core message that retaliation will be effective. It is usually better game theory to follow up a highly impactful action with relative silence, but silence never has been Trump’s strong suit.
There is much more to the argument at the link.
Not your grandpa’s talent show
Hosted by Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma, the four-hour entrepreneurial talent show had all the production values of The Apprentice.
But the glitzy televised extravaganza, in which 10 contestants battled for $1m in prize money in front of a boisterous audience, took place neither in the US nor China. The action unfolded instead on a stage in Ghana, the first of what is set to be an Africa-wide annual contest as one of China’s best known businessmen scours the continent for younger versions of himself…
Mr Ma came up with the idea of the $1m prize — and the Africa Netpreneur television show to go with it — after meeting young Kenyan entrepreneurs on his first trip to the continent as a special adviser to the UN agency Unctad in 2017…
The Netpreneur show is due to be broadcast in mid-December on two channels with a pan-African presence, South Africa’s DStv and StarTimes, a Chinese media company. During the filming, Mr Ma sat on a raised dais next to three fellow judges: Strive Masiyiwa, the billionaire Zimbabwean founder of telecoms and media company Econet Wireless, Ibukun Awosika, chairman of First Bank of Nigeria, and Joe Tsai, executive vice-chairman of Alibaba.
Where are the Smothers Brothers? Here is the full David Pilling FT story.
Sir Rod Stewart
He’s one of rock’s biggest stars, but Sir Rod Stewart has finally revealed the fruits of his other great passion – model railways.
In between making music and playing live, Sir Rod has been working on a massive, intricate model of a US city for the past 23 years.
He unveiled it as part of an interview with Railway Modeller magazine.
He then phoned in to Jeremy Vine’s BBC Radio 2 show to rebuff the host’s suggestion he had not built it himself.
“I would say 90% of it I built myself,” he insisted. “The only thing I wasn’t very good at and still am not is the electricals, so I had someone else do that.”
Sir Rod has released 13 studio albums and been on 19 tours during the time it took to build the city, which is modelled on both New York and Chicago around 1945.
Here is more, via the BBC. Via Ilya Novak.
The McConnell-Trump impeachment game
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one key excerpt:
A second factor, however, pushes in the opposite direction. If Trump is viewed as too corrupt, too poisonous or too unreliable by swing voters, some of these senators also run the risk of losing their jobs. These senators therefore wish to rein in Trump, if only for selfish reasons. Trump and his policies are not very popular, as illustrated by numerous polls. And some senators might decide that loyalty to country, and to the future of the world, also argues for constraining Trump.
Reining in Trump does not have to mean forcing the leopard to change its spots, which is probably impossible anyway. But it could mean nudging Trump to be less outrageous: Don’t respond to the Ukraine accusations by encouraging China to investigate Joe Biden’s son, for example. Be more careful in your dealings with Turkey and the Kurds. Refrain from calling Never Trump Republicans “human scum.”
OK, so now to take the next step: How can these senators possibly check Trump? The threat of impeachment is their most potent weapon…
The upshot is that McConnell’s power over the president is growing. These are exactly the kinds of wrist slaps Trump notices.
The question, of course, is how Trump will respond to critical signals from Republican senators. My guess is that he will not play a cooperative “tit for tat” strategy, trading signals in a rational manner to keep senators in line and proceeding toward an orderly resolution of the impeachment judgment from the House. Rather, the signals sent his way might enrage him or raise his stress level to the point where he behaves less rationally than usual. Then the Senate will have to work all the harder to constrain Trump, thereby upping the stakes — and the stress — once again.
We will see.
Rat transit markets in everything
Learning to drive small cars helps rats feel less stressed, scientists found.
Researchers at the University of Richmond in the US taught a group of 17 rats how to drive little plastic cars, in exchange for bits of cereal.
Study lead Dr Kelly Lambert said the rats felt more relaxed during the task, a finding that could help with the development of non-pharmaceutical treatments for mental illness.
Here is the story, via the excellent Fergus McCullough.
Do Social Media Harm the Mental Health of Youth? Probably Not.
Time spent on social media has been blamed for increased suicides and depression, just as were other new technologies and pastimes such as phones and Dungeons and Dragons.
… but is social media the real culprit? Or are we engaged in a moral panic, perhaps not understanding the root of the problem? One major limitation of the current literature is that the vast majority of research on SNSs and mental health are cross sectional and cannot speak to developmental change over time or direction of effects. Additionally, research to date rely on traditional regression techniques that model between-person relations among variables. These techniques ignore individual processes that are vital to our understanding of the true relationship between these variables. Thus, the aim of the current study is to test a causal model of the associations between time spent using social media and mental health (anxiety and depression), using both between and within subjects analyses, over an 8-year-period of time, encompassing the transition between adolescence and emerging adulthood.
That’s from an impressive, 8-year long study. It’s not a random experiment but this is the most credible research on the question I have read to date.
Of course, this raises the question of why mental health is down and fragility is up among the young. One answer is that the evidence on mental fragility is flimsy, which is true in general, but the data on suicides is reasonably good and suicides among youth have increased a lot since 2000. I’m not sure of the answers but although social media fit the time trend I now down weight that explanation.
Hat tip: The awesome Rolf Degen.
We had Nash and Schelling — who did the Soviets have?
The bi-polar confrontation between the Soviet Union and the USA involved many leading game theorists from both sides of the Iron Curtain: Oskar Morgenstern, John von Neumann, Michael Intriligator, John Nash, Thomas Schelling and Steven Brams from the United States and Nikolay Vorob’ev, Leon A. Petrosyan, Elena B. Yanovskaya and Olga N. Bondareva from the Soviet Union. The formalization of game theory (GT) took place prior to the Cold War but the geopolitical confrontation hastened and shaped its evolution. In our article we outline four similarities and differences between Western GT and Soviet GT: 1) the Iron Curtain resulted in a lagged evolution of GT in the Soviet Union; 2) Soviet GT focused more on operations research and issues of centralized planning; 3) the contemporary Western view on Soviet GT was biased and Soviet contributions, including works on dynamic stability, non-emptiness of the core and many refinements, suggest that Soviet GT was able to catch up to the Western level relatively fast; 4) international conferences, including Vilnius, 1971, fostered interaction between Soviet game theorists and their Western colleagues. In general, we consider the Cold War to be a positive environment for GT in the West and in the Soviet Union.
That is from a new paper by Harald Hagemann, Vadim Kufenko, and Danila Raskov, via Ilya Novak and Beatrice Cherrier. And via Kevin Vallier, here is a new paper on how Schelling’s game-theoretic notion of stability may have come from his very early work on macroeconomics.
Vending machine markets in everything
The engagement ring (size 6.25) is in the fourth machine in the B3 slot, almost hidden among the more colorful gifts. Made by Fitzgerald Jewelry of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it features a yellow rose-cut diamond surrounded by gray-colored diamonds set in 14-karat gold band with matte finish. It costs $800 before tax…
Ms. Kelly jokingly added that you could almost pull off an entire wedding with items from the vending machines. Grooms can wear the Duncan Quinn cuff links ($525) and a necktie ($285). Brides can carry a dried bouquet that stays fragrant for three years ($25). Photos can be taken with a Polaroid camera ($100). The machine even sells Polaroid film in color or black and white ($17 each).
Here is more from the NYT.
The chess diet
Robert Sapolsky, who studies stress in primates at Stanford University, says a chess player can burn up to 6,000 calories a day while playing in a tournament, three times what an average person consumes in a day. Based on breathing rates (which triple during competition), blood pressure (which elevates) and muscle contractions before, during and after major tournaments, Sapolsky suggests that grandmasters’ stress responses to chess are on par with what elite athletes experience.
“Grandmasters sustain elevated blood pressure for hours in the range found in competitive marathon runners,” Sapolsky says.
It all combines to produce an average weight loss of 2 pounds a day, or about 10-12 pounds over the course of a 10-day tournament in which each grandmaster might play five or six times. The effect can be off-putting to the players themselves, even if it’s expected. Caruana, whose base weight is 135 pounds, drops to 120 to 125 pounds. “Sometimes I’ve weighed myself after tournaments and I’ve seen the scale drop below 120,” he says, “and that’s when I get mildly scared.”
And this:
He has even managed to optimize … sitting. That’s right. Carlsen claims that many chess players crane their necks too far forward, which can lead to a 30 percent loss of lung capacity, according to studies in the Journal of Physical Therapy Science. And, according to Keith Overland, former president of the American Chiropractic Association, leaning 30 degrees forward increases stress on the neck by nearly 60 pounds, which in turn requires the back and neck muscles to work harder, ultimately resulting in headaches, irregular breathing and reduced oxygen to the brain.
Here is the full ESPN article, via multiple MR readers.
Brexit update (POTMR)
Boris Johnson is planning to force a new Brexit deal through parliament in just 10 days — including holding late-night and weekend sittings — in a further sign of Downing Street’s determination to negotiate an orderly exit from the EU. According to Number 10 officials, Mr Johnson’s team has drawn up detailed plans under which the prime minister would secure a deal with the EU at a Brussels summit on October 17-18, before pushing the new withdrawal deal through parliament at breakneck speed.
The pound rose 1.1 per cent against the US dollar to $1.247 on Friday amid growing optimism that Mr Johnson has now decisively shifted away from the prospect of a no-deal exit and is focused on a compromise largely based on Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement.
That is new from the FT, here is part of my Brexit post from August 29:
I would sooner think that Boris Johnson wishes to see through a relabeled version of the Teresa May deal, perhaps with an extra concession from the EU tacked on. His dramatic precommitment raises the costs to the Tories of not supporting such a deal, and it also may induce slight additional EU concessions. The narrower time window forces the recalcitrants who would not sign the May deal to get their act together and fall into line, more or less now.
Uncertainty is high, but the smart money says the Parliamentary suspension is more of a stage play, and a move toward an actual deal, than a leap to authoritarian government.
This remains very much an open question, but if you “solve for the equilibrium,” that is indeed what you get.
Boris Johnson’s suspension of Parliament
The betting markets have stayed in the 48-55 range for Brexit by year’s end, even after the suspension announcement. That to me does not sound like “hard Brexit hell or high water.”
I would sooner think that Boris Johnson wishes to see through a relabeled version of the Teresa May deal, perhaps with an extra concession from the EU tacked on. His dramatic precommitment raises the costs to the Tories of not supporting such a deal, and it also may induce slight additional EU concessions. The narrower time window forces the recalcitrants who would not sign the May deal to get their act together and fall into line, more or less now.
Uncertainty is high, but the smart money says the Parliamentary suspension is more of a stage play, and a move toward an actual deal, than a leap to authoritarian government.
That said, I still do not like either Brexit or the suspension.
The new and improved Magnus Carlsen
After a few years of only so-so (but still world #1) results, Magnus has I believe won five tournaments in a row this year and he is leading in the sixth, currently running in Croatia.
He recently stated that he has learned some new chess ideas from AlphaZero, but more importantly he has shown up better prepared in the openings than his opponents, probably for the first time in his career. Yet his preparation has taken an extraordinary spin. Other grandmasters prepare the opening in the hope of achieving an early advantage over their opponents. Magnus’s preparation, in contrast, is directed at achieving an early disadvantage in the game, perhaps willing to tolerate as much as -0.5 or -0.6 by the standards of the computer (a significant but not decisive disadvantage, with -2 signifying a lost position). Nonetheless these are positions “out of book” where Magnus nonetheless feels he can outplay his opponent, and this is mostly opponents from the world top ten or fifteen.
So far it is working. One commentator wrote: “Magnus is turning into a crushing monster just like Garry. He isn’t the strangler anymore”
And it is hard to counter someone looking for a disadvantage!
Claims about Iran (model this)
“Iran has probably arrived at the conclusion that it has less to lose from acting this way than from doing nothing,” Aniseh Tabrizi, a research fellow and Iran expert at London’s Royal United Services Institute, told CNBC via phone Tuesday.
“There is a gamble behind it that wasn’t there before, which is: ‘If other countries retaliate, we are willing to take the risk because we have really nothing to lose at this point’,” Tabrizi described. “And that is a dangerous way to feel.”
Iran’s economy is expected to shrink by 6% this year, after having contracted 3.9% last year, the International Monetary Fund says. By contrast, it clocked 3.8% growth in 2017, before the Trump administration re-imposed economic sanctions after withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal that offered the Islamic Republic relief from prior sanctions.
And:
“It’s all about careful calibration and plausible deniability,” Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told CNBC.
Iran’s tactics, experts say, are designed to disrupt but not provoke a military response. So far, attacks have specifically avoided civilian deaths and environmental damage like an oil spill.
Instead, the Revolutionary Guard or its naval equivalent may be sending the message that it’s capable of undermining U.S. and Arab Gulf states’ interests in the region. And if they feel they can get away with it, it’s because they’re banking on President Donald Trump not wanting to actually start a war.
“Ultimately, Iran’s intention is to call President Trump’s bluff,” says Ibish.
I don’t have a clear view on this matter, but find it an interesting and of course important question. Here is more from Natasha Turak.
What should I ask Neal Stephenson?
For a forthcoming Conversations with Tyler, no associated public event. Your counsel and extreme wisdom are appreciated as always.
Don’t relax about nuclear war
That is the theme of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit:
Each generation has its own form of recency bias, as it is called in behavioral economics. Just after Sept. 11, for example, there was great concern about follow-up attacks. (Thankfully, nothing comparable followed.) Now we worry a lot — maybe too much — about insolvent banks, insufficiently high inflation, and the Chinese shock to U.S. manufacturing.
So what about nuclear war? Looking forward, the reality is that the risks of such a war are quite small in any particular year. But let the clock run and enough years pass, and a nuclear exchange of some kind becomes pretty likely.
I have found that people with a background in financial market trading are best equipped to understand the risks of nuclear war. An analogy might be helpful: Say you write a deeply out-of-the-money put, without an offsetting hedge. This is in fact a very risky action, though almost all of the time you will get away with it. When you don’t, however — when market prices move against you — you can lose all of your wealth quite suddenly.
In other words: Sooner or later the unexpected will come to pass.
And:
Meanwhile, a generation of hypersonic delivery systems, being developed by China, Russia and the U.S., will shorten the response time available to political and military leaders to minutes. That raises the risk of a false signal turning into a decision to retaliate, or it may induce a nation to think that a successful first strike is possible. Remember, it’s not enough for the principle of mutual assured destruction to be generally true; it has to be always true.
Do read the whole thing, which includes a discussion of Steven Pinker as well.