Gaming the World

Group dynamics should be of interest to anybody who needs to deal with a group. This can include nations, corporates, religious groups, unions, professional associations and the likes. It can be interesting for individuals in general and can help them to try and understand their position in the society and their contribution to the resulting dynamics. Game theory has been an important step towards rationalizing this dynamics. Its concept of equilibrium between various competing forces is a nothing but a stroke of genius. The theory, however, abstracts the results and a sequence of events. A framework that maybe able to account for human motivations and behaviour may be able to complement the theory. There are two places where I see the potential of extracting such behaviour patterns: the animal kingdom and astrology.

Game theory has found its way to biology. What I propose is that in addition to this we can extract basic behaviour patterns that can be observed. As in physics we begin with the simplest of assumptions, why not first try to extract behaviour patterns from animals? Most animals, after all, exhibit a fairly consistent behaviour when compared to humans. Humans differ from animals in their ability to choose and switch behaviour. A cheetah can never become a vulture but a human producer can transform to sloth. A series of predictable, simple animal behaviour patterns can be used to describe a complex human one, and similarly the way animal groups interact can be used for group dynamics as well.

For example, the diverse wildlife of an African savannah can make an interesting study in basic patterns. We can see that in order to survive the animals seek or develop some kind of advantage. This can take form of numbers, size or specializations. Numbers are sought as either an offensive or a defensive strategy. Most herbivores generally seek groups for a nominal defence against predators, though only few like wild buffalo would take the fight back to the predator. Even carnivores like lions and wild dogs seek numbers to ensure success and survival. Some animals, like the rhino and elephant, count on their size to bully and get their way. Finally, some kind of specialization is used for survival. Giraffe uses its long neck, a cheetah uses its speed while vultures use their flexibility. At the end, various unknown choices on the path of evolution determine the place occupied by any particular animal. This determines their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threat; so to say. For example, a cheetah goes hungry despite of being the most successful hunter on the savannah due to its inability to defend what it is able to hunt. Lions, hyenas and vultures manage to harass the cheetah enough to forfeit its hard-earned food. So, when Ayn Rand talks about the fact that the creators are taken for a ride, I think it is a brave defence of the heroics of an achiever (cheetah) but ignores the fact that the strength to defend what one has is as important to succeed. For ages, hungry barbarians at the gate have ravenously consumed civilizations smug with its achievements. Be it ancient Rome or India, the story is the same. Similar parallels can be found in other animal behaviours as well. The bottom-line is that each one tries to maximize their advantage as they know best. Be it the chest-thumping of morality to induce guilt, brute force, majority, cunning, intelligence or hard work; the whole question is about getting an advantage and trying to maintain it. Morals come up to try to enforce stability as such a purely Machiavellian society may tend to get totally turbulent. All forms of social institutions come up with a view of creating stability. Nevertheless, a few always manage to find a way to game the system and the ones who feel left out, feeling taken for a ride, push for changes and alternative systems of organization. So, effectively, we have managed to transform power games between individuals into power games with in groups and alternative organizing principles.

Similar patterns can be found in astrology. Astrology gives us a classification system that tries to crystallize "human" elements (picture a periodic table of elements) and defines a set of rules for their reaction in various circumstances. Most people think of astrology only as the sun sign. My observation says that it is NOT about the sun sign as sun is only one out of nine planets influencing a person. Think of it like a vector problem in Mathematics. It is not the presence of one force that counts, it is where the resultant vector would point to that determines the personality. Or a chemical reaction in which certain elements react to produce a result that may be quite different from the reacting elements. In fact, after some observation, it is possible to map the result to its constituent elements without seeing the birth chart, to see how a person behaves and then try to classify it under any of the observable patterns in the matrix. If we are able to see a fit, it immediately gives us a perspective on the person's current state of mind and the possible behaviour he is expecting. And you do not need any birth chart for this! This, for me, has been the most practical application of astrology. A tool to better understand myself, people around me and behaviour patterns. It has certainly helped me to be more understanding and modify my behaviour according to the situation. It has also helped me to understand my own prejudices & thought patterns.

Further, linking this to artificial intelligence and reducing the patterns to programs can help to further refine the framework. Using studies from emergent behaviour or modelling of a probabilistic systems of interlinked events (a system in which events are not definite but probable, and occurrence of any one event has the potential of affecting the probability of all other events in the system) around this could prove to be interesting.