If Nobody Goes for the Blonde

The book discusses on the game theory, the importance of cooperation and its applications in real life. It starts with Nash’s equilibrium which I found really interesting. John Nash developed a very original idea which brought him success even if he found it in the most peculiar way. He happens to be in a pub with friends and they spot a beautiful blonde with her brunette friends. So they start betting on who among them gets the blonde. Suddenly Nash points out that the only way for them to have a win-win situation in which all of them get laid is if they cooperate and none of them tries to steal the blonde. Instead, they all go for the brunettes, they don’t get in each other’s way and they all get to win. He then formulated what I supposed was enough to fly in the face of 150 years of economic theory. At least that is as accurate as the movie goes. The first chapter was all about expounding this thought coupled with a lot of the author’s personal experience.

The next chapter included the mechanism behind ‘I cut and you choose’ where ultimate fairness is achieved by the principle of minimax. Minimax meant minimizing possible maximum loss. The seven deadly dilemmas were pointed out in the 3^rd chapter. The author provides a great summary for each problem. One of which is Brinkmanship where two sides push each other to the edge while hoping that the other one backs out first. The next chapter in my opinion is the most humorous one which tackles about the game: rock, paper, and scissors. In this chapter, Fischer discusses how the balance arises in the game and how we might be able to use it in practice. Chapters 5-8 are all about cooperation. How important trust is and how we could gain it, how we could bargain effectively. The 8^th chapter discusses on how we could change the game to avoid the “trap” of the Prisoner’s dilemma and other undesirable outcomes.

The book was overall enjoyable and friendly. I like how the author peppered it with personal anecdotes because this way, he connects more to the readers. However, I did not necessarily have a good grasp on game theory as I expected I would. The author provided a lot of charts which I found nice for the effort but it wasn't so effective. He may have assumed his readers knew what was going on and skipped past with only the briefest of descriptions. Another problem I had with this book was its organization. The boxes would be inserted in between texts and have continuations (another box) on the next page. This causes the reader to flip back and forth, get confused, lose trail of thought and eventually get tired of it. In summary, I loved the book for its cheerful writing style and emphasis on cooperation but most of the explanations weren't lucid enough for me.