Rock, Paper, Scissors: A Book Review

            Rock, Paper, Scissors is a book written by Len Fisher. It was published last November 4, 2008. This book generally talks about game theory and how Fisher relates it to our everyday life inside this 8-chapter book.

            Game theory is the science of strategy, as well as a branch of economics. This book discusses ways to promote trust and cooperation with other people. According to Fisher, the need of new strategies is the birth of game theory which would help solve or minimize the social dilemmas. This will be achieved by giving people new perspective which unravels the true causes and by providing new strategies to balance conflict and cooperation.

            Here are the summary of each chapter:

            In the first chapter, it mainly talks about the Prisoner’s dilemma and the Nash equilibrium. The second chapter discusses the concept of minimax and fair division. Miinimax is the lowest of the set of a maximum values. According to Wikipedia, “Fair division is the problem of dividing a set of goods between several people, such that each person receives his/her due share”. The third chapter tackles about the “Seven deadly dilemmas” which are interesting game theory problems. The fourth chapter discusses the game “rock, paper, scissors” and how it can be used in resolving conflicts, which is said, that this game has no pure strategy.  Chapters’ five to eight are about the relationship with other people, such as how to achieve trust, how to effectively bargain, and other forms of cooperation.

            To sum up this book, Fisher gave 10 tips or strategies to use cooperation effectively  (1) Stay if you win, shift if you lose, (2) Bring an extra player in, (3) set up some form of reciprocity, (4) Restrict your own future options so that you will lose out if you defect on cooperation, (5) offer trust, (6) create a situation that neither party can independently escape from without loss, (7) use side payments o create and maintain cooperative coalitions, (8) be aware of the seven deadly dilemmas, and try to reorganize the benefits and costs to different payers so that the dilemma disappears, (9) divide goods, responsibilities, jobs, and penalties so that the result is envy free, (10) divide large groups into smaller ones.

            What unique about this book is that it gives us the application of mathematics, specifically the Game Theory, in our daily lives. Knowing that theories are informative, but still this book presented Game theory in a fun way as playing a game. The experiences of the author also helps lighten the mood of reading this book.