THE CATCH-22 LOGICAL TRAP THAT THREATENS OUR WORLD

GAME THEORY is all around us. Despite its name, it is not just about games – it is about the strategies that we use every day in our interactions with other people. Many of these strategies involve a hidden, Catch-22 logical trap. It is a constant, if often unrecognized, presence in family arguments, neighbourhood disputes and day-to-day social interactions, as well as in the global issues that we now face, such as global warming, resource depletion, terrorism and war. Here I analyze daily news stories where I show how the trap arises, the damage that it causes and, most importantly, how we can cooperate to overcome it.

THE TRAP was discovered by Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash, the schizophrenic anti-hero of the film “A Beautiful Mind”. Once you catch on to it, you will start to see it everywhere. Paul McCartney and Heather Mills were caught by it during their divorce. So were Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton during the race for the democratic nomination. So were the fishermen who over-fished the Newfoundland fisheries. So are we all.

THE TRAP arises whenever we could cooperate for mutual benefit, but where one of us sees that we could do better by cheating on the cooperation. So we could, until the other party starts to think the same way. Then we both, quite logically, cheat, but somehow we end up in a worse position than if we had maintained the cooperation in the first place. We are trapped in a vicious, Catch-22 circle of logic.

MY BOOK ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS shows how the trap works, and what we can do to get out of it. Here I will reinforce the book with daily examples from the news which show how pervasive the trap is, and how important it is to understand and use the escape routes that the book reveals.