INVITATION TO CYBERSECURITY 136 Therefore, the solution to the game is Imposter: Accept, Mom: Reject. This is the Nash equilibrium, because from this square, neither player can unilaterally change her choice and receive a better outcome. Where we left off in the story above, the king had just announced his verdict, “Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other.” Now let’s see how the story ends: “The woman whose son was alive [Mom] was deeply moved out of love for her son and said to the king, ‘Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!’ [Reject] But the other [Imposter] said, ‘Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!’ [Accept] Then the king gave his ruling: ‘Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother.’ When all Israel heard the verdict the king had given, they held the king in awe, because they saw that he had wisdom from God to administer justice.” (1 Kings 3:26-28) Game theory accurately predicted the women’s choices. It turns out King Solomon had a trick up his sleeve; so, happily, the ending was not what anybody could have expected— the real mother received her baby back alive. The story does not say what happened to Imposter, but we can assume the ending was not so happy for her. This is an illustration of how game theory can be applied to real-life situations. It takes some careful thought, and may involve some assumptions, but game theory can be a helpful tool for methodically analyzing complex real-world scenarios. 6.2.2 Game Theory Summary In both the hacker’s dilemma and Solomon’s wise ruling, the games were solved by viewing the situation through the choices available to the other player. Eve determined what she should do by thinking about what Trudy might do, just like Mom figured out what she should do based on the Imposter’s choices. Best response analysis is very important for strategic thinking—it is putting yourself in the shoes of your adversary. The most important takeaway for us is to see that when analyzing a strategic scenario, it pays to consider the world from the perspective of your opponents. It is helpful to take the time to enumerate their choices and to consider how they would rank the different outcomes. Game theory is the study of interdependent decision making between multiple players where each player strives to maximize his own utility. Real life strategic situations can be analyzed through the lens of game theory by identifying the players, the interdependent choices available to them, and their utility preferences. Game theoretical analysis proceeds by viewing the situation through the choices available to the other player. In the next section we will dig deeper into what it looks like to explore strategic situations from our adversary’s perspective by learning about behavioral game theory.
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