Mind Performance Hacks

Hack #47. Eliminate Dominated Strategies

Find your strongest strategy by systematically eliminating all of your weaker choices.

We've already seen that it's important to find dominant strategies [Hack #46] when you make decisions, if possible. If you're lucky enough to have a single dominant strategy, your choice is clear.

Sometimes, however, neither opponent has a dominant strategy. In that case, the opponents should try to eliminate strategies from consideration that are dominated and to continue eliminating weaker strategies until a single strategy emerges as clearly superior. When each opponent has settled on a single strategy, they have reached a pure strategy equilibrium, which is the best that either opponent can rationally hope for.¹

In Action

Welcome back to that world-famous cookery game show, Titanium Chef. On this episode, we have two time-traveling celebrity chefs named Pasta and Futurio. The ground rules for this episode are as follows:

• Both chefs will choose a cuisine from their respective periods. Pasta will choose between Incan and Sumerian cuisine, and Futurio will choose among Andromedan, Rigelian, and Venusian cooking.

• There are 10 judges on this episode, each of whom may either cast one vote for a chef or abstain from voting.

• Each contestant will take home $10,000 times the number of votes she receives.

The Titanium Chef studio has been temporally shielded so that Pasta and Futurio can't use their chronovision sets to predict their opponent's cuisine. However, both ...