The Toolbox

Game Theory

“Follow the Leaders” art installation popularly known as “Politicians Discussing Global Warming” by Isaac Cordal. Montreal, Canada, 2015.

Win‐win

We will not win alone. Much of this book has been about the building blocks of collaboration, such as transparency, kindness, logic, humility, adaptability, trust, and clear communication. Collaboration is a necessary ingredient of social change.

Accordingly, we should be sobered by the fact that human history is littered with failed collaboration and unnecessary conflict.

During the Cold War, the U.S. military hired mathematicians to parse the tragic logic of the nuclear standoff. Thinkers like John Von Neumann built the new discipline of game theory to precisely illuminate the terrible decisions facing political leaders. Game theory was used to explain market behavior and political conflict.

Over time, the discipline grew and evolved. Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize in economics for showing how people can, in fact, work together to find creative solutions for common resources that they’d otherwise deplete if they only pursued their own selfish interests.¹

Social change agents like us can similarly benefit from game theory to explain—and potentially avoid—shortsighted and selfish behavior that limits our individual ...