Game Theory: Game of Hawk-Dove (aka Chicken)

Evolution, through survival of the “fittest”, is commonly thought of as a very harsh process that results in zero-sum outcomes - one organism thrives at the expense of another.

In the movie, A Beautiful Mind, there was a scene wherein John Nash was fuming mad when he lost in a board game against his intellectual rival Martin Hansen. Believing that he had played a perfect game, there is no way that he is going to lose the game. As intellectual as John Nash is, he probably thought that the worst outcome of his perfect game plan is a draw, if the other player would be able to respond with a perfect strategy of his own. But this is not to be. John Nash lost the game because he had failed to anticipate the next move of his opponent which surprises him. He knew very well the “analytics” of the game but he forgot to include the human factor in his analysis.

In 1996, Gary Kasparov the Russian Chess Grandmaster and the world's undisputed chess champion was pitted against a super computer named Deep Blue developed by IBM. After 6 games of grueling encounter, Kasparov won 3 and Deep Blue won once, with 2 games ended in a draw. The IBM team went back to work, developed their program more, and improved the system to beat Kasparov in their next match which was held a year later. This experiment exposes the limits of the human brain.

Game theory has been used to study a wide variety of human and animal behaviors. It was initially developed in economics to understand a large collection of economic behaviors, including behaviors of firms, markets, and consumers. The use of game theory in the social sciences has expanded, and game theory has been applied to political, sociological, and psychological behaviors as well.

The Hawk-Dove (aka Chicken) game is an influential model of conflict for two players in game theory. With two players and two strategies to choose from, the outcome of the game is easier to predict. The hard part is: which strategy better suits which situation.

According to Wikipedia, the game of Chicken, also known as the Hawk-Dove or Snowdrift game, is an influential model of conflict for two players in game theory. The principle of the game is that while each player prefers not to yield to the other, the outcome where neither player yields is the worst possible one for both players.

The name "Chicken" has its origins in a game in which two drivers drive towards each other on a collision course: one must swerve, or both may die in the crash, but if one driver swerves and the other does not, the one who swerved will be called a "chicken," meaning a coward.

HAWK: very aggressive, always fights for some resource. While the outcome maybe favorable to them, the other consequence may proved fatal.

DOVE: never fights for a resource -- it displays in any conflict and if it is attacked it immediately withdraws before it gets injured.

In game theory, a system is said to be in an equilibrium called a Nash equilibrium if there is no strategy which any of the components can improve their state in the system. In the Game of Hawk-Dove (aka Chicken), the hawk has the best chance of getting the bigger payoff, unless it faces off with another hawk, in which case a duel becomes inevitable. The bigger the payoff, the bigger the risk. Unless you don't mind being called a chicken, playing dove is like playing it safe, with little reward and sometimes none at all.

In the run-up to the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the hawkish advisers of the Bush administration were able to convinced then President George Bush to wage war against Iraq, in particular the regime of the late Saddam Hussein. They have successfully argued that Iraq was a threat to America and to the peace of the world, through its alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ties to terrorist network. Everybody knew now that there were no WMD found in Iraq.

This type of behavior is typical of a hawk, very aggressive, always fights for some resource (oil in Iraq) and in retaining its world's only superpower status.

Time and time again, the game of Hawks-Doves in the political spectrum is being played repeatedly all over the world. The struggle for supremacy to shape the country's foreign policy lingers on, while the number of casualties of war continues unabated.

Looking back at the classic (non-quantum) evolutionary game as applied to the financial crisis which started in 2008, we will call the Doves in the game those bank investors who acquire rather low risk products that return moderate payoffs. The Hawks are those bank investors who seek out high risk products that have the potential to return large payoffs–but, these also could result in huge losses.

Although the risk of destabilization in the investment market was obviously increasing for the last few years prior to the crisis, the behavior of some aggressive investment bankers did not change. However, instead of ending in a stable state, finally the market crashed and almost all aggressive agents disappeared from the population. This could have been prevented, if any aggressive behavior were inhibited completely.

As for the political hawks, they should be the first ones to be sent to the front line of any war they have advocated. This will give them the first hand experience of what it felt to be in a war zone. It will also give them the lesson they duly deserve about the agonies of war, if ever they would be lucky enough to survive and tell their own stories.

The evolutionary game theoretic predictions of this particular version of the Hawk-Dove game are that the ratio of aggressive vs. non-aggressive behaviors would not reach equilibrium. That is, it predicts a crash!

In choosing the best strategy, it would be wise to read the situation very carefully, weigh the benefits of winning and the cost of losing, and decide accordingly based on what you really want to achieve. If the end result is worth your own life, by all means, play the hawk. If other people's lives and livelihood are on the line, for God's sake, play the dove.

In my opening paragraph, I choose the words “survival of the fittest” to describe the kind of attitude that is most prevalent in this day and age. People becoming more materialistic to the point of being greedy. The last financial crisis and the fight for oil in Iraq are both a case in point.

Based on the many articles I have read, I have stumbled upon many ideas on how the Hawk-Dove game can assist theorist in analyzing the best possible scenario that will emerge if a standoff between two protagonists occur, or that a market crash is forthcoming, and so on and so forth. But I have yet to read an article on how to resolve a long standing conflict between feuding nations. We are all witness to the never-ending cycle of violence in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has been going on for as long as I can remember. In fact, this is being used as an excuse by some extremist terrorists organizations to justify their terror campaigns around the globe.

I have mentioned earlier the innocent and ordinary people falling victims to wars, atrocities and the financial meltdown. And I read somewhere that it only takes the good men to do nothing for evil men to triumph. Only few people had orchestrated these appalling events, while the rest of us just watched idly by.

Free market economy as espoused by the Americans is not bad. This is part and parcel of democracy. People can choose freely what they want and how to use it. The problem occurs when people become too aggressive and felt compelled by the promise of good returns to any investment that was offered to them. In a dark and narrow alley, where certain danger lurks ahead, the hawks are most willing to face the danger, while the doves will shy away and find another route to reach their destination. It will take them longer, but they will surely get there and live another day to mingle with their own species.

Why can't the human race follow the example of a dove?

In the second paragraph, I have told the story of how frustrated John Nash was because his beautiful mind failed him. And in my second story, I have shown the limits of human brain when pitted against a computer. From these two examples, I can fairly assume that the best human intelligence is possibly only comparable to a pentium-based computer, with probably, a 1 gigabyte of RAM (Random Access Memory). But even with these limitations, man will stop at nothing to find the answers to what they sought to discover.

Any studies about human behavior can only be considered complete if it can manage to grasp the complexity of the human brain. Even the Omnipotent Divinity does not assert its power over it.