Eli5 Can someone explain zero sum games and how they apply to our daily lives clearly?
In: Economics
An example would be we play a game, the prize is $100. There are only 2 players, all $100 will be awarded but the split depends on how well each player does relative to the other. So any additional dollar you get is a dollar I don’t get. If we start at 50/50 for instance, and you gain a dollar, that means I lose a dollar. The split is now 51/49.
Basically any gain you make, is an equal loss for me. And Vice versa.
It’s very rare that this happens in life, but it can occasionally. More often, we tend to think of things as zero sum when they are not.
An example is a promotion at work. Often viewed as zero sum. Either you get the promotion or I do. Now, there are other factors of course, so it is not a true zero sum, but most people may view it that way.
Generally, viewing things as zero sum in life is not accurate nor productive.
A zero sum “game” is one where if you sum up the wins and loses of the “players” you end up with 0.
This has the consequence that 1 player can’t gain without the other player losing. And an example of that would be a fixed amount of stuff. Like idk paintings by a famous painter who’s dead. As he’s dead the amount of his pictures is limited and doesn’t increase, so the only way to get another painting is to get it from another person. So if you track the amount of paintings, they remain constant.
As a consequence of that zero-sum games tend to be more on the competitive ego-centristic side and depending on the resource in question that can lead to massive conflict. Though often things aren’t zero-sum games because you can produce more of a thing or find substitutes or whatnot.
There’s one piece of pie, and you and I both want a slice. However we give it or agree to share it, there is only one slice of pie that we’re eating.
So if I get the entire pie, you get no pie, if we split it 50/50 we each get less pie than we wanted, and if you get the slice, I get nothing.
Those types of situations are common in dealing with things in the short term (like my pie example). In the long term it’s certainly possible to bake more pie, which allows change away from zero sum.
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