kityates.bsky.social
Author.
Prof of Math Bio and Public Engagement.
Member of Independent Sage since October 2020.
@Kit_Yates_Maths on twitter
Books -
Math(s) of Life and Death
How to Expect the Unexpected
Get them here: https://tinyurl.com/37rx2yuv
He/Him
1,366 posts
24,938 followers
334 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
comment in response to
post
Yep at Kings College London with the statue of John Keats.
Couldn't get him to look into the camera.
comment in response to
post
Absolutely. Could help save a lot of time and indecision.
comment in response to
post
Did you read the thread? It definitely doesn’t say that.
In fact it says almost the exact opposite. Lol wow.
comment in response to
post
This Thread is adapted from my substack post "Will he, won’t he? The benefits and dangers of Trump’s mixed negotiating strategy"
\ENDS
kityates.substack.com/p/will-he-wo...
comment in response to
post
So whilst mixed strategies might work well for parlour games or even for business negotiations, it’s not clear that they are the most appropriate strategy when it comes to international nuclear diplomacy.
36/37
comment in response to
post
Even if the US’s allies felt they would like to support the curbing of Iran’s nuclear programme, how could they manifest this support when they had no idea how their ally will act?
35/37
comment in response to
post
This means they can’t formulate an appropriate response or will perhaps be led to believe the unpredictable actor is simply not serious.
The other problem with a unilateral mixed strategy is that sometimes even your own allies don’t know what you are going to do.
34/37
comment in response to
post
But one of the main problems with using unpredictability as a deterrent strategy or a negotiation stance is that an opponent does not know the potential consequences of their actions.
33/37
comment in response to
post
...capitulating in his game of nuclear chicken.
It had been argued that Trump was simply bluffing in order to deter Iran from continuing their nuclear programme; warning them of the potential consequences if they do.
32/37
comment in response to
post
Although the operation may have initially spooked the Soviets, Nixon’s game-theoretic gamble was ultimately a miscalculation, needlessly escalating the risk of nuclear war, failing to bring Hanoi back to the negotiating table and leaving him in a weakened position after...
31/37
comment in response to
post
The B52s spent three more days harrying the border before being ordered home in what Nixon hoped was another unpredictable move, demonstrating that he could de-escalate tensions as quickly as he had heightened them.
30/37
comment in response to
post
Soviet General Secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, was concerned enough by Nixon’s Madman antics to demand that his ambassador set up an urgent meeting.
29/37
comment in response to
post
As the bombers approached the eastern border of the Soviet Union, they slowed and diverted their course, so as not to stray into Soviet airspace.
28/37
comment in response to
post
There was a very real danger that the Soviets might have interpreted Nixon’s behaviour not as the irrational actions of an unbalanced president, but as the rational and strategic pre-emptive actions of a Chinese ally.
27/37
comment in response to
post
The Soviets were wary of the Americans’ newly found sympathies towards Beijing, the US having thawed previously frozen trade relations between the two countries earlier in the year.
26/37
comment in response to
post
At the same time, although Nixon was unaware of the situation, the Soviet Union was engaged in a secret border dispute with China that had been rumbling for six months.
25/37
comment in response to
post
Nixon knew that Soviet radars would pick the bombers up early on in their trajectory and see the threat coming. He hoped that this would scare the USSR into acquiescing to his Vietnam demands.
24/37
comment in response to
post
On 27 October, unbeknown to the American people, Nixon launched operation Giant Lance. Eighteen B-52 bombers loaded with some of the world’s most powerful thermonuclear weapons were dispatched at 500 miles per hour across Alaska towards the Bering Strait.
23/37
comment in response to
post
In a calculated act designed to convince the Soviets of his recklessness and coerce them into exerting their influence over Hanoi, the president placed the US military on full global war readiness alert.
22/37
comment in response to
post
In October 1969, with negotiations to end the war in Vietnam at a stalemate, Nixon put his Madman policy into action.
21/37
comment in response to
post
He reasoned that if his opponents judged him to be an irrational actor, they would not be able to predict his plays and would thus have to make more concessions to avoid the risk of accidentally triggering him into retaliation.
20/37
comment in response to
post
The aim, as the name would suggest, was to convince Nixon’s communist opponents that he was more than a little unhinged.
19/37
comment in response to
post
...than they would to an agent whose rational actions they find easy to predict.
One particular mixed strategy, a form of brinkmanship known in political science as the Madman Theory, was the basis of much of Richard Nixon’s foreign policy in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
18/37
comment in response to
post
Conversely, when negotiating with a despot who is employing a mixed strategy – someone who might, for example, have their finger on the nuclear button one minute, while advocating for total disarmament the next – an opponent might find themselves making more concessions...
17/37
comment in response to
post
In the context of international diplomacy, sticking to a pure strategy – having a preordained response for any given situation – might reduce the ability of a negotiator to bluff, bluster or manipulate an opponent.
16/37
comment in response to
post
The students whose counterparts displayed emotional unpredictability were made to feel as though they lacked control over the negotiations, leading them to make larger concessions and irresolute demands.
15/37
comment in response to
post
In one scenario, negotiators were asked to be relentlessly negative and angry, while in another, they were asked to frequently change their emotional tone between positive and negative.
14/37
comment in response to
post
In recent experiments into the impacts of emotional unpredictability, management students were asked to negotiate a hypothetical venture with each other according to some pre-specified rules.
13/37
doi.org/10.1016/j.je...
comment in response to
post
This reduces both the likelihood of depleting the prey in a particular region of the forest and the probability of the hunted animals learning where humans like to hunt and deliberately avoiding those areas.
12/37
comment in response to
post
Divesting the decision to an essentially random process circumvents the inevitable repetitiveness of human-made decisions.
11/37
comment in response to
post
Their direction-choosing ceremony involves burning the bones of previously caught caribou and using the random scorch marks that appear in order to determine the direction for the next hunt.
10/37
comment in response to
post
For hundreds of years, the Naskapi people of eastern Canada have been using a mixed strategy to help them choose where to hunt.
9/37
comment in response to
post
As I write about in How to Expect the Unexpected, game theoreticians might refer to the practice of choosing probabilistically from among a range of strategies to avoid becoming predictable as a mixed strategy.
8/37
www.amazon.co.uk/How-Expect-U...
comment in response to
post
The best strategy, if you can’t guess your opponent’s move, is to choose completely at random between the three different plays. Memorising a randomised list of papers, rocks and scissors to throw in a competitive game gives you the best chance of winning against a pro.
7/37
comment in response to
post
Regularly alternating patterns also get spotted quickly and are easy to beat. Members of the World Rock Paper Scissors Society (yes, of course there is a society – why wouldn’t there be?) are masters in the art of exploiting predictability.
6/37
comment in response to
post
Serious practitioners of rock paper scissors (as opposed to squabbling siblings using the game to decide who gets to ride shotgun) understand that it is a game of psychology more than chance. If you throw the same shape every time, you get picked off easily by your opponent.
5/37
comment in response to
post
And there is an argument which suggests his unpredictability might be a deliberate game theoretic strategy designed to keep his political opponents guessing.
4/37
comment in response to
post
Perhaps Trump has genuinely been trying to give the appearance of choosing randomly when it comes to big policy decisions in order to maintain this unpredictable aura.
3/37
www.pbs.org/weta/washing...