What I've Learnt From Game Theory

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]If you notice that your relationships and work are a lot harder than they need to be, it's very likely that you're in a game that you don't realize. Lately, I've been seeing this more and more around me, and I've heard about game theory for a couple of years now. You're hearing about it in podcasts, reading about it in articles, but I decided to actually get into it. So, I went down a rabbit hole. Since then, it's been really hard to not see it in almost every interaction. Not just working on a project with colleagues or hanging out with friends, there's a transaction. And for most of us, myself included, we've been playing this game mainly blind our entire life. The first example that really made me see it was at work. We had a brand new colleague join the team, and on paper, uh she was great. But slowly, slowly, I started seeing a pattern. In meetings, for example, she'd take credit for things that she hadn't done entirely herself, or she'd very purposely cause someone to take a fall so that she gets the praise. [music] And in the short term, this worked in the eyes of the managers. You know, the managers thought she was great. She was very capable and could [music] do the work. But the rest of the team saw through it. I think the problem she'll run into is that she'll realize she's been optimizing for a short-term game, when in reality, a work environment is a lot more long-term. You're rocking up every day, seeing the same people, working with the same colleagues. And this is a realm where trust, communication, and reputation matter a lot and compound over time. And this is exactly what we started to see. People stopped trusting her, they stopped communicating with her and sharing information, knowing that she'd be very willing to let them take a hit so that she gets a little bit of praise out of it. And what clicked for me was not the thought that, you know, she's being an or anything. It's that she's playing a game that she thinks is short-term, but is actually in reality long-term. And this idea really clicked more for me when I started revisiting the prisoner's dilemma. For those that don't know it, I'll give you a quick rundown. Hypothetically, you and your partner get arrested and put into separate cells, and you're both given the same deal. If you both stay silent, you get 1 year in jail each. But, if you choose to betray them, you get off scot-free and they stay in jail for 10 years. If they choose to betray you, they get off scot-free, but you get 10 years. And there's also the scenario where you both betray, and you both get 5 years. So, from the outside, the best outcome is obviously for you to both stay silent and only get 1 year each.

[00:02:32]But, what happens when you're inside the cell by yourself thinking about what your partner's actually going to do, the results change, your behavior changes.

[00:02:40]Because you're thinking, if I stay silent, but they betray me, I'm screwed. So, what happens? In a lot of scenarios, you see that both people choose to betray each other and both get 5 years. A worst scenario than if they both trusted. And what's important for me is that this isn't just some hypothetical situation. It's something that we start to see more and more once we open our eyes to it. Anytime in our workplaces, in our relationships, where the best outcome is achieved through mutual trust, but there's also an option for defecting, where you actually get a lot more benefit out of it, you start to see this same dilemma play out. Before reading into game theory, I used to label people as, you know, good or bad.

[00:03:22]But, once I delved deeper and deeper into game theory, it mainly realized that what if a lot of this personality or negative labeling I'm giving people is actually a consequence of the game that they think they're playing. Take that colleague that I just mentioned. If she believes that she's in a short-term game, and you view it from an objective lens, her behavior actually makes a lot of sense. She's doing exactly what the incentives are nudging her to do in that scenario. And then I'd wager that if you sat her down and talked to her and actually let her know what the reality of the game she was playing is, her behavior would change. She'd become a lot more trustworthy, a lot more prone to helping out in a team. So, you'd have the same person, but a different game and from that, different behavior. And this idea started bleeding more and more into other areas. You know, you look at politics, I think a lot of it is we're looking at smart people that are incentivized to act poorly. And this relates to relationships as well. It's not that people aren't compatible, it's that there's a coordination problem between the two parties. And what I realized is that when I started seeing behavior as a response to a game, I stopped labeling it with such harsh critique. And that might sound a little controversial or forgiving of people for their bad behavior, but I think it's a more objective way of viewing it. So, off the top of my head, I started thinking about some games that we all might but don't realize. For example, a friendship that's fading where both sides aren't choosing to message each other and are thinking in their head, "If they wanted to be friends with me, they'd message me first." But, the reality is, you know, both sides are thinking that and so, what happens? You reach that negative equilibrium that we're talking about in the prisoner's dilemma or a relationship that stays polite and shallow and doesn't really reach that depth that both people are looking for because they're incentivized to not show vulnerability and are fearful. Each person is protecting themselves from feeling rejection. What results is this low-level, low-connection relationship that nobody actually wants. And just hopping back to my point is that it stops becoming a people problem and it seems to be more of a game problem. And in all of these scenarios is a term that I've heard of, but it sort of eluded me. It's called the Nash equilibrium, which is basically the situation where everyone is acting the most rationally and intelligently they can based off what they expect everyone else is going to do. And it made me think, how many of our situations and relationships in our life are we stuck at a Nash equilibrium because no one wants to take the first move. It's a very confronting question in my opinion, but also freeing because what it means is the people you're playing these games with aren't necessarily bad or anything. They're just incentivized to act that way and we can be the first [music] to sort of break that pattern with this knowledge.

[00:06:15]So, if you can't change the person, you change the game. Change the incentive, change the information they have, change their way of seeing it. Sometimes that same person who [music] we feel frustrated with in a scenario would actually end up becoming our teammate had we shifted the parameters. And that to me is insane. Learning about game theory didn't make everything feel colder. It made everything feel a lot more human. Because under all the jargon and knowledge that I've learned about this, it's changed my view from why is this person like this to what game do they think they're in right now? It's stopped me from immediately judging people. And just yeah, again, realize that we're all just trying to do the best that we can [music] and are acting in a way that we think is the most intelligent. So, the next time you feel that something's off in a relationship or in your work, ask yourself the question, what game is everyone playing here? I hope you enjoyed this video. Please leave a like and comment if you see this in your life as well. As always, thank you so much for watching and I'll catch you around.