GAME THEORY AND POLITICAL REALITY

The paper, "The Israel-Palestine Question- A Case For Application of Neutrosophic Game Theory" by Dr. S. Bhattacharya, Dr. F. Smarandache, and Dr. M. Khosnevisan [1] proposes the application of a particular kind of game theory to a specific political/social situation. I always considered political and social situations as complex, dynamic, and, in the long term, unpredictable. But this paper is a revelation that social complexity can be described and analyzed using mathematical tools.

Game theory, as defined in Wikipedia [2], is a branch of applied mathematics which tries to describe behavior in important situations wherein an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of other individuals. Game theory is applied to the social sciences, including computer science and political science. In political science, Game Theory is used to identify the choices available to each party and to evaluate what each of them is trying to achieve. In short, Game Theory is used to simplify a complex and dynamic political situation so that it can be fully understood.

The paper [1] argues that the normal form game( a zero sum game) applied by Plessner [3] is inadequate because it lends to static and well defined variables. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on the other hand, is characterized by changing strategies and ambiguities at particular points in time. At one particular point, the players are playing a cooperative game and a non-cooperative game. When Israeli and Palestinian authorities commit and support their peace agreements, they are playing a cooperative game. When Israeli forces unilaterally attack Gaza with tanks and Hamas paramilitaries fire rockets at Jewish civilian settlements, they are playing non-cooperative games. The authors propose that a neusotrophic game theory is better equipped to study these class of dynamic situations.

Wikipedia defines a zero sum game as a theory where in all contending parties do not really gain anything at the end of the game. The gain and losses of one player is offset by the gains and losses of other players. When the total gains are added with the total losses, the sum is zero. This could describe a scenario were particular parties may gain certain successes and concede certain losses but in the end everyone wins, nobody really has a grater advantage over the other. A neutrosophic game is similar to the zero sum game in the sense that it seeks a win-win solution to contentions. The only difference is that it has a component to address the changes and ambiguities that may be present to a situation, like what calculus is to algebra. The paper [1] defines Neusotrophy as a new branch of philosophy which studies neutralities and their interaction with various types of social ideas or ideologies.

References:

[1] S. Bhattacharya, F. Smarandache, M. Khosnevisan. "The Israel-Palestine Question - A Case for Application of Neutrosophic Game Theory", Computational Modeling in Applied Problems: collected papers on econoetrics, operations research, game theory and simulation, pp. 50 - 60

[2] Wikipedia.org, http://www.wikipedia.org

[3] Plessner, Yakir. "The conflict Between Israel and the Palestinian: A Rational Analysis", Jerusalem Letters/Viewpoints, No. 448, 22 Shvat 5761, 15, February 2001