One of the most charming features of game theory is the almost limitless depths
of evil to which it can sink.
Your garden-variety evils act against your values. Your better class of evil,
like Voldemort and the folk-tale version of Satan, use your greed to trick you
into acting against your own values, then grab away the promised reward at the
last moment. But even demons and dark wizards can only do this once or twice
before most victims wise up and decide that taking their advice is a bad idea.
Game theory can force you to betray your deepest principles for no lasting
benefit again and again, and still leave you convinced that your behavior was
rational.
Some of the examples in this post probably wouldn't work in reality; they're
more of a reductio ad absurdum of the so-called homo economicus who acts free
from any feelings of altruism or trust. But others are lifted directly from real
life where seemingly intelligent people genuinely fall for them. And even the
ones that don't work with real people might be valuable in modeling institutions
or governments.
Of the following examples, the first three are from The Art of Strategy; the
second three are relatively classic problems taken from around the Internet. A
few have been mentioned in the comments here already and are reposted for people
who didn't catch them the first time.
The Evil Plutocrat
You are an evil plutocrat who wants to get your pet bill - let's say a law that
makes evil plutocrats tax-exempt - through the US Congress. Your usual strategy
would be to bribe the Congressmen involved, but that would be pretty costly -
Congressmen no longer come cheap. Assume all Congressmen act in their own
financial self-interest, but that absent any financial self-interest they will
grudgingly default to honestly representing their constituents, who hate your
bill (and you personally). Is there any way to ensure Congress passes your bill,
without spending any money on bribes at all?
Yes. Simply tell all Congr
バツ子（痛いの痛いの飛んでけ;;
lain
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