At the end of the game show Golden Ball, the two final contestants have to decide whether to steal or split the winnings. The problem is, they have no idea what the other person will pick. It’s the classic prisoners dilemma.
You can imagine how chaotic this gets.
One day a contestant flipped the game on its head with a truly bizarre strategy. He looked the other man in the face and said he was absolutely going to pick steal. He was going to pick steal, and the other contestant should pick split, giving him all the money, and just 'trust him' that after the show he would share the winnings with him.
It was audacious - his opponent obviously rejected it. Any sane person would.
The two contestants argued back and forth but the man refused to budge even when the crowd started booing him. And then the moment of truth came.
Both men put their balls in and their decisions were revealed - they’d both picked split.
How? It was a masterpiece of strategy in retrospect.
The first man had always intended to split but just had to be sure he wouldn’t be betrayed.
Once he had convinced the other guy to accept the potential of getting nothing and guaranteed he would hit split, he was free to do the same. He didn’t need to exploit the man - he just had to strip away ambiguity and bend the risk in his favour.
Here’s the final kicker - when they interviewed the other contestant afterwards it turns out he was lying about wanting to split when he was arguing and had planned to steal the entire time.
So if the first guy hadn’t been resolute in his position and had trusted the other guy, he would certainly have been rugged.
There are always more options than what you see at first.
Flip the script. Bend the world in your favour. Find a win-win and be ruthless in negotiating for it.
You don’t need to exploit an unfair situation but you can constrain an ambiguous one.
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