Book Review: Rock, Paper, Scissors

       The book written by Len Fisher published in the year 2008 under Basic Books titled, "Rock, Paper, Scissors", is a book that connects game theory to everyday situations and uses that theory to let the readers understand the problems such as domestic quarrels, neighborhood arguments and even global problems we usually encounter, that are apparently rooted in that vicious circle of logic - The Game Theory. The book also claims that there is "another side of game theory - a side that concerns cooperation rather than confrontation and collaboration rather than competition. It also even suggests several techniques as to how cooperation is achieved and discusses some of the social dilemmas we usually come up in our attempt to cooperate".

        According to Fisher, the author, her main aim of writing the book "is to assemble a toolkit of potential strategies for cooperation, in the same way build up a toolkit of techniques for tackling scientific problems during her life as a scientist".

        As I read it, the book indirectly pointed out "self-interest" as the main detrimental culprit from which many of the social dilemmas we usually experience are rooted. "It can make its unwelcome presence felt whenever profit goes to an individual person or group but costs are shared by the community as a whole". Hence, "self-interest"  could also be concluded as the main driving force that motivates every person to cooperate "if only" his/her interest is served and would depend on how her involvement in a certain thing will serve that interest.

         Among the topics discussed in the chapters of the book, I am most absorbed with the topic: "The Seven Deadly Dilemmas" , which is in the third chapter of the book. In this chapter, Fisher provided a list of 7 dilemmas that explains how situational self-centered traps work and how they affect us in real life. The Pioneer's dilemma, Tragedy of the Commons, Free Rider problem, Chicken, The Volunteer's dilemma, the Battle of the Sexes and the Stag hunt are among the 7 dilemmas she discussed. What I really liked about in this chapter, apart from having the most interesting title, the explanations brought here are really straightforward and in some cases that the author needed to expand her ideas and arguments, she would backed it up with catchy illustrations that would do the rest of the explanations for her and would unlocked the chains of confusion inside of a puzzled mind. I really appreciate that she used her own experiences as examples to explain the ideas she is trying to bring.

          As a whole, unlike other books that I've read, this book is sort of less- stressful, since I don't have to braced myself for extremely mind boggling set of equations and get overwhelmed with lots of figures I see in the explanations and examples, because the ideas and explanations brought by the author were situational.