game theory in dark knight, batman

http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2008/08/19/game-theory-in-the-dark-knight-a-critical-review-of-the-opening-scene-spoilers/

This article brings up how game theory is a crucial element in the movie "The Dark Knight." It brings up the issue of fair division and how it is related to a popular game theory game relating pirates and division of treasure. I thought this article was very interesting as I had never realized before how much game theory related topics were present in this movie -- it really is quite a lot.

I thought the most interesting part of the article was the part showing how much power Pirate A held over the other 2 when dividing up the treasure. Since Pirate A could buy off Pirate C with just 1 piece of the treasure (since if A dies, C gets nothing), A not only survives but gains 99% of the treasure and has to give nothing to the 2nd in command. This is particularly interesting when you think of hierarchy and how the 2nd in command should theoretically hold more power than the 3rd in command. However, in the pirate problem, this is clearly not the case and gives rise to the question of why anyone would want to be 2nd in command.

This also is reminiscent of the splitting dollar activity we did in class where some people would have to negotiate in a bidding war all the way down to 0 or something close similar to Pirate B in the case of the treasure example.

This is similar to the graphs we looked at in class. For a T shaped graph of 5 nodes (3 across and 3 down) even though the center node had the most links to the graph and possibly the most power that node was not necessarily in the most profitable spot. In the case of the pirate example it was the second most powerful who actually had the least trading power as opposed to the least powerful.

Yes, this article clearly shows a network exchange. In this case, we can see that the most powerful always has the most connection to decide how his should split the treasure. The second most powerful always tries to get rid of the most powerful so that he can get more share. I also like how this is apparent in the robbery scene. Another scene that involved decision is actually the end where there are two ships and they are deciding if they should press the button or not. It can be modeled as normal form game where the players have two choices, press or not press, with four outcomes, both dies, one dies and one live, both live. Of course, as portrayed in the movie, they are considering the probability whether or not the other team will press or not. Making this a Nash eq problem. This is also similar to the prisoner's dilemma game. In the end, as good people, they chose to not press.