OK, so welcome back to game theory.
And as I discussed last class, our goal is able to is to use
game theory to analyse global events to understand why they're
happening as well as make certain predictions about how
they should develop. But to do that, I first need to
train your mind and how and how to see the world using game
theory. So last class in our first
class, we discussed example of the dating game of why men and
women are motivated to behave the the way they do when they
look for a mate. Today I want I want to discuss
the issue of school. OK, school.
So for the first few classes, I'm going to use examples from
your life that you know pretty well in order to develop the
mindset for game theory. So school is something that you
should know very, very well. As you know, the purpose of
school is to train you in a way that allows you to be functional
in society as well as to be creative, right?
OK, so the goals are basically literacy, right?
Which means reading and writing. This is the primary purpose of
school because in order to function in our society, you
need to be able to absorb information and convey
information, OK? Number 2 is basically what we
call the core competencies, OK? These are skills that you need
to be successful in life, including the ability to think
critically, to cooperate with others, to collap, to
collaborate, to communicate. OK, you all know this.
The last thing is what we call lifelong learning.
So in the age of AI, in the age of globalization, school is just
a start of the learning process because every five years the
whole changes. So you need to be in a constant
process, a constant state of learning.
OK, so you have to like actually love learning and you have to
like know how to learn for yourself.
So these these are the three basic purposes of school and
that's why you're at the school. Unfortunately, what we know is
that most schools, I'm not saying all schools, I'm saying
that most schools are pretty bad at these three things.
In fact, you can make the argument that most schools not
only do not teach you these skills, but they have the
opposite effect. In fact, they make you hate
learning. OK, so let's look at literacy.
Today. In most schools, you're not
required to read books. In fact, when you're in
university, the professors there are so shocked that you don't
read books that instead they make you read paragraphs or
watch videos. OK, so just literacy.
Around the world, people are losing the capacity to read and
to write. And not only that, the people's
attention spans have decreased. It's very hard for a professor
to give you an hour lecture. People lose focus after about 5
minutes. OK, so this is one problem.
Another problem is school is supposed to teach you
creativity, critical thinking skills, collaboration, but it
doesn't do that. But the collaboration in school,
it's a competition where you believe that it's a 0 sum game.
So for you to get ahead, you need to school over your
classmate. So class ranking is very
important. So that's kind of odd, OK.
And the last thing, of course, is lifelong learning, where
school teaches you to hate school and therefore teaches you
how to hate learning, especially in China, OK?
Especially in China where you work hard until the national
entrance examination, age 18. And then after the examination
ends, what do you do? You burn your books.
That's a great ceremony here in China.
Right after the examination, you take your books, you about the
pages and you throw it in the sky to to signal your
liberation, your liberation. And you're like, I never, ever
want to read a book again. I never, ever want to take a
test again. I never want to learn again.
OK, so around the world, most schools, not all schools there
are there are some really good schools out there, but most
schools are failing in their mission.
School sucks. And so the question for us today
is why is this the case? And so we're going to use game
theory to analyze why this is the case.
All right, So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to tell you
a story about myself. So the year is 2008.
I went to Yale College, OK, in the United States, and I was an
English major. I did very well in school.
So I was hired in 2008 to go to Shenzhen in South China and help
the school, Shenzhen Middle School, build an an
international program to send kids abroad.
OK? So this 2008, which was a long
time ago and back then, not, not that many students wanted to go
abroad. There were really few
international schools. So the first thing I did was I
looked at the situation at the school, OK, And this and this,
this, this what I found, OK, I found that students, even though
they're going abroad, maybe about 10% of the students were
planning to go abroad. So that's about 80 students each
year. That's a lot.
But the way they were going about the process of sitting
abroad was problematic. OK, so first of all, all they
were doing was taking regular Chinese classes.
And you know, in Chinese classes, all you do is you sit
in a room of 50 kids and you stick notes and you take tests.
You don't communicate, you don't ask questions, you don't debate.
OK, so that's one problem. Another problem is that the
students are spending all their time memorizing SAT word list,
OK? They were not reading, they were
not writing, They were just memorizing words.
And the other thing that they did to make their applications
look good is Model United Nations, OK?
And that's fine. Maybe some of you on Model
United Nations, and that's a good activity, but everyone was
doing it. There's actually no
differentiation. All right, So I looked at the
situation and I said no. I mean, you might be able to get
into a good American University because, you know, these kids
are very smart. But I wanted them to do well at
the university and to do well in life.
OK? So I made certain changes to the
curriculum and to the school. OK.
So first thing I did was I set up a seminar system.
So rather than in Chinese classes, I invited the American
teachers to come and teach seminars like we have at the
school where 1020 kids are in a room and they discuss books that
they read together. OK, rather than SAT word
memorization, I had them read books.
Students were required to read a lot of books.
In fact, I established A5000 book English library at the
school where students can just go and borrow books and read.
I wanted to teach students the joy of reading.
And then in terms of activities, I didn't want students to do
modern United Nations anymore because I didn't want kids
sitting around just talking. I wanted to let them do things.
OK, So I set up two new new activities.
The 1st is called the coffee house and the coffee house is is
the first coffee house in China in the Chinese high school.
There are lots of coffee houses today.
When I was the first person, two separate coffee house where
students had to run a business, they had to work as waiters and
provide good service to customers.
And it was it was a collaboration effort.
As you can imagine, this is great for the students to learn
collaboration, to learn finance, to learn entrepreneurship.
OK. So that's a very successful
activity. Do you have a question?
Yeah, OK. I mean, was that like similar
with our moon coffee? Like the coffee in the West S
store? OK, 2008.
I was the first person to do anything.
OK, OK. OK.
Just, I mean, like, yeah, similar.
Yeah. All right, so the coffee house
was an activity I set up, which was very successful.
It's still there today. Guys, if you go to senior middle
school, you'll see the coffee house still there a long, long
time after I I went away. The other thing I did was
something called the daily newspaper.
And this was the first daily newspaper in China in a high
school and probably maybe even around the world, where students
everyday had to report, collect information, write articles,
edit and publish it. And they worked until like
midnight, sometimes until 2:00 AM.
And then at 7:00 AM they had to get up and deliver the newspaper
to all the students. And these are two very
successful activities. And so I understand game theory
and I say, OK, if you want to make this transition from the
old system to new system, you also have to establish a new
culture to allow these activities to flourish.
And so my three major principles were transparency, innovation,
OK, transparency, innovation, openness.
And so my idea was this, rather than accept a curriculum that
was perfect, it would be a curriculum that would evolve
over time. We would learn mistakes
together. We would admit these mistakes,
and then we would correct them together.
And that's what learning is. OK.
So the idea of transparency also, I made changes all the
time, which created some chaos, which is a time for us to
reflect and to be resilient. Now it's very open and honest
about everything that I was doing and this.
And so this system in a very short amount of time, even
though it was a lot of problems in beginning, it became a very
effective system after a semester or a year.
And not only that, the students who went for this program did
very well in life. They went to Yale, they went to
they went to Wharton, Cornell. And this program actually in
middle school became the most famous program in South China.
And when our students have the best record of cost emissions in
South China. OK, so this sounds great, right?
OK, the problem is this. The problem is what happened
after I established the program. The first one that happened was,
OK, I was fired. They said get out of here.
OK. Second of all, the teachers, the
parents, the students were all happy to see me go.
They were like, get out of here, we never want to see you again.
The third thing that happened was I did kind of beat yourself
a new program that was very similar to this, OK.
But after that, after four years of doing this and being very
successful at this, I was never allowed to set up another
program again. No one wanted me to work in
management again, OK, So even though I was successful, you
know, I worked really hard, even though I was innovative, even
though I set up really the best study board program in all of
China, I was the first. Everyone else copying me
afterwards, I was fired, no one wanted me to stay, and I was not
allowed to do this ever again. Why?
OK, Well the reason is this. When I was doing this, the word
that everyone used to describe me was not reformer, not
visionary, not idealist, not dreamer, but dictator.
OK, One other word that they used that was that was more
common was this guy's an asshole?
OK, this guy's a complete asshole.
Why? Because I insisted on fairness.
OK, I don't care who you are. I don't care who your parents
are. I want you to work hard and
learn. And as you can imagine, that
pissed off a lot of powerful people because that's not how
the game is played in China, OK? It's actually not the game how
this game is played anywhere in the world.
The game's not fair. The game is established by
stakeholders, and they play the game according to their
interests. OK, so let's go over what
happened. All right.
OK, so my I understand that there are stakeholders, and the
stakeholders in game theory are just the players.
OK, the players. And who are the players?
Well, you have the students, you have the parents, you have the
teachers, you have the administrators, the school
leaders, you have the government, OK.
And then you have the colleges. The college are the US colleges
where I'm trying to send my students.
OK, So these are the players in the game.
And if you want to send game theory, you need to understand
the motivations and interests of all the different players that
tells you why or how they will behave the way they do OK, So
look, so here is my original understanding of the players,
which was clearly wrong, OK? Because I got fired, all right.
So the students, the students wanted to like, love to learn,
get into Ivy League and be the best, OK?
So I thought that students what their motivation was to be the
best possible person, to work hard, to love learning, to be
famous, to get in Ivy League. OK, Clearly this is wrong.
OK, What I'm saying back then, what my thinking was the
parents, well, the parents wanted successful kids who were
independent, OK, independent. And they wanted face, right?
So they want their kids to get into the Ivy League.
All right? Teachers.
Well, teachers wanted to do a good job, right?
They want to teach students. They love teaching.
They love students. They just want to be given the
space and the opportunity to teach what their passion is.
OK. Administrators.
I really didn't like
administrators, so I just thought they were just, they
wanted good results, OK, that's all good results.
As I'm going to, as I'm going to provide a good result.
They're happy, OK, The government, they wanted
innovation. They wanted good workers.
They wanted, you know, they want technology, OK, They want a
strong China. Colleges wanted the best
possible potential, OK? They wanted students who will be
the leaders of the future, OK, So 2008, when I set the program,
this is my assumptions about who the players were and what muted
them, OK? Clearly, clearly I was wrong
about who they were, OK, So let's go over.
Let's now do an announcement of what they really, really want,
OK? And the easy answer is that in
game theory, all the players, what they're motivated in is by
achieving the best possible results by doing the least
amount of work possible. OK, Just remember that that's a
principle here. Everyone wants to achieve the
best results by doing the least amount of work possible.
People are lazy and people are greedy.
It's that simple, guys. OK, so students, they wanted to
get in the Ivy League, but they didn't want to work hard to get
in the Ivy League. They wanted to do as little work
as possible. And if it meant they had to work
hard to get Ivy League, they they were like, I don't want to
get in the Ivy League. Then I'll just get into another
school because who cares? OK, The best possible result,
least possible work parents are like, yeah, I can let my kid
work hard, but what's important is for me to control my kid,
right? For to make to because only I
know how to ensure my kid succeeds.
So I need to. I don't want my kids to think
critically or in or be independent.
I want my kids to obey me. The teachers are like, listen,
this is a job, man, OK, I have kids.
I don't want to work hard. I just want to come to school,
do what I'm supposed to do, do what is minimally required me to
collect my salary and then go home.
I don't want to teach my passion because I don't have any
passion. OK, administrator.
So like, Oh my God. What's important is for me to
make sure the powerful parents are happy.
I don't care about everyone else.
I don't care about poor parents. I don't care about middle class
parents. As long as the parents who are
powerful are happy, I can keep my I can keep my job, right?
The government is like, you know what?
I don't want innovation in this country, even though I say I
want I want it because I don't want problems in life, OK?
I just want things to just stable the way they are and
everyone's happy. OK, So now we understand what
happened. All right?
All right. So now, what I will show you is
this. I will show you how a game is
constructed. A game is constructed when all
the different players agree on the rules and incentives of the
game. All right, I was an outsider.
I was not a player. I came in to construct a game in
which I felt that students would thrive, and they did thrive.
But that's not what they want, OK?
They wanted to have control over the game, and they lose control.
Well, they call you and they call you the outsider.
An asshole. OK, all right, so let's do this
again and objectively think about what the interests and
motivations of each player are. And when their interests
converge, that's the game they play.
All right, so you have students, parents, teachers, leaders,
school administrators and then the colleges.
OK. Another thing that you have to
do in game theory that's very important is you have to rank
the power of power of each player.
You have a question? Government.
Excuse me? The government?
Yes. Sorry, you're right.
I forgot about the government. OK.
And the government, another thing that that you have to do
in game theory is you have to rank the importance of the
players, OK, so not all players are equal.
So in this game theory, even though there are students, and
students are the majority, students actually don't matter,
OK, What students actually think and what don't actually matter,
what matters, of course, are the parents, because the parents pay
to play in this game, and parents can cause a lot of
problems if they don't get what they want.
OK, so the most important are the parents, and yet the
teachers. Why?
Because the teachers are the ones who are implementing the
wolves of the game, OK? The way that teachers behave
determines how this game is played.
And then these two are the most important.
OK, then maybe you have administrators as well, but
they're not as important as the parents and the teachers.
The government doesn't really matter because they don't really
care, right? It's one school among thousands.
Who cares what the school does as long as it doesn't cost me
any problems. The colleges don't care either.
They say they want really passionate students who are
curious, who are matching it from China.
They don't care, OK, For them, it's just business.
They just want students who are willing to pay money to get a
copy education in America. All right, so the cost don't
really matter. Don't take anyone who's willing
to pay. And the Ivy League, Yeah,
everyone's in the Ivy League. But who do the Ivy League want?
They want people who are to be successful in life, Right?
And who are these people? Not the best students.
These are people from powerful families.
OK, so this game is great, right?
They have all this talk about, you know, we want the best
motivated students, want peer students who are curious, We're
passionate. It's all nonsense.
Yeah, that's not how the game is played.
So the college don't even matter either.
OK, so these are the three major players, the parents, the
teachers, administrators, students, government colleges.
They are in this game. They don't really matter.
So now what we're going to do is we'll analyze the mentality, the
world view, the interests of each player, OK.
And again, once we do that, once we figure out where they
converge, then we know how the game is constructed.
All right, So let's look at students.
Students, OK? I mean, they want to be popular,
right? So most students come to school
and actually the priorities have to learn the priorities to make
friends and to be popular among their friends.
OK, That'd be. That's just human nature.
That's true, right. Then you have please teachers
and parents. This guy, this is really
important to understand. You're not in school not to
learn. You're in school to please
parents. And the teachers.
Why? Because parents are the ones who
pay for your way in life, right? The ones who give you food.
Teachers are one who gives you grades.
You're not going to learn. You're going to please them.
There's a difference, OK. And grades are a way of showing
how well you're pleasing the parents and the teachers.
OK. Is that true?
All right. And then you're like, have fun.
OK, And then get a good college. OK.
All right. So am I missing anything among
the students? All right, so, OK, I'm sure
there's more, but, but let's just keep on going, OK?
Not parents. Well, the parents, what they
want is, of course, successful kids.
But they want successful kids not because they believe that
success will make their kid happy.
What they really want, of course, is face right.
They want their kid to go to the Ivy League and then when the kid
of the Ivy League provides a good education or their kid will
be happy at the Ivy League, they just want to brag their
relatives and their friends and their colleagues.
My kid is at Brown or Cornell or Dartmouth.
OK, but face also means to treat education as a luxury product.
Why do parents send kids to national schools?
Not because national schools provide a better education.
It's because international schools are more expensive.
And most importantly, international schools have white
faces, right? White faces.
OK, This is the main marketing tool of international schools,
right? They have all these white faces,
white teachers and like, Oh my God, this is a real National
School now. You don't care if the what if
the teachers are actually good at what they're doing.
You don't care if the kids are actually learning.
You don't care what the curriculum is.
You don't understand that sort of stuff.
You just understand, OK, 10 white faces.
Therefore this is a good school. It's that simple.
OK. And then of course, you want
some good outcome, OK, You want you want a good outcome.
You don't care if your kid that's actually learning in
school. What you want is your kid to get
good grades, to get in a good college, OK?
These are not the same thing, right?
So that's the parents and the teachers.
Teachers are really simple because teachers do this job and
for them the priority is to do as little work as possible to
get by. OK?
I'm not saying all teachers. I'm saying the majority of
teachers in the school are just trying to get by because quite
honestly, they have families and they have other
responsibilities, so they don't have time to focus entirely in
school, OK, So basically just get by, OK.
Or the minimum amount of work. OK, You may not, you may not
believe this, but like when you actually grow up and get a job,
you'll do the same thing, OK? You just get the do a minimum
amount of work in order to get by Administrators.
They want good outcomes, but what their real priority is to
protect relationship with parents.
OK, Just give parents what they want, OK, Their job is to sell
the school. So, so whatever parents want,
you just give it to them. And administrators also, by the
way, have families. This is a job for them.
They also just want to get by, OK?
They're not trying to build the best school possible.
They're not trying to change the world.
They're not trying to educate students.
They're just trying to get by, do the least amount of work in
order to get by. Government is OK.
They say they want innovation, creativity, technology, but
really it's just like, no problems, guys, OK?
As long as you don't carry any problems for us, we're happy
with you. Just stay away from us.
We're happy to not bother you. Please don't come bother us.
Yeah, that's government. Also, what they want is for
students who will also be no problems in the future.
Right? Right.
So compliance. So as long as schools are
teaching you how to obey authority, how to comply, how to
do what you're told, they're happy you're a good school.
Colleges, again, just want the money, OK?
That's all they care about. If you're willing to go to
American College and pay how much?
How much is it nowadays? Like 50,100 thousand a year?
That's a lot of money, guys. OK, If you want to pay that,
they'll take you. I guarantee you, you even if you
don't speak English, they'll take you.
All right? Yeah.
So you mentioned that earlier, like the the, the purpose of
education are that three things, but now schools don't do that.
So what caused the transformation?
Yeah, that's a really good question.
When? Yeah.
OK. So what we discussed last class
is the idea of superstructure, right?
Superstructure, sorry. Superstructure is just the macro
picture of society. It's demographics, how many
people are there? It's economy, it's politics,
it's religion, OK? And we discuss how societies are
born, they mature, and then they die, OK?
So there's actually another way of understanding this.
You can actually use three metrics to understand how
societies develop, OK? And these three metrics are
cohesion, openness, and energy. OK, So what is energy?
Energy just means you want to work hard, OK?
You are, you believe you're motivated, you're driven, you
work hard all the time. And working hard just doesn't
mean like you work 12 hours. It just means like you're
focused, you're attentive, right?
So for example, if you're working at a restaurant as a
cook, you want to make a really good meal, OK?
You're energetic about it, OK, Does that make sense?
That's energy. OK, so openness just means that
you want to learn, you want to grow, you're willing to admit
you made a mistake and improve on yourself.
OK. And the last thing is cohesion.
Where you are, you see yourself as part of a society, part of
part of a community of people, and you want your community to
grow as well. And we have all three things
together. The schools are great.
OK. And so, for example, go to
Finland. It's a small country, maybe
about 5 million people, but the schools are amazing.
Why? Because Finland is an energetic,
open and cozy society. When you hear that, what you
want to do is invest in the future.
And what that means is you want to, you have to make sure that
every child, not just your child, but every child has good
future, has good education. And So what you do is you have
your best employers become teachers, right?
You pay them very well, you give them high status and you give
them a lot of atonement freedom because then they feel
respected. And if you do that, the schools
are great. And guess what, guys in China in
maybe 1980s, the schools are amazing here.
OK, what we're seeing today is today.
But if you go back to the 1980's, the schools were really
good. If you went to school in China,
I'm not talking about like the best one.
I'm just talking about like an average school.
Teachers felt respected. They believed that the
responsibility to train the young.
They took pride and joy in their work and the students enjoy
learning. And guess what?
Back in 1980s, kids did less work.
There were less tests, there was less pressure, and they learn a
lot more. OK, so when a society starts and
begins, you have these three aspects.
But over time, what happens is all three decline.
Why? Because there's more corruption,
there's more inequality, there's more wealth.
OK, So what happens is wealth generation and inequality,
corruption. And so people feel under stress.
OK, So rather than cohesion, you have individualization,
individual, OK, does that make sense?
Where everyone's like, you know what, I don't care if other kids
are doing well. What's important is that my kid
does well because it's a 0 sum game.
If if, if all the other kids in the school do really well, but
my kid flunks out, I'm dead. I'm screwed.
So I'd rather my kid do OK and every other kid gets screwed
over. OK, so now it's a competition in
schools. All right, openness.
Are you willing to learn from your mistakes?
And the answer's no because if I'm in a straight and I say to
parents, I'm sorry, I made a mistake today, the parents will
be like, you're fired. Get out of here.
You're incompetent. OK, so you could be like the
best person in the world, but if you make a make a mistake, the
parents will come and kill you. But if you, you but you could be
the worst person in the world, but you just hide in your
office. The parents can't find you.
You're OK. OK, so school administrators are
are now are now afraid to admit they're wrong, which means that
a school can never improve, right?
And they have energy, which is like, you know what, if I do a
good job, parents will want me to do a better job.
I can't please all the parents. So I'll just hide my office, do
as little work as possible. And then if parents complain,
I'll just shut off my brain. OK.
And this is happening because of wolf generation. 1980s China was
really poor. And the only way to get to to
lead a better life is through education.
That's why students work hard. If students work hard, teachers
are motivated to teach well. And now you having a time when
you know today in 202526 when parents have money.
So it doesn't matter if you don't do it on school because
your parents can just give an apartment can buy you a car.
Who cares if you do it on school.
So you're not motivated if you're not motivated,
indifferent, then as a teacher, why am I going to want to teach?
Well, OK, so it's a superstructure of society.
OK. Does that does that make sense?
All right, any more questions? OK, OK, so so thank you.
OK. So again, a superstructure
determines the motivations of the players, and where the
interests of the players converge is the game that you
have, OK? All right, so you go back to
this list, and what we're seeing is parents just want white
faces, OK? Sorry, white faces.
And they want successful kids, which means good grades, OK
Parents, teachers just want to get by and do as little work as
possible. The administrators just want to
protect relationship with parents, OK.
And so when you do this convergence, this is this is
what the schools look like now, OK, Schools in China, in
national schools in China, by the way.
And again, this is like the majority.
I'm not saying it's every school, but I'm saying it's a
majority, OK? What you have are white faces,
easy grades, right? It's really easy to get a good
grade, all right, Some top students, these students are
given scholarships and then they're sent to top
universities, OK. Then you have lots of cheating,
OK, and high turnover where students leave, teachers leave,
but new ones come in. So who cares, OK.
And this is what it looks like. This this what happens when you
take the interests of these different players.
You can verse them together. And this is what what schools
look like today. Just lots of white faces, lots
of really nice buildings, lots of fence activities, great
marketing, beautiful website, really motivate admissions
officers. Then you have easy grades where
everyone gets an A no matter what you do.
You have some top students who will get into a good school so
that the the school can brag about them.
You have lots of cheating going on.
OK, You don't get a good grade. Just complain and you get a good
grade. OK, so that happened to me at
the school where I tried my first year to give fair grades.
OK? A fair grade is not like I, I
give you a 20, I give you like an 80.
And students complain about me. So now so I'm stuck giving them
like a pass fail, right? So it's not hard for students to
get to pass. If you don't like a teacher,
just complain. And then the teacher has to
change. And so you now you have high
turnover where teachers feel stressed out and where parents
are never happy and where students don't care.
OK, doesn't make sense. This is why schools suck.
And I'm, I'm, I'm saying they suck not just in China, not just
in our schools, but in most places around the world.
And it has to do with the superstructure society.
OK, but what? But I, I mean, like the point of
today's class is not like schools suck, don't go to
school. The point of today's class is
we're trying to analyze why schools are the way they are.
And one way to analyze it is by figuring out what at what point,
OK, do the different players converge, right?
So think of you have different sets, right?
Parents, teachers, students, government, colleges, OK.
And their convergence point is the game they play.
Now, what's important for us to understand is that there is
actually a lot of room to this convergence point.
So it's possible to do reform, but only within a subset of.
Of this convergence point. OK, so my problem is back in
2008, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna set up a new universe,
my own world. I'll make up the rules, I'll be
gone. And you just have to play the
game. I tell you to play the game, OK?
And that's why everyone is like, you're an asshole, OK?
Whatever you do, whatever game you set up has to be within this
convergence point in order for players to accept it, OK?
And this is true for everything. If you want to implement POCO
reform anywhere, you have to figure out where the different
stakeholders converge and figure out how to move the stakeholders
from one part of the convergence point to another part of the
convergence point. OK, This slow incremental
reform. OK, Does that make sense?
OK, any questions before I I conclude, Guys, ask questions.
What was this clear? Yeah, you have a question?
So in the future, will we learn more about how do we find out
what causes different stakeholders to have different
interests? Like in the future, it's like,
not really. OK.
Yeah. That's a really good question.
So. So thank you for asking.
OK. All right.
So the question is where do the interests of these different
players come from? OK.
And I mean, the easy answer is the superstructure of society,
OK, People are responding to their culture.
But in game theory, what I want to teach you is that it's
because they themselves are playing different games, OK?
So let's look at parents, OK? Parents have different
identities. They are family, They are
colleagues, OK. And depending on on their
identity, they're playing a different game.
All right, So what does family mean?
Family means that you might have brothers, right?
Brothers. What do brothers do?
They compete against each other, right?
You have three brothers. You want to prove that you're
better than your brother? How?
Well, by having more money, by having better kids, by having a
more beautiful wife. OK, That's a game they're
playing, right? But then you have colleagues.
You have colleagues and the game you're trying to play there is
you got a longer colleagues because that that's what ensures
your success in life. OK, so you need to make sure
that your child, no matter how he or she is educated, is able
to become friends with the sons and daughters of your
colleagues, OK? So because that's this is what
ensures success. All right.
And so there are other games as well, but but you understand
this, right? You understand how parents, the
calculation isn't just like my kid, I want my kid to be
successful. No, no, you're thinking about
how to play different games and be successful in other games,
right? Because if you if your kid being
very successful, but not in a way that pleases the colleagues
you become, it can be for another game, OK, The people
that the thing that people fear the most is the idea of
authorization or basically just exile where you are no more part
of the group. They kick you out as a player,
OK? That's what people are afraid
of. And that's why people are
motivated by what they do, because they're trying to,
they're trying as hard as possible to play the game and
get along with other players while at the same time competing
against them. So it's a weird psychology, OK?
You're trying to beat them at the same time.
You don't want to piss them off and get thrown on the game, OK?
And this is what prevents the idea of cheating.
But from the perspective of the game, if you do anything
different, that's still cheating, OK?
Because so another way of saying this is a lot of the rebellion
against what I was doing as a reformer is I was subverting
traditional Chinese values, OK? I was arguing against the norms,
the values, the conventions of this country.
And it's. And so if people believed in me,
then they risk themselves being ostracized by the larger
community. OK, Does that make sense?
All right, so that's parents then you have right.
OK. But students, right.
So students, they're trying to play a game where they do all in
school because that ensures a good outcome.
But at the same time, students play other games as well.
So for, for example, a friendship game, right, where
you're trying to have as many friends as possible, you're
trying to be popular in school. That's another game you play.
You're also trying to please your parents, right?
Because by pleasing your parents, that ensures that you
have an easy, comfortable life. In fact, you could argue that
all these three games, pleasing your parents is the most
important, Then comes having good friends because that will
also ensure success in life. And the game that you care the
least about, that matters the least, is actually doing well in
school, learning, learning in school.
OK, does that make sense? So game theory, it sounds easy,
but it's very, very complicated because we're complicated
individuals. Each one of us has different
identities, has different motivations and has different
outlooks. And, and also what's really
important for us to understand is we're always changing as
people, OK? So the way that you behaved in
kindergarten is not the way you behave today in high school.
It will not be the way you behave when you enter society.
You're always changing because the games are always changing.
You must adapt to new games that have different players and have
new requirements. OK, So that's wonderful about
us, where we are easily adaptable, where we are, we are
resilient, OK, But we are always changing according to the game
and and we are who we are is often determined by the nature
of the game. OK, so you're going to come into
school wanting to learn, being creative and all that, but
eventually you recognize that that's everything we've warded
in school. All right, getting along, having
lots of friends doing, helping other students cheat, that's
rewarded. And so you adapt to the game,
and that's why you behave the way you do, OK.
And if you actually go back and think about everything that you
did in school, the answer is you're responding to a certain
incentive or rule of the game, OK?
And that's what you need to. That's what we need to
understand about game theory. Game theory.
It's not about ideas, it's not about ideals.
It's not the way things should be.
It's the way things are. And the way things are are
determined by who players are and the way players behave.
It's a response to their the game they believe they're
playing. Great.
Does that make sense? OK, so so thank you.
And any more questions? OK, great.
So we'll continue this next class.