Game Theory – Nash Equilibrium

In my last post on Game Theory I started by introducing Game Theory and the Matching Pennies game. In this post I’m going to explore the Nash Equilibrium to try and further my knowledge about Game Theory. In a game of two or more players where there isn’t a definative winner and looser the two players might be able to find a middle ground. This ‘middle ground’ might be described as the Nash Equilibrium, it occurs when all the players in a game are getting the best payoff for the move they make (i.e. no player can benefit by deviating from his strategy).

An example of this can be found in a Game where a couple who fail to make a decision about what to do in the evening get split up and so they each have to decide which event to go to. It just so happens that each person in the couple has a favourite activity which they may have wanted to do in the eveing. The man favours going to watch sports and the woman favours going to the cinema. If the man chooses to go to watch sports then he is getting the most enjoyment out of the activity and likewise, if the woman goes to the cinema she will get her best payoff.  If they meet then the woman will enjoy the sports slightly and the man will enjoy the cinema slightly, however, if they fail to meet then they will both not enjoy the activity.

Following is the payoff table for this game.

	Male Sport	Male Cinema
Female Sport	+2 +1	0 0
Female Cinema	0 0	+1 +2

Here you can see that there are two Nash Equilibrium for this Game if either player knows what the other person is going to do. If the Male knows the Female will go to the Cinema it is in his best interest to go to the Cinema as well. This simply shows what a Nash Equilibrium is and it requires that each participant knows what the other persons best payoff is and so what they are going to do.

The Southland Tales and The Brown Bunny

I’m watching this (The Southland Tales) movie whilst packing to move flat and let me tell you, watching this movie whilst doing something else really isn’t how it should be watched. Even now that I’m watching it with my full attention it’s still very disjointed and hard to follow.

The Southland Tales is by the director of one of the worst movies that has become cult ever, in my opinion of course. That movie is Donnie Darko and the director Richard Kelly and gets to be called terrible because of it’s, in my opinion, lack of originality. It seemingly attained cult status because it was quirky in comparison to most popular movies but retained enough ‘sanity’ to entice your average Tom, Dick and Harry.

Either way, I did not realise that Kelly was the director when I started watching, however, after becoming suitably confused I became suitably interested and really wanted to enjoy The Southland Tales. It has a brilliant cast mixed amongst a terrible cast which confused me as brilliantly funny comic actors go toe to toe with babysitting wrestlers and half beat singers.

The film got an amusing reception at the Cannes Film Festival and got given one of the most amusing reviews I think ever by Jason Solomon in The Observer saying.

“Southland Tales was so bad it made me wonder if [Kelly] had ever met a human being”

and

“sprawling, plot-less, post-apocalyptic farrago”

which gave him the

“sinking feeling that this may be one of the worst films ever presented in [Cannes] competition.”

Reading the wiki article and you see the following quote:

“The most disastrous since, yes, The Brown Bunny.”

from Roger Ebert about it’s performance at the Film Festival. This got me on to The Brown Bunny (imdb) wikipedia page which brings such amusement it’s unbelievable, to think that everyone is a critic, and that they are all right about such an atrocious movie, I really do have to watch this movie sometime soon. When Ebert commented on the worst movie in Cannes history he was called a fat pig, which can’t be seen as being the best retort (a short note, if your skill is attacked it’s best to either defend your skill or attack the other persons skill. Attacking their weight or look amounts to saying “I’ll get my dad on you”, or just plain defeat). As a parry to this scathing insult to Ebert’s physique he came out with my favourite paraphrasing of Winston Churchill to date.

“one day I will be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny.”

I leave you with this, watch the movie, enjoy it, if you can, and then watch The Brown Bunny, but afterwards, watch something a little more lighthearted that you can laugh at for being funny, like, The Benchwarmers. You could always watch something seriously good like The Man From Earth.

Daily Mug Shot

Today I started a DailyMugShot to do some stop animation. It’s starting off with very Jamie Smart (Bear) influences, but I imagine it will morph and change quite a bit over the time in which I do it (this is why I named the account Bear). It’s worthy of note that Jamie Smart’s Bear comic is very funny and very original in a sea of boring and unoriginal content that you now find in indie comics.

This is something I’m going to keep up daily and dedicate maybe half an hour to doing a scene for each shot. I imagine that they’ll start quite boring but they’ll pick up and if I can get a better web cam things can start getting quite funky later on.

Bear DailyMugShot

My DailyMugShot