Game theory is great if you know what game you’re playing.
The teacher set up some fun, interesting and rational game-theory world. The students played some insane social status game, with completely different rules and payoffs.
I would put it this way: The students were playing a social status game combined with an academic success game. The teacher started a sub game of both of these games but failed to provide academic incentives for it, resulting in incentive to win the social game, so that’s what they played and quite well I might add since it was zero sum and they resolved it quickly without any negative consequences from conflict. Would that all conflicts over fixed resources get resolved so cleanly!
I think this is exactly the point of the post.
The teacher set up some fun, interesting and rational game-theory world. The students played some insane social status game, with completely different rules and payoffs.
I would put it this way: The students were playing a social status game combined with an academic success game. The teacher started a sub game of both of these games but failed to provide academic incentives for it, resulting in incentive to win the social game, so that’s what they played and quite well I might add since it was zero sum and they resolved it quickly without any negative consequences from conflict. Would that all conflicts over fixed resources get resolved so cleanly!
Why “insane”?
Probably the wrong word. I don’t understand this kind of behavior and am often frustrated by it, but it probably makes sense in certain contexts.