There is actually an unrelated meta-strategy here, whereby on all disputes one designated partner acquiesces to the wishes of the other. This behaviour is also far from unheard of in romantic partnerships. While this doesn’t seem very egalitarian, I am wondering if it actually becomes a reasonable trade-off for partnerships which face coordination problems on a regular basis.
How common Battle of the Sexes situations are in real life? Almost always the partners can talk to each other, making strategies like ‘let’s flip a coin’ or ‘I decided the last time, so you decide this time’ viable. (Also, if you face coordination problems that often, you probably aren’t the right partner for each other and had better break up.)
It doesn’t sound like the “meta-strategy here, whereby on all disputes one designated partner acquiesces to the wishes of the other” could apply to those.
When my old roommates and couldn’t find each other at CostCo, we coordinated by having the short people look for the tall people and the tall people not move around too much.
In games like The Resistance, hidden players sometimes need to coordinate. My friend circle has a convention where the more experienced player chooses.
How common Battle of the Sexes situations are in real life?
Seriously? Extremely. Conscious or subconscious manipulation is pervasive. Implicit or explicit threat of withholding sex or a promise of granting sex (“I’m not in the mood after a movie like that” or “someone is getting lucky tonight!”) is not even considered manipulative anymore.
I don’t see “I’m not in the mood after a movie like that” as manipulative. There are movies that, while I may enjoy watching them, will leave me in a melancholy mood that just isn’t consistent with being horny. Though yuck at “someone is getting lucky tonight!”
Depends on the relationship, I’d say, on the “cultural norms” established within it. In some it’s fine, in some it’s fine only if open and explicit, in some it’s not fine at all.
So, one partner decides which movie to watch and the other decides whether to have sex. That’s the second of the strategies I mentioned in the grandparent. :rolleyes:
Not “clearly”, unless at least one of them would be unambiguously better after the break-up than after any other possible course of action, like counseling, cheating, confronting, bluffing, learning how to influence people, etc.
I mean, if A is willing to refrain from sex with B arbitrarily long in order to get their way but not vice versa, then A probably doesn’t really want sex with B that much; so it’s likely that A would be better off with someone else with less sex drive than B, and B would be better off with someone else with more sex drive than A. (Unless they’re both fine with the idea of trading sex for favours, in which case yeah, whatever works.)
How common Battle of the Sexes situations are in real life? Almost always the partners can talk to each other, making strategies like ‘let’s flip a coin’ or ‘I decided the last time, so you decide this time’ viable. (Also, if you face coordination problems that often, you probably aren’t the right partner for each other and had better break up.)
When coordinating a lie
When meeting up on a hike with no phone service
When players can’t talk openly)
When players don’t know each other in advance
Also, many nonrationalists have naive ideas about how being in a Romance means you automagically never have coordination problems.
It doesn’t sound like the “meta-strategy here, whereby on all disputes one designated partner acquiesces to the wishes of the other” could apply to those.
When my old roommates and couldn’t find each other at CostCo, we coordinated by having the short people look for the tall people and the tall people not move around too much.
In games like The Resistance, hidden players sometimes need to coordinate. My friend circle has a convention where the more experienced player chooses.
Seriously? Extremely. Conscious or subconscious manipulation is pervasive. Implicit or explicit threat of withholding sex or a promise of granting sex (“I’m not in the mood after a movie like that” or “someone is getting lucky tonight!”) is not even considered manipulative anymore.
In this case you have a bargaining problem, not a coordination problem.
Even so, that’s not what the quoted question was asking.
The question was about games where communication is not allowed. If you have bargaining then you have communication.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Yes, but if communication is possible, the issue of mutually guessing which Nash equilibrium the other player is going pick doesn’t occur.
I don’t see “I’m not in the mood after a movie like that” as manipulative. There are movies that, while I may enjoy watching them, will leave me in a melancholy mood that just isn’t consistent with being horny. Though yuck at “someone is getting lucky tonight!”
That’s what foreplay is for. ;-)
Depends on the relationship, I’d say, on the “cultural norms” established within it. In some it’s fine, in some it’s fine only if open and explicit, in some it’s not fine at all.
So, one partner decides which movie to watch and the other decides whether to have sex. That’s the second of the strategies I mentioned in the grandparent. :rolleyes:
It’s rarely like that. It’s more like “it’s my way in all things I care about, or you are not getting any”.
In which case the two clearly ought to break up.
Not “clearly”, unless at least one of them would be unambiguously better after the break-up than after any other possible course of action, like counseling, cheating, confronting, bluffing, learning how to influence people, etc.
I mean, if A is willing to refrain from sex with B arbitrarily long in order to get their way but not vice versa, then A probably doesn’t really want sex with B that much; so it’s likely that A would be better off with someone else with less sex drive than B, and B would be better off with someone else with more sex drive than A. (Unless they’re both fine with the idea of trading sex for favours, in which case yeah, whatever works.)
These are certainly some of the possible alternatives, but not all of them.