Pages 4-5 of my edition of my copy of The Strategy of Conflict define two terms:
Pure Conflict: In which the goals of the players are opposed completely (as in Eliezer’s “The True Prisoner’s Dilemma”)
Bargaining: In which the goals of the players are somehow aligned so that making trades is better for everyone
Schelling goes on to argue (again, just on page 5) that most “Pure Conflicts” are actually not, and that people can do better by bargaining instead. Then, he creates a spectrum from Conflict games to Bargaining games, setting the stage for the framework the book is written from.
[edit-in-under-5-minutes: Note that, even in the Eliezer article I posted above, we can see that super typical conflicts STILL benefit from bargaining. Some people informally make the distinction between “dividing up a pie between 2 people and working together to make more pies”, and you clearly can see how you can “make more pies” in a PD.]
I’m pretty unhappy with the subthread talking about how wrong LessWrong Folk Game Theory is and how Game Theory doesn’t use these topics. One of the big base-level Game Theory books takes the first few pages to write about the term you wanted, and I feel everyone could have looked around more before writing off your question as ignorant.
Schelling actually uses the term “zero sum game” repeatedly in his essay “Toward a Theory of Interdependent Decision”, even explicitly equating it to “pure conflict”. This essay starts on page 83 of my copy of the book.
I only realized this after my comment while flipping through, so I was going to leave it off, but it’s been driving me mad for a few days since it significantly strengthens my above argument and explains why I find the derision in the replies so annoying.
Pages 4-5 of my edition of my copy of The Strategy of Conflict define two terms:
Pure Conflict: In which the goals of the players are opposed completely (as in Eliezer’s “The True Prisoner’s Dilemma”)
Bargaining: In which the goals of the players are somehow aligned so that making trades is better for everyone
Schelling goes on to argue (again, just on page 5) that most “Pure Conflicts” are actually not, and that people can do better by bargaining instead. Then, he creates a spectrum from Conflict games to Bargaining games, setting the stage for the framework the book is written from.
[edit-in-under-5-minutes: Note that, even in the Eliezer article I posted above, we can see that super typical conflicts STILL benefit from bargaining. Some people informally make the distinction between “dividing up a pie between 2 people and working together to make more pies”, and you clearly can see how you can “make more pies” in a PD.]
I’m pretty unhappy with the subthread talking about how wrong LessWrong Folk Game Theory is and how Game Theory doesn’t use these topics. One of the big base-level Game Theory books takes the first few pages to write about the term you wanted, and I feel everyone could have looked around more before writing off your question as ignorant.
Schelling actually uses the term “zero sum game” repeatedly in his essay “Toward a Theory of Interdependent Decision”, even explicitly equating it to “pure conflict”. This essay starts on page 83 of my copy of the book.
I only realized this after my comment while flipping through, so I was going to leave it off, but it’s been driving me mad for a few days since it significantly strengthens my above argument and explains why I find the derision in the replies so annoying.