Abstract
The moving and staying power that, as I suggested in Chapter 5, may distinguish SB from P can also be used to differentiate more powerful from less powerful actors in the secular world. There is nothing sacrosanct about these attributes, though I think that the indefatigability required of a player with M-power, and the suspension of choice required of a player with S-power, may well characterize aspects of omnipotence that a supernatural figure, who embodies the sacred and mysterious in a religion, may possess.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Material in this and the next section is drawn from Steven J. Brams and Marek P. Hessel, Threat power in sequential games (mimeographed, 1982).
References to this literature are given in Steven J. Brams and Donald Witt-man, Nonmyopic equilibria in 2 × 2 games, Conflict Management Peace Sci. 6, 1 (1983).
Steven J. Brams, Biblical Games: A Strategic Analysis of Stories in the Old Testament (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980), pp. 173–176.
Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966).
While it is possible to provide formal conditions under which SB has a reason to threaten P, they are not very illuminating. Their significance is mostly algorithmic, and they can easily be deduced from the algorithm for determining threat outcomes given in note 8.
Schelling, Arms and Influence.
Brams, Biblical Games, pp. 175–176.
For a description of this paradox and references to it, see note 13, Chap. 2, where, unlike here, SB is the player with the dominant strategy.
Of the 78 2 × 2 ordinal games, 17 are vulnerable to tacit deception and 27 to revealed deception; in 11 of the 17 vulnerable to tacit deception, including the Revelation Game, revealed deception leads to a better outcome than tacit deception. See Steven J. Brams, Deception in 2 × 2 games, J. Peace Sci. 2 (Spring 1977), 171–203;
for an analysis of deception possibilities in other games, see Brams and Frank C. Zagare, Deception in simple voting games, Social Sci. Res. 6, 3 (September 1977), 257–272; Brams and Zagare, Double deception: two against one in three-person games, Theory and Decision 13, 1 (March 1981), 81–90. Applications of deception analysis to political games are given in Zagare, A game-theoretic analysis of the Vietnam negotiations: preferences and strategies 1968–1973, J. Conflict Resolution 21, 4 (December 1977), 663–684; Zagare, The Geneva Conference of 1954: a case of tacit deception, Int. Studies Quarterly 23, 3 (September 1979), 390–411; and Douglas Muzzio, Watergate Games: Strategies, Choices, Outcomes (New York: New York University Press, 1982), pp. 43–50.
John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Gamesand Economic Behavior, 3rd Ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953). A relatively nontechnical explication of these concepts and underlying calculations for two-person constant-sum games is given in Brams, Game Theory and Politics (New York: Free Press, 1975), pp. 1–25.
The calculations that follow were developed in collaboration with Morton D. Davis, for whose advice I am grateful. Although they are very different from the calculations developed in Vladimir A. Lefebvre, Algebra of Conscience: A Comparative Analysis of Western and Soviet Ethical Systems (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1982), Lefebvre also analyzes ethical structures that underlie good and evil. He shows how they differ fundamentally in Western and Soviet societies.
Frederick Sontag, The God of Evil: An Argument from the Existence of the Devil (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 134.
Harold S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Schocken, 1981).
In When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Kushner quotes Job (p. 41) to the effect that there are “no rules” in understanding God: “He snatches away— who can stop Him? Who can say to Him, ‘What are You doing?’ ” (Job 9:12). Yet, as I showed, arbitrary and seemingly unfathomable behavior is entirely consistent with rules of those games that prescribe random strategy choices. That God in fact makes these choices, perhaps for our own good, I cannot say. However, arbitrariness itself is certainly not inexplicable behavior in games; indeed, it may be optimal to use subterfuge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1983 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brams, S.J. (1983). Immortality and Incomprehensibility. In: Superior Beings. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-1807-2_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-1807-2_6
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-1809-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-1807-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive