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Zero Sum vs Positive Sum Games - How To Win?

1,647 views Wait, is this logic right? • Jun 04, 2023
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Slog Reference: Zero Sum vs Positive Sum Games

Description

Zero sum game vs positive sum game. This video explains the concepts of zero sum and positive sum in a simple and easy-to-understand way. It shows how some situations involve only one person winning while another person loses (zero sum), while other situations allow everyone involved to win (positive sum).

Throughout the video, other real-life examples of zero sum and positive sum situations are explored. It emphasizes how negotiations, such as salary discussions or solving conflicts, can either be win-lose or win-win scenarios.

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

"Today you, tomorrow me." Comment by /u/honer on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/elal2/comment/c18z0z2/

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:23 The basics
03:42 Example
06:25 Positive sum situations
09:10 Zero-sum but not
12:44 Zero-sum
14:41 Secretly positive-sum
15:57 Marriage
17:57 Immigration
18:33 How to figure out the type?
19:24 Changing the game
20:26 Why zero-sum exists?

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Zero Sum vs Positive Sum Games

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Transcript

so srikant Suppose there is an exam and you are usually the first ranker and just before the exam the second ranker comes to you asking for help with some problems okay would you help them or not help them what standard am I in ninth oh definitely not help them okay why because I want to be the first ranker and continue being the first ranker if it were tense then I would probably help them because at board level it doesn't really matter whether I help them or not it's a it's a whole different ball game there what is the difference between these two situations uh I at standard ninth if I help them then I'm reducing my own chances of
coming first yes at standard tense we are both competing against a much bigger pool of students because it's a board exam it's a state board and national board and internet whatever board it is where there are much more people so by helping each other we get to get we'll get to learn better quicker faster more both of you can get a yeah better percentage in the board exam correct whereas in the first case both of you can't be first rankers right we can be but I would rather not be yeah this is a very important thing I believe uh economists call it a zero sum they m versus a positive sum game right the first one where
one of you only can be a first ranker which means for you to become a first ranker that person has to lose is called a zero-sum game it makes sense of some situation right for one person to go positive the other has to go negative the only way you will is by pushing somebody down the only way awareness is the second one where you said it's a bold exam uh so if we help each other instead of both getting 87 percent both can get 89 and both can get 91 and both can get 94 right there are some really big percentages right so that's a positive sum get as in both of you after an activity or after you get together
engagement both got a positive value out of it yes this understanding the difference between these two and which situation in life is zero sum which situation is positive sum is I believe one of the more important things and you can do in your life and it can change how you approach things it can change what how much you get out of life I think a lot of it also boils down to Asian maturity because as a kid I was led to believe that everything in life is yes but the more I live I realize that no everything in life is actually better if you treat it as a positive sum game and look at it from a positive so in fact
that is going to be the important message of this episode which is which things you are inadvertently approaching as if it's a zero-sum situation but in reality it's a positive some situation or it is a zero-sum situation but with a few tweaks you can convert it into positive sum right but before we get there this is also something that you might have heard as win-win-win situation exactly I mean a lot of the times we think of situations as we lose for YouTube for you for me to win you have to lose within situations can definitely exist only that a lot of situations in life are win-win all right so but before that I want to give an example of when I
first learned that everything is under zerosome game please please uh I mean because we grew up in a family where you know you had to save money every time you want to buy something the most important thing was to haggle try to bring the price down as much as possible and pretty much at the end if you were convinced that you came with the lowest price the new one right otherwise the shopkeeper one they got the money yeah I mean it was so inbuilt we didn't even think about this absolutely by 10 standard textbook there was a lovely story which talked about imagine a prehistoric Village right everybody is on their own everybody is hunter-gatherers
um and everybody has to go get their own food uh per day and then at the end go up to the stream and get their own water okay kind of inefficient if everybody is doing it it's yeah but that is how everybody was until people discovered say one person discovers that it tells a friend you know what why don't you go and get enough food for both of us while I go and get enough water for both of us right yeah that way both of them ended up Saving Time right guys because the person who went to get the food Spent A Little More Time On the food but zero time on water correct and the person who
went for water Spent A Little More Time On Water and zero time on food right yeah realize that this wasn't a zero-sum game both of them benefited yeah right and in figures otherwise this guy would be competing for the same food resources that uh the first guy was correct attempting not just that but also over time what happens is that the person who has specialized in getting water after a while realizes and has some free time uses the free time to figure out a more efficient way of getting water in the same for the one who's hunting and Gathering the more efficiencies you can discover yeah yeah in fact we might do an entire episode on this there is something
called the learning curve which says that the price of something keeps falling the more you specialize in it right lots of fascinating examples yeah the sentence itself sounds fascinating keep an eye out for that episode uh if it has happened by this time you'll find a link in the comments General concept there was that every time there is a trade between two people and nobody is holding a gun to your head which means that you did it willingly it means that you both benefited from it correct every time you pay for uh bunch of potatoes right it means that this was in your best interest because if that person didn't give you potatoes in return for that money you would have
to go and grow potatoes yourself yeah and if you calculate the time value of your money that would have just been ridiculously expensive we've done an episode on this link is in the description go check it out it's called the I think it's called the dollar value of your time but we'll put a link go check it out when you're buying potatoes for 25 rupees right and you think oh my God I could have gotten it at 20. what you have to think is that you know if that person hadn't given you potatoes for 25 it would have cost you 7000 Rupees to grow them yourself yes it would yes it would so every such
Exchange most exchanges in the world are positive some exchanges and I have to keep that in mind unless you go to a place where haggling is the norm for example I remember there used to be this uh Street in in the place where I grew up and you used to get clothes on the street like on the footpath there would be clothes hung up uh wind small um makeshift shops and the tradition or not the tradition but basically the point of it was you go there you ask them for a price and then you quote a much lower price that was the entire game it it was essentially a game the haggling part was baked into the price and into the system
there so if it's that kind of a scenario then it's a different thing but it's still not be a different thing if you calculate the oh come on I am not paying 2500 bucks for a pair of jeans which is clearly not more than 200 bucks okay fine don't go to places like this okay the fun there is not the clothes that you buy the fun there is the haggling which I'm saying to tell you for the privilege of handling yes yes yes and I have this is not just here but it's in a lot of places across the world where the where where the concept of the place or where the charm of the place is
the haggling that you do so don't discount haggling it is coming back to the point of this episode I'll give some examples of things which are viewed as Zero Sum but they are not right okay imagine workplace competition it's not Zero Sum can you please tell that to all of my previous bosses who insisted that I was not competitive enough exactly it is not right in the workplace situation a lot of people think that you know promotions are say zero sum I have to get promotion which means that person has to do badly now if you're going out of your way to ensure that that person does badly or even if you are ensuring that you don't
cooperate with that person right sure you might win the promotion by making it a zero-sum game but usually in workplaces what can happen is that if you cooperate with each other over time both of you can do well right that one promotion which is zero sum isn't the only game in life yeah both of you get experience the company might grow both might get promoted uh or you don't get promoted but you have the skills so you can get a better job elsewhere lots of positive some opportunities right as in if it's a fixed pie and both of you are fighting over it it's a zero-sum game but those things in life the pie is
growing right if you are in an industry that is growing and most Industries are growing so it is not a zero-sum game yeah that's that's something to definitely look out for applies at the level of the business also right I mean two different companies if they compete with each other truth or nailed uh then it's bad for both of them right but if they both focus on growing the pie then that's good you know that's why all the egg sellers in India I mean they get together and they put out ads saying eggs are good for you what are they doing they're trying to increase the market yeah make it a positive sum game for all of them instead of just fighting
each other to sell the limited number of eggs that people are buying and when you do see fighting like those rivalry ads Between Coke and Pepsi and whatnot it is basically a way to drum up more sales that's that's basically it they are not fighting to establish dominance over the market no both of them have a sizable share of the market it's not like one as a monopoly and the other doesn't but uh yeah it's it's all for so sometimes it is right I mean there was a time when Coke and Pepsi there was the market wasn't quite growing and they were just fighting each other for percentage points it was a zero sum game and then
cook got a famous CEO who said your competition is not with Pepsi your competition is with water yes and that suddenly changed the game for Coke instead of competing with Pepsi they focused on growing the market convincing the people who are drinking water to drink Coke and Coke never looked back and Pepsi never caught up with cook after that right I said something similar in the context of radio back at my old office I told them so when the offer of 1GB free per day launched uh everybody was like Yay free data so awesome internet is going to be cheap and whatnot I said no you don't realize this means that we suddenly have more competition exactly because now
people have an alternative form of entertainment other than radio and people laughed at me but here we are I am on YouTube yes so but this brings up a good point right there are some things in life which are actually Zero Sum yeah I was about to ask you that all of sports yes is zero sum right I mean for you to win the other team has to lose right and even in football if you draw you get only one point yeah the total sums up to two the number of knots comes up to two right yeah yeah because the wind the winner gets three points but if you draw you get one point each so you're losing there right so
draw is effectively a form of a loss war is zero sum war between two countries yes right politics often is zero sum right I mean only one person can win that election yep uh lawsuits are like that yes standing in line for water you know when I was young I lived in a place where we didn't get water in our Taps all the time yeah so we had to go there was one common tap where there would be water for one hour yes that used to happen anybody in the community goes there with like a couple of pots yeah fills the water and comes back home and you have to stand in line and you
were only allowed a fixed number of pots why because it was a zero sum game I if I fill more pots then you get to fill fewer pots because the water is going to run out after some time right and and if you are Marathi then you have heard this phrase [Music] yes if you haven't heard that phrase please go ask a Marathi friend what now means and why now exists but anyway moving on and if you have a latest movie which is a perfect example for a zero-sum game please leave a comment Naveen what examples appear to be Zero Sum uh when you think about them but uh they are actually supposed to be positive some yeah uh
situations suppose you are a researcher right would you collaborate with another researcher I would think so right so there is a tricky part here right I mean because you think that if you have some idea and you share your ideas with another researcher now suddenly the uh credit is half credit is hard right whereas it's not like there is a fixed amount of credit in the whole world so the more you collaborate with people the more ideas come out the more research will happen so that makes it a positive sum game in fact this whole thing about there being a fixed size pie that you are fighting over at zero sum and you have to keep asking yourself is that
really true because you know life is not Sports and War most of Life the pie is growing speaking of War What About Love yes are different a lot of people and similar to approach a marriage as if it's a zero-sum game that you know yeah I have to wear the pants in this marriage that I wear chuddies my influence will increase only by making hers decrease my power increases by making her power less that's like really bad yeah I mean you have to approach any relationship as a Cooperative effort to grow the pie ready yeah the enjoyment the things you can achieve the things you can do together and so on yeah yeah um any other examples before we move on
to the next question that I have which I'm itching to ask also yeah um think of like at a country level right uh say if there is a disaster in a neighboring country okay there are a lot of people who think you know why do we have to send them disaster disaster relief right why do I mean it's their problem right yeah but again that's zero some thinking right because in reality the country is helping each other is good for both countries right if you don't help Bangladesh when they have a disaster you are going to get a bunch of Bangladeshi refugees here and now everybody is lost they're a wonderful story uh along these lines but not
country level but more along a personal level uh that I read on Reddit uh a while ago it it is simply called today you tomorrow me and I can't begin to tell you what a beautiful story it is I am not going to narrate it for you I'm going to leave a link in the comments please go and read that story because it is such a beautiful example of why positive sum uh is necessary when interacting with people outside your own Circle whether it is a personal Circle or whether it's a country Circle so this example just reminds example right that um countries when they worry that if we allow immigration the immigrants will come and
take away our jobs yeah you know it's a big big threat yes in reality a lot of research has shown that immigrants come in and they do jobs that the people here didn't want to do in any case and overall usually the economy improves yes right so the pie is growing and everybody is better off absolutely so that's another example of a positive substitution yeah here is the question that I've been dying to ask you when you are in a situation how do you figure out whether it's a zero sum situation or a positive some situation because that will determine a lot of of course yeah just see if the pie is growing look at
the final outcome not not just the nearer term final outcome right like oh this promotion there is only one promotion fixed time but think of it as long-term career right there the pie is growing there isn't like a fixed amount of money to be made there isn't a fixed amount of level that both of you who can reach right so it takes I can grow so try to find a positive sum uh game that you can make there in general but say a slightly long term and see if there is a something that can grow instead of it being fighting over a fixed this okay now let's take a situation where I am in a zero-sum situation yeah but I I want
to make it a positive substitute can I can I make a real positive just the Pepsi versus scope was an example right right of course fighting over a fixed market share and that was a zero-sum game instead zoom out and look at the bigger picture look at the bigger picture now suddenly the pie is growing much bigger the so that is one thing it is possible to convert zero sum to positive sum not always okay but sometimes you can't okay which case see if you can walk away it is not necessary that you play all the games right walk away from the game that's also what's that 90s movie the best uh option is to not play yes uh war games
or I I don't remember again we'll put a reference our trench game yeah the only correct move is to not play at all yes I am sorry if that was a spoiler for you but if at this point you haven't watched the movie can't do much about it uh but then if the one more thing I want to say about walking away right huh I mean sometimes it's that the situation is a zero-sum situation and you just walk away sometimes the problem is not the situation right it could be converted into a positive sum game but the other person refuses to do that right sometimes the person is a problem so walk away from that person associate
with people who are willing to play positive some games and there are people who have just grown up with a zero-sum mindset stay away from those people yeah and uh uh managers and leaders watching this if there are lot of people walking away from the situation in your organization maybe it's time for you to take a deep dive and evaluate what is it exactly that they're walking away from Yes hint anyway um question why isn't everything positive some by default why does zero sum even exist because we'll see I mean when there is a fixed pie things will be Zero Sum right I mean long ago we evolved in situations where there was a fixed amount of fixed amount of food uh
right so whenever there is scarcity there is uh Zero Sum games being played and that's why our brains are built like that but over time we figured out how to cooperate at large levels how to you know uh I mean we came up with technology we came up with science and a whole bunch of things which have grown the pie like by orders of magnitude right but our brain is still stuck on the African Savannah so that is why the two kinds of situations are that when there is scarcity there is a zero sum put in terms of evolutionary time skills we evolved in scarcity and now we are in a world with abundance correct another
situation is that a lot of us grew up in scarcity right pre-1991 India things were tough correct that's why we had a zero-sum mindset even when we were young our parents some of them still have zero some mindsets yes they do but the pie India is now growing like crazy and we are in a much better position to play positive some games right so this is a scarcity mindset versus abundance mindset look up those terms or we'll do an episode one of these days on those terms uh it's going to be a very short episode maybe we'll do a shots or something yes yeah that might uh help in general keep in mind that something is
zero sum probably because there was a scarcity in the past which is no longer true right as Society develops as cooperation happens as development happens more and more Society moves from zero sum towards positive sum from scarcity to abundance therefore some Zero Sum to positive sum that definitely makes a lot of sense and of course if the Zero Sum doesn't work for you walking away is always an option there are some times when you can't walk away and then go go ahead and play the Zero Sum game okay I'm you know I am not Jesus I am not Gandhi I'm not going to turn the other cheek right if I can't walk away then I'm going to slap you if
you are playing football you have to score a goal you have to win man there is no option there that that can't be a positive sum game so yeah I agree there so if it's a zero sum game you can't walk away from it go play it and play it to the best of your abilities go in but try not to play Such games try to find positive some situations try to convert xenosum to positive some situation I try to walk away from zero sum situations anything that looks like a zero sum in the present is very likely to become a positive sum sometime in the future yes and that's the takeaway that we're going
to leave you with today srikanth Naveen thank you