Washington's Rogue Elephants

DESPITE all the bluster about an impending default on the government’s debt, most observers in Washington and on Wall Street still believe the two parties will reach a crisis-averting agreement.

That’s because the practice of American politics assumes that all players will negotiate according to predictable patterns — that they will realize they can get more from compromise than by demanding everything and winning nothing.

Under that assumption, President Obama is right to keep pressing for a compromise, because eventually the Republicans will fall in line. But as two wildly different fields — game theory and the study of elephant mating patterns — show, there are limits to the usual assumptions: sometimes players simply refuse to play the game, and when that happens, the best advice for their opponents is to do the same.

One of the classic games studied in game theory is chicken: two players rush toward each other, each wanting the other to swerve. The one who does, loses. The trick to winning is for one player to convince the other that under no circumstance will he or she veer off course.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/opinion/27Barash.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1