Hobbes, Locke, and "Revolution"

Who knew Locke and Hobbes were still being brought up in the 21^st century, outside of Polisci 101 I mean. While watching the new show “Revolution” on NBC I realized the two separate groups portrayed in the show follow the beliefs of both Hobbes and Locke.

For those of you who don’t know or simply don’t have time for TV, “Revolution” shows the U.S. after a mysterious power outage. Everything that ran on any form of electricity, from cell phones to computers suddenly went off and never turned back on. We meet the main characters fifteen years after the “black out,” or loss of power. The United States doesn’t exist anymore. Instead the U.S. has been broken up into multiple republics, run by absolute dictators (sound familiar yet?) The one we are most familiar with at this point in the called the Monroe Republic. Sebastian Monroe has control of the majority of all firearms, as rare as they are now, and his militia enforces anything and everything Monroe deems “necessary.” When people see the militia coming, they hide if they can or they do whatever it is they ask, because they fear the militia more than they want to protect what is theirs. (Please tell me this is starting to ring bells!)

If it hasn’t, let me lay it out for you. In Hobbes’ The Leviathan, Hobbes believes that when a government goes into effect, it is because one man gains all of the weapons and power; everyone else follows him purely out of fear. Monroe follows this definition to a T, in “Revolution.” He does not allow civilians to own firearms, giving him military superiority over the majority of the population. There is, however, a rebel group trying to fight against Monroe, which The Leviathan does not mention about government. This rebellion is trying to bring back the government of the United States of America, as opposed to the Monroe Republic. But there is also another story to this show besides the government.

The audience mostly follows the story of a young woman named Charlie as she tries to find her brother, who was taken by the militia. Their father is believed to have known how and why the black out occurred and even how to turn the “lights” back on. When the militia comes to get their father, he is accidently shot and the militia takes Charlie’s brother, Danny, instead. As Charlie intends to search for Danny by herself, but two other people from her small community choose to go with her. This is something neither of them has to do. They are not related to Danny, in no way are they responsible for him and they are not to blame for Danny being taken. Regardless, they still choose to go with Charlie, even against Charlie’s own will. (Hmmm…people working together…familiar much?) Charlie goes in search of her uncle, Miles, at her father’s suggestion and he also agrees to help her get Danny back, even though he has never met Danny or Charlie, he agrees to help them on the bases of their family ties and nothing else. Charlie is not threatening him. She is not bribing him. All she can do is ask, beg, Miles to come with her.

I will admit that this does take Locke farther than what he wrote in his Treatise. In The Second Treatise, Locke says we should be part of communities only if it does not cause harm to ourselves. In “Revolution,” it is obvious those helping Charlie are risking harm to themselves and I don’t want to spoil this series for anyone, but you do see harm come to these individuals as their quest continues.

In closing, I think it’s interesting how today in the 21^st century, when a writer decides to write about a situation that is, basically, post apocalyptic, society is thrown back into a state of nature similar to the one described by Hobbes and Locke written centuries ago. Those who were or are involved in the government, or even society in the big cities, in this state of nature support Hobbes’ idea that you cannot trust anyone. While those who have no experience with the Republic, or have stayed in more rural areas, have a more “Locketian” view of human kind being inherently good. For example Charlie regularly convinces Miles to not kill individuals working for the militia. By no means do I know if the writer was inspired or drew on the Locke’s and Hobbes’ writings, but the similarities are awesome, surprising, and worth discussing.

Feel free to watch the series and comment. Come on, there's only four episodes so far.

Approach through Assurance Game: Who's Being a Fool?

Today we talked about the assurance game. To symbolize it, assuming red is player 1, blue is player 2.

Before that, one important assumption has to be made, namely that each player believes that the other is in the same situation and will have the same probability as the thinker have of making their decision.

Let P(S)=the probability that the Agent would stand.
      P(R)=the probability that he would run.
and E(S) and E(R) are the expected utilities from the actions two players act.
Now, P1 wants to calculate his final utility from how P2 act.
1. E(S)=P(S)*A+P(R)*C
2. E(R)=P(S)*B+P(R)*D
Then compare 1 and 2, yield E(S)-E(R)=P(S)*(A-B)+P(R)*(C-D)

Here comes the objection #1: Crisis of being demanding, and practically less frequently than prisoner's dilemma.

Assurance game requires that P(S)*(A-B)+P(R)*(C-D)=0, therefore if we assume that P(S)=P(R)=.5, we must have A-B+C-D=0. And if the result is not zero, there will be a dominant strategy. It seems to me that A-B+C-D=0 is too demanding, because the result of A-B+C-D is perfectly contingent, it follows that we have to make up four numbers to make the equation established, and it is more plausible for us to make up another four to destroy the equation.

Moreover, in the fool's objection, "maximized utility by breaking the covenant" means C>>A>D>B, this is definitely a prisoner's dilemma. it follows that A+C nevertheless does not equal to B+D. Therefore by making up numbers that satisfied the assurance game is simply escaping from the fool's attack. To me, prisoner's dilemma happens much more frequently than assurance game.

Objection #2: Crisis of methodology

P(S)=P(R)=.5 if and only if E(S)=E(R). That is to say, by assuming P(S)=P(R), we are meanwhile assuming that E(S)=E(R). It is true that the outcome of the decision would affect the probability of each action, because if I know by calculating the probability that E(R) definitely outweighs E(S), my probability of running away is 1 and that of staying decrease to 0. Therefore in assurance game, neither probability of each action nor expectation of the utility should be assumed.

Actually this method of calculating expectation is not very practical, because we always have to assume something when doing the calculation, otherwise P(S) and P(R) changes with the changes of E(S) and E(R), and E(S) and E(R) forwardly changes P(S) and P(R), we come up with nothing but infinite regression. Therefore we either abandon the method, or we continuously making assumption.

To my knowledge, so far the expectation seems to be the best tool we can use in prediction, and it follows that we should continuously making assumptions. To acknowledge this, let's go back to the equation, then assume that A-B=1 and C-D=-1, then E(S)-E(R)=P(S)-P(R). And Hobbes would say that this ends up with the same conclusion: do whatever the other one does. But as I said from above, it is not wise to assume that A-B=D-C.