Peter
Nonacs, professor of biology at UCLA, teaches Game Theory in his
Behavioral Ecology course. He told his students that for an upcoming
exam, they could do anything that would normally be considered cheating:
A
week before the test, I told my class that the Game Theory exam would
be insanely hard—far harder than any that had established my rep as a
hard prof. But as recompense, for this one time only, students could
cheat. They could bring and use anything or anyone they liked, including
animal behavior experts. (Richard Dawkins in town? Bring him!) They
could surf the Web. They could talk to each other or call friends who’d
taken the course before. They could offer me bribes. (I wouldn’t take
them, but neither would I report it to the dean.) Only violations of
state or federal criminal law such as kidnapping my dog, blackmail, or
threats of violence were out of bounds. [...]
Once the
shock wore off, they got sophisticated. In discussion section, they
speculated, organized, and plotted. What would be the test’s payoff
matrix? Would cooperation be rewarded or counter-productive? Would a
large group work better, or smaller subgroups with specified tasks? What
about “scroungers” who didn’t study but were planning to parasitize
everyone else’s hard work? How much reciprocity would be demanded in
order to share benefits? Was the test going to play out like a
dog-eat-dog Hunger Games? In short, the students spent the entire week
living Game Theory. It transformed a class where many did not even speak
to each other into a coherent whole focused on a single task—beating
their crazy professor’s nefarious scheme.
On the day of the
hour-long test they faced a single question: “If evolution through
natural selection is a game, what are the players, teams, rules,
objectives, and outcomes?”
Most students responded by working together:
One
student immediately ran to the chalkboard, and she began to organize
the outputs for each question section. The class divided tasks. They
debated. They worked on hypotheses. Weak ones were rejected, promising
ones were developed. Supportive evidence was added. A schedule was
established for writing the consensus answers. (I remained in the room,
hoping someone would ask me for my answers, because I had several
enigmatic clues to divulge. But nobody thought that far afield!) As the
test progressed, the majority (whom I shall call the “Mob”) decided to
share one set of answers. Individuals within the Mob took turns writing
paragraphs, and they all signed an author sheet to share the common
grade. Three out of the 27 students opted out (I’ll call them the “Lone
Wolves”). Although the Wolves listened and contributed to discussions,
they preferred their individual variants over the Mob’s joint answer.
In
the end, the students learned what social insects like ants and
termites have known for hundreds of millions of years. To win at some
games, cooperation is better than competition. Unity that arises through
a diversity of opinion is stronger than any solitary competitor.
But that wasn't the end of of Prof. Nonacs's instruction:
But
did the students themselves realize this? To see, I presented the class
with one last evil wrinkle two days later, after the test was graded
but not yet returned. They had a choice, I said. Option A: They could
get the test back and have it count toward their final grade. Option B: I
would—sight unseen—shred the entire test. Poof, the grade would
disappear as if it had never happened. But Option B meant they would
never see their results; they would never know if their answers were
correct.
“Oh, my, can we think about this for a
couple of days?” they begged. No, I answered. More heated discussion
followed. It was soon apparent that everyone had felt good about the
process and their overall answers. The students unanimously chose to
keep the test. Once again, the unity that arose through a diversity of
opinion was right. The shared grade for the Mob was 20 percent higher
than the averages on my previous, more normal, midterms. Among the Lone
Wolves, one scored higher than the Mob, one about the same, and one
scored lower
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