Looking at Redemptive History through the Lens of Game Theory (Or: The Kingdom of God is like Game Theory where everyone always picks to Collaborate)

 Let’s start with what is Game Theory:  Derived from Wikipedia and Chat GPT:  Game theory is the study of strategic interactions among rational decision-makers. It analyzes the possible actions available to each party (or "player"), the outcomes that result from combinations of those actions, and the conditions under which players may reach an equilibrium — where no player has an incentive to unilaterally change their strategy.

Stated in more practical terms: If I am living in a tribe (Tribe Gamma) on one side of the Skunk river and there is another Tribe Kappa on the other side and one day me and my Tribe Gamma buddies bump into a crew from Tribe Kappa and “we say “hey, what do you have there?” and they say,  “a bunch of delicious dried buffalo meat, “What do you have?” and we say, “Some delicious corn and some pumpkin pies from the pumpkin’s we have grown.””   Now we have some choices to make.  Choice A:  Shot them with our arrows and just take all of their buffalo meat, or Choice B:  Make a “fair” trade with them of our corn and pie for their buffalo meat.   An equilibrium emerges if we do A (shoot them) for example and Tribe Kappa says, “Okay, Okay, every year we will just give you some of our buffalo meat and you promise not to kill us.”  That is an equilibrium because we are better off because we get this free buffalo meat and Tribe Kappa is better off because they are not dead.   OR the equilibrium for choice B (trade) might be that we are all better off because life is better for both tribes if we just trade our various food and we all live happier. 

What game theory tries to do is predict under what circumstances the tribes end up in which equilibrium.

With these ideas about game theory I thought I would, as a kind of experiment, evaluate each clear human to human interaction in the book of Genesis as a game theory play or move with a set of strategy choices with resulting outcomes.

So, for each human interaction I identified 6 different strategies people could choose and grouped these into 4 morality categories…

·       ATTACK and DECEIVE or trick I put into the moral category of BAD.

·       RETREAT or Run away and SUBMIT I put in the SKETCHY category.  It is a little more ambiguous but not something to which God really called us.

·       PASSIVE which I categorized as morally NEUTRAL.  For example.  If someone gives you a gift or rescued you from a bad situation.

·       COLLABORATE which I categorized as morally GOOD.

Then for each party of each interaction I identified 4 possible Outcomes of the interaction.

·       DESTROYED: Should be self-explanatory.

·       LOSE:  You survive but are diminished in some way.  You lose land, livestock, status etc.

·       NEUTRAL: Nothing really changes for the party.

·       WIN:  Your situation is improved as a result of the interaction.

Now before I talk about what I did or did not discover in this “experiment” I would like to discuss the criteria I used for moral categorization of strategies.

To “categorize” the strategies, I focused on biblical commands that come at the very beginning of the Bible OR that are called out as specifically important.

Here are what I consider to be preeminent moral commands / or Guidelines in the Bible that I used as the basis for categorizing the above mentioned strategies.  That is, God’s most basic moral imperatives.

·       “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…”  Genesis 1:28 - strategies that help humans multiply and fill the earth are good and conversely strategies that do the opposite are not.

·       “…and subdue it [the earth] and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”     Genesis 1:28   - strategies that help humans subdue the earth are good and conversely strategies that do the opposite are not.

Implication of those two commands: People will need to collaborate to make those two commands happen. 

Fast forward 1,000s of years, as recorded in Mark 12:28-31in the ESV, we have Jesus who fulfills everything in the Old Testament giving us the greatest commandment when asked by a scribe, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” ²⁹ Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰ And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

In this, Jesus is stating explicitly what is implied in the first 2 commands: to multiply and subdue the earth we must explicitly chose to love and collaborate with every one we meet and therefore NOT choose to take, kill and deceive to safe guard our own well-being at the expense of others.

The interaction of the 3^rd and 4^th humans gives some indication that looking at God’s commands to flourish and love in terms of game theory actions may be appropriate and productive.  In the first half of Genesis chapter 4 we see Adam and Eve’s 1^st and 2^nd born taking on helpful and productive roles in their brand new tiny society but when they present their offerings Cain’s is not accepted. Presumably he needed to provide an animal offering rather than a “the fruit of the ground” offering.

Cain has two options now.  One: go to Able and say, “Hey, If I give you some of the fruit of the ground I raised, would you give me some livestock that I could offer to God.”   A mutually beneficial and collaborative exchange.  Instead he chose to kill and destroy.  A clear game theory play with strategies and outcomes.  .

So, the “experiment” I did:  I documented each human to human interaction in the book of Genesis and evaluated it in terms of the game theory strategies and outcomes noted earlier for each party in each interaction. I was able to identify 98 interactions with 196 strategy decisions and outcomes.  One for each party in an interaction.  The biggest thing discovered is that with that many interactions you quickly get a lot of data you can evaluate and it quickly becomes overwhelming when you do not have great data analysis skills which it turns out I do not. J  Figuring out how to sort through all these data ultimately turned out to be above my pay grade. 

So, I will provide you with a few of basic observations.

First, regardless of the strategy taken, about 55% of the time the players / actors managed a good outcome for themselves.  That projects slow growth in human flourishing which, I would argue is what history shows us.

Second, per the graph below, the trend through the generations documented in Genesis is that as a % of total interactions humans trended toward picking a strategy that aligns with God’s commands.  Good strategies were picked less than 10% of the time in prehistory whereas in the generation of Jacob’s sons choosing good strategies rises to almost 50%.  But don’t get too excited. The book of Judges is right around the corner.

Graph from Chat GPT…

I would like to say a little more about one observation on the Genesis data.  Roughly 20% of the time both parties choose to collaborate.   This is by far the highest strategy combination indicating an innate desire for humans to want to collaborate. This is followed by 13% where one party collaborates and the other party is passive and there is a tie for the 3^rd most common interaction combination at around 8% with passive dupes getting deceived OR the two parties just attacking each other.

For the interactions where both parties chose to collaborate there is no negative outcome noted for either party and almost all outcomes are demonstrably positive for both parties.   So, when we all choose to follow God, things go very well. Big shock!

This leads me to my next thought:  It is my contention that if all humans everywhere had always chosen collaboration with the outcomes of every interaction resulting almost exclusively in beneficial growth for all parties, human population and flourishing would have progressed at a rapidly faster pace than what we have seen in history.

For example.  Every time a new tribe roles into our valley instead of working out how to trick them out of their stuff or just killing them and taking their stuff we would ask.  “How can we work with these people and their skills and talents to get more crops, produce and animal products for food, shelter, clothing, mutual entertainment, etc for all of us?”  Instead of wasting energy and resources trying to procure the fixed set of resources we see before us we would collaborate to find ways to wring more value out of the resources around us to our mutual benefit.  Instead of inventing brass and iron to give us weapons that help us take resources from others, we would collaboratively invent brass and iron tools to help us get progressively more valuable consumable items for the limited resources around us.

If love and collaboration is the approach that all humans everywhere had always taken, I project that humans would have progressed much more quickly into, through and beyond the industrial era and thus fulfill the command to be fruitful and multiply and fill and subdue the earth much more quickly than we actually have.

As historical support to this claim, ancient Egyptian documents 2,000 years old by Hero of Alexandria and Vitruvius tell of a rudimentary steam engine that appears to have been used to create “tricks” in the pagan temple to give the impression that the gods of their temples had special powers.  Imagine if people at that time had decided NOT to use this invention for one of the bad game theory strategies, namely, to deceive people BUT instead they had collaboratively tried to work out how to make steam powered boats that could move crops more quickly out of the Nile to more people around the world.  That collaborative choice further increases human flourishing.  The former promotes stagnation.

I contend that had humans always picked to use new technology to support love and collaboration we would have initiated the industrial revolution perhaps 1,000s of years earlier accelerating the fulfillment of God’s commands AND because we always defaulted with love we may have avoided some of the negative impacts of industrialization.

It did not happen like that.  Instead, I believe we are still living in a world where we mutually choose love and collaboration 20% of the time (or at least a way lower percentage than that to which God has called us). 

What to do about this?

If we re-wind to the beginning of this paper and consider this issue in terms of game theory, the issue we have is the equilibrium of both parties choosing love / collaboration is not stable.  There is always the possibility that one player in an interaction might determine there is an incentive for them to unilaterally choose to deceive or attack in the next move and procure for themselves a better outcome at the expense of the other.  This devolves into a world where it is risky to choose to collaborate. You may be taken advantage of or worse.

I would propose that in terms of game theory the promises of God offer at least one thing that could tip us back to always collaborating / loving…

Galatians 6:2,7-10   ^"2 Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ. ⁷ Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. ⁸ For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. ⁹ Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. ¹⁰ So then, ^[b]while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith."

In the long view. Choosing love and collaboration / choosing the law of Christ and doing good will always result in a positive outcome of eternal life in the final judgment.

God’s promises provide the final incentive to always choose love.  With eternity in mind, choosing love always pays, even if it leads to negative consequences in the here and now. 

For the incentive of eternal life and the disincentive of eternal punishment to be an effective incentive in picking a strategy requires faith that God will follow through with His promises. Ultimately Faith is a positive driver in achieving the outcomes God has called us to.

Based on this game theory assessment. Without the true threat of judgement for wrong doing the incentives to always collaborate are too weak to support a consistent equilibrium.

The threat of judgment for wrong doing and eternal blessing for picking rightly creates incentives potentially adequate to support an equilibrium where love and collaboration always result in the best equilibrium outcome.