Speculative (now)Everything presents Patriotic Game of Marriage
Posted on November 15, 2019
Disclaimer: Any similarity to actual husbands is purely coincidental. No real marriage was harmed in the making of this blogpost.
Imagine this blissful married-life* moment, when you cuddle together on a couch after a long day, drinking tea with something extra (if it’s a Polish household**), and everything is as perfect as in a movie you’re watching (and you’re pretty sure it’s real and there are no creepy guys with cameras behind the frame, but who knows), and THEN your husband, out of nowhere, decides to remind you how different you are, and spectacularly ruins everything by asking:
“Ok, so what does it mean that you’re interested in speculative design, does it have any sense, any future?”
COMMERCIAL BREAK
// where pillows and words fly in a slow-motion dance called “let’s have a discussion”, while “Fur Elise” plays in the background //
It is important to note here that the context of our argument called “what is speculative design [1] and does it makes any sense” exceeds far from design for us as a Polish married couple, sitting together on a couch in a foreign country, as it is specifically situated within our own individual understanding of patriotism (I know, pretty unexcepted turn from simple “married couple fight” scenario).
So instead of fighting, I decided to take a high road, as I always do *cough*, and apply a speculative take on a Game Theory to solve our marital (and not only) problems as ONE DOES (and it has nothing to do with watching Game of Thrones – ok, maybe a little bit).
And as winter really is coming, “Let the Marriage Games Begin!”.
Game Theory is a framework of conceiving social situations among competing (and competitive, as we talk about marriage) players. It’s a mathematical model that can be used as a form of negotiation, conflict, and cooperation between actors. It is assumed players within the game are rational (I know, I know, we’re in Game Theory invented by some white dudes, please stay with me) and will strive to maximize their payoffs in the game. It is also assumed that each action and choice of one player affects the outcome of another [2] (actually that part should be in the marriage contract). So, let’s dive into our setting for today:
Game: Set of speculative circumstances in this Patriotic Game are what Dunne and Raby would probably call a “powerful dream” that we need [1]; its a Game scenario where individuals directly affect a system; in this case the system is actually the emerging culture of Poland, arguably a new one, still confused with colonization threads from Germany, Russia and now the US especially in thinking about economy; that is shaped by actions of two or more decision-makers (players); the result, in this case, is shape of a strong sense of what makes “sense”;
Players: are two young Polish citizens, that individually and as a collective are strategic decision-makers within the context of the Game;
Strategy: A complete plan of action a player will take;
Player’a 1 “H” strategy is to maximize the result by the most known tools to strengthen the nearest possible future;
Player’s 2 “W” strategy is to maximize the result by the most radically different approaches to create the furthest possible future.
Payoff:
Happy, agreeable marriage (HA!);
Building a vision of the future that makes sense;
Equilibrium: The point in a game where both players have made their decisions and an outcome is reached – and marriage survives.
Before we play, lets firstly get on the same linguistic page and dissolve the meanings behind the words based on situated knowledges [3] of the Players.
Player’s 1 “H” understanding of critical words:
f – preferred future of our country = cultural thinking based on a strong economic focus
y – sense = feasible, predictable actions with a direct connection to the near future
z – speculation = unknown tool that might be not useful in developing desired future
f = y – z
Therefore for a Player 1, future that makes sense, is the one where there is no (or limited) space for speculative design with unknown outcomes.
Player’s 2 “W” understanding of critical words:
f1 – preferred future of our country = unknown space, which re-orders and decolonizes current order of thinking including economical system
y1 – sense = new, unfamiliar way of thinking that breaks current sense-making
z1 – speculation = rigorous imagination space to fabulate possible futures
z1 = fx1+ y2
Therefore for Player2, a future that makes sense, is the one created by a speculative design.
As we understand, what future means for each player let’s get into the Game scenario, using BoS [2] coordination game:
Here, two players have to co-create a patriotic vision for their country, in order to plan their future as individuals in a system. One of the players has a preference to focus on the current economic systems in order to create a desired, safe future and one of them has a preference for speculative design to create unknown yet form of the desired future. The game is asymmetric because, while both players have the same goal (patriotic vision of “better Poland”) and access to the same options, they have different strategies and corresponding rewards for each are different based on the players’ preferences. In order to maintain their marriage — or equilibrium — the players should choose the same activity and direction (hence the zero payoffs for separate activities, sorry pal).
This game has three equilibrium:
(i) Both players deciding to focus on future=f
(ii) Both deciding to go to focus on future1=f1
(iii) A final, mixed option, where each player will opt for their preferred option three-fifths of the time.
Guess which one we settled on (haha)?
Of course, game theory cannot put people and their decisions into boxes and has millions of flaws and limitations, but it might serve as a starting point for gathering and understanding each other’s situated bits of knowledge [3], in order to create equations that don’t yet exist (by the way yes, that means I still win).
What if there is a fourth equilibrium, where:
(iv) both of the players co-ordinate their situated knowledges [3] into co-creating desired future, with stepping in and out from leading position..?
So as we continue playing the biggest Game of All called Marriage, I write this blogpost as a speculative love letter to my husband with whom I can’t wait to co-create (even only three-fifths of the time as a start) a future we both share a dream about.
* by married I don’t necessarily mean by a Pen on a Piece of Paper, but generally this state of relationship -very loving state, of course *cough* – when you need to at least play the game of RECALLING when you started dating (not saying forgetting, cause who would forget…) 2011? No, 2012. 2011?
** deep apologies to any Polish fellows without a sense of humor, who might be deeply offended by my playful take on stereotypes, na zdrowie!
Bibliography:
[1] Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. 2013. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, And Social Dreaming. London: The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[2] Rodriguez, Jesus. 2019. “Beyond The Nash Equilibrium: Deepmind’S Clever Strategy To Solve Asymmetric Games”. Medium. https://towardsdatascience.com/beyond-the-nash-equilibrium-deepminds-clever-strategy-to-solve-asymmetric-games-d571c998dac4.
[3] Haraway, Donna. 1988. Feminist Studies. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question In Feminism And The Privilege Of Partial Perspective.. Feminist Studies, Inc.
[4] “What Is At Stake With Decolonizing Design? A Roundtable”. 2018. Taylor & Francis. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17547075.2018.1434368.