[Search4] Morgenstern's passages on poker and nuclear war

※ 발췌 (excerpt):


출처 1: http://kryten.mm.rpi.edu/SELPAP/NUCLEARDETERRENCE/SB_NSG_SE_EM_JL_nuclear_mindreading_042513.pdf


5.4 The Current Inadequacy of Digital and Tabletop Games

5.4.1 Relevant Digital and Tabletop Games, in Brief

( ... ... ) This is not to say that we are the first group to appreciate the recalcitrance of nuclear strategy. The German-born economist Oskar Morgenstern, co-developer with John von Neumann of game theory, famously likened the Cold War to poker at a time when the underlying strategy used by strategists was derived from a different kind of game entirely.  He (1961) wrote: "The cold war sometimes compared to a giant chess game between ourselves and the Soviet Union [ ... ]. The analogy, however, is quite false, or while chess is a formidable game of almost unbelievale complexity, it lacks salient features of the political and military struggles with which it is compared." And, elaborating:

Chess is, to begin with, a game of complete information. That is, the chess opponent has no unknown cards, no means at his disposal which the other player cannot see and know all about. Every move is made in the open; consequently (AND THIS IS MOST IMPORTANT), there is no possibility of bluffing, no opportunity to deceive. Obviously, these conditions are far removed from political reality, where threats abound, where the threatening nation has to weigh the cost not only to its enemies, but to inself, where deceits is certainly not unheard of, and where chance intervenes, suddenly favoring firt one side, then another. [ ... ] The present cold war situation makes this need for strategic perception not only apparent but imperative. Thermonuclear disaster might be triggered at any time by a few false steps which become increasingly difficult to avoid as new conflict zones, like Cuba and Congo, arise. Furthermore, nuclear weapons are spreading ominously to more nations while the ability to deliver them anywhere, from any point on earth, is already in the hands of the two superpowers. [ ... ] With bluffs so much easier to make and threats so much more portentious than at any previous time in history, it is essential not only for our own State Department but for the entire world to understand what bluffs and threats mean; when they are appropriate; whether they should be avoided at all costs; in short, that is the sanest way to play this deadly, real life version of poker.

The 'way' that Morgenstern alludes to, we claim, aligns with what our framework offers. The real-life game that we are in is one that appears to be without visible end; furthermore, to extend the poker analogy, there also appears no way to leave the table.


출처 2: Chess vs. Poker in the Cold War: Planning Ahead vs. Reacting to the Last Hand

On February 5, 1961, Oskar Morgenstern wrote an article for ^The New York Times^ titled "The Cold War Is Cold Poker" that argued for poker─against chess─as the game best suited to parallel the ongoing diplomatic conflct between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

"The cold war is sometimes compared to a giant chess game between ourselves and the Sovient Union, and Russia's disburbingly frequent successes are sometimes attributed to the national preoccupation with chess," Morgenstern begins. "The analogy, however, is quite false, for while chess is a formidable game of almost unbelievable complexity, it lacks salient features of the political and military struggles with which it is compared."

Morgenstern argues that since "chess is the Russian national pastime and poker is ours, we ought to be more skillful than they in applying its precepts to the cold-war struggle." Alas (in his view) that had not been the case by early 1961. Thus does he proceed to argue in favor of the country's leaders becoming more studious about poker strategy, particularly highlighting the need to learn how bluff effectively (and responsibly) ^and^ to learn how to recognize the Soviets' bluffs, too.

"The problem of how, on the one hand, to make a threat effective and, on the other, to recognize a genuine threat by your opponent is one of the most fundamental of the day," writes Morgenstern.

( ... ... )

An early essay by von Neumann "On the Theory of Parlor Games" (1928) explored how poker's bluffing element helped make the game suitable to study as a means to learn  more about deceptive behaviors in other contexts. That essay was expanded upon considerably into a chapter called "Poker and Bluffing" in ^Theory of Games and Economic Behavior^ ( ... ... )

Morgenstern would go on to work as an advisor for Eisenhower, while von Neumann would likewise be involved in Cold War strategy while chairing a secret intercontinental Ballistic Missile Committee before his death in 1957. Thus by 1961 Morgenstern had well developed his "Cold War is Cold Poker" idea, and he lays it out in full in the ^NYT^ piece.

It was an influential argument. Kennedy would get variously credited with have reaffirmed the "we play poker, they play chess" idea, further underscoring both cultural differences and the contrasting strategic approaches of the two superpowers toward each other. And further promoting the "poker provides a better approach" argument as well.

Reading backward onto Cold War history, that strategic divide frequently gets presented in ways that are favorable to the U.S., with adopting a poker-like strategy often made to seem more practically useful given its more conspicuous attention to bluffing than is the case with chess. The fact that chess is "a game of complete information" (as Morgenstern points out) makes it less suitable than a partial information gaime like poker that "describes better what goes on in political reality where countries with opposing aims and ideals watch each other's every move with unveiled suspicion."

Those retrospectively viewing the conflict today (with knowledge of its ultimate outcome)─and indeed, contemporary commenting on it then like Morgenstern─therefore mostly champion the America's "poker" approach as preferable to Soviets' "chess" tactics.

Not everyone was agreeing with Morgenstern, however, that poker was ^necessarily^ a better source of Cold War strategy for the U.S. than was chess. A letter to the ^NYT^ by Louis Wiznitzer dated February 26, 1961 responded to Morgenstern's article by saying its pro-poker position "sums up pretty much the essential reasons why the United States has been steadily losing the cold war in the last 12 years."

"Whereas the Communists are waging a game of chess, with moves as scientifically planned as possible," noted Wiznitzer, "the Americans are improvising poker moves and bluffs, without a master plan or aim, and depending more or less on their last hand, or reacting to the enemy's bet." Since "politics is not a game nor simply an art" but rather a "science," he insists, the long-range thinking of chess is actually preferable to the overly reactive game of poker.

"You cannot beat chess with poker," he concludes.

It's an interesting reponse, and the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion less than two months later─soon recognized as a woefully shortsighted "play" with especially damaging consequences for the U.S.─probably helped convince many that Wiznitzer, not Morgenstern, was on the right side of this debate at the time.


출처 3: In Nuclear Poker, Don't Bet on Trump (James McManus, Bloomberg, Jan 2017)


Is North Korea's belligerent young leader, Kim Jong-un, bluffing when he says the "last stage" is underway for testing a ballistic missile capable of hitting the U.S.? What about President-elect Donald Trump, when he tweets, "It won't happen"?

As Trump's administration begins, a showdown with North Korea over ICBMs seems all but inevitable. Just yesterday, South Korean media reported possible signs that the North may be preparing a new missle launch. In managing this conflict, few things will be more crucial than understanding the nature of bluffing. Unfortunately, for all his talk of being a good deal maker, Trump is a terrible bluffer─and his lack of skill is likely to destablize nuclear politics.

A bluff is an untrue but plausible story. In the mindset of poker, bluffs work when your opponent believes you have a better hand, so he can't call your your bet or raise, conceding you the pot. The savvier player wants to steadily grind away at the stack of his opponent over a large number of small pots, without risking too many of his own chips in any single hand. The weaker player can counter the "small ball" strategy by raising all-in fairly often, forcing all-or-nothing confrontations.

To understand why these dynamics are so crucial in nuclear negotiation, consider the work of John von Neumann, the prodigiously gifted polymath who immigrated to the U.S. from Hungary in 1933 and later contributed to the Manhattan Project. Von Neumann loved poker because its strategy involves guile, probability, luck and budgetary acumen, but is never transparent; it always depends on the counterstrategies deployed by opponents.

Expert players misrepresent the strength of their hands, stimulate irrational behavior, and deploy other mind games to confuse their opponents. In a nutshell, they bluff. It was von Neumann's efforts to express bluffs in mathematical terms that helped him develop game theory, which has numerous real-world applications, nuclear strategy foremost among them.

Von Neumann's main collaborator, Oskar Morgenstern, summed up the value of poker logic in 1961: "The Cold War sometimes compared to a giant chess game. The analogy, however, is quite false, for while chess is a formidable game of almost unbelievable complexity, it lacks salient features of the political and military struggles with which it is compared." As a game of complete information, chess provides no opportunity to bluff, leaving it "far removed rom political reality ... where threatening nation has to weigh the cost not only to its enemies, but to itself."

"If chess is the Russian national pastime and poker is ours," he continued, "we ought to be more skillful than they in applying its precepts ... With bluffs so much  easier to make and threats so much more portentous than any previous time in history, it is essential not only for our own State Department but for the entire world to understand what bluffs and threats mean; when they are appropriate; whether they should be avoided at all cost; in short, what is the sanest way to play this deadly, real-life version of poker."

Trump bluffs almost constantly. He has spent his entire adult life overstating the value of his real estate holdings and branding endeavor, while bragging relentlessly about his wealth, sex life, length off the tee, and on and on. His bluffs during the campaign─that he had a replacement for Obamacare, a secret plan to defeat Islamic State and so on─were plainly false to anyone paying attention. To Trump, what was true hardly mattered.

Such tendencies would not serve him well in a poker game. Any player who continually misrepresents the size of his hand would cause sharp opponents to give his bets little credit. They simply wait for above-average hands and call him. As Daniel Negreanu, the all-time winningest poker tournament player, put it to me, "Trump's bluffs are very effective against level-one thinkers. His lies are so outlandish that people think they have to be true or he wouldn't have said it. The constant barrage makes him tougher to read. But sharper players would pick him apart."

Kim may not be irrational, but he knows how to seem that he is, which gives him leverage. ( ... ... ) As Negreanu puts it, Kim is "a scary player. Being unpredictable, capable of any move at any time, makes him hard to prepare for."

( ... ... )


출처 4: James McManus, "Game Theory: Poker; Bluffing and the Royal Flush of Cold Warfare," NYT, Oct 2005.


Nicholas D. Kristof recently wrote on the Op-Ed page of this newspaper about North Korean power plants that may be capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear materials: "It's possible that North Korea is bluffing or is resuming construction only to have one more card to negotiate away."

( ... ... )

By the midle of the 20th century, with the nuclear arms race neck and neck, two brilliant Princeton professors helped the United States pull ahead of the Soviet Union. The economist Oskar Morgenstern served as a close adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and a math whiz named John von Neumann made vital contributions to the Manhattan Project, information theory and computer technology. Perhaps most important, both men provided deep mathematical insight into the nature of bluffing when they wrote "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior" in 1944.

Their 647-page magnum opus was a groundbreaking model of econmics and social organization, based on a theory of games of strategy. ( ... ... )

As Morgenstern wrote later: "The cold war is sometimes compared to a giant chess game between the United States and the Soviet Union, and Russia's frequent successes are sometimes attributed to the national preoccupation with chess. The analogy, however, is quite false, for while chess is a formidable game of almost unbelievable complexity, it lacks salient features of the political and military struggles with which it is compared."

Since chess is a game of complete information, it offers no opportunities to bluff, which leaves it ''far removed from political reality where the threatening nation has to weigh the cost not only to its enemies, but to itself, where deceit is certainly not unheard of, and where chance intervenes.''

Such elements were basic to poker, which Morgenstern called "a game of wile and artifice" and used all caps to emphasize that "THE BEST HAND NEED NOT WIN." Consistent winners, he wrote, "rely on their ability to perceive opportunities offered by each changing situation, and on artful deception through bluffing."

He conceded that chess might be a more moral game but insisted that poker tactics were more useful when "countries with opposing aims and ideals watch each other's move with unveiled suspicion.'' He concluded, ''If chess is the Russian national pastime and poker is ours, we ought to be more skillful than they in applying its precepts."

( ... ... )


출처 5: James McManus, Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

( ... ... ) As Morgenstern put it in 1961, "The Cold War is sometimes compared to a giant chess game. The analogy, however, is quite false, for while chess is a formidable game of almost unbelievable complexity, it lacks salient features of the political and military struggles with which it is compared." Because chess is a game of complete information, it provides no opportunity to bluff, leaving it "far removed from political reality ... where the threatening nation has to weigh the cost not only to its enemies, but to itself, where deceit is certainly not unheard of, and where chance intervenes." Luck, deceit, and cost-effectiveness are basic to poker, a game in which "the best hand need not win." It is the bluff that makes poker the most useful model for "countries with opposing aims and ideals [who] watch each other's every move with unveiled suspicion."

"If chess is the Russian national pastime and poker is ours," Morgenstern continues, "we ought to be more skillful than they in applying its precepts to the cold-war struggle." We need to be strategically astute because "nuclear weapons are spreading ominously while the ability to deliver them anywhere, from any point on earth, is already in the hands of the two super-powers. With bluffs so much easier to make and threats so much more portentous than any previous time in history, it is essential not only for our own State Department but for the entire world to understand what bluffs and threats mean; when they are appropriate; whether they should be avoided at all cost; in short, what is the sanest way to play this deadly, real-life version of poker."

Parallels between poker and nuclear showdowns aren't neat or one-to-one, yet no game more closely resembles military and diplomatic maneuvres. Morgenstern says they are "similar enout so that something substantial can be learned from good poker principles. Corresponding to each player's cards and chips, you have the quantity and quality of a country's weapons, the disturbance which one country can cause another, and the changes in national plans than can be imposed. Bluffs correspond to the numerous threats being made with increasing frequency on the contemporary international scene."

It is worth noting here that the old Germanic word ^bluffen^ means "to bluster or frighten." The English version, combining both meanings, first appeared around 1665, as bluff-based vying games like ^pochen^ and brag became popular. No other kind of game so perfectly captured the essence of this deceitful yet potentially lifesaving tactic─of making someone believe you will fight to the death if necessary, without having to actually shed any blood, let alone evaporate cities.

While Stalin seldom bluffed, his successors regrettably picked up the knack. "Unquestionably the most successful bluff, by either side," writes Morgenstern, "was the Soviet Union's threat in 1956 to rain missiles on England unless she stopped her actions in Egypt" during the Suez crisis. He also believed the West was bluffed by the simple roadblocks the Red Army put up around West Berlin. Instead of a massively expensive airlift, all we needed were a few tanks to break through the roadblocks. "We held strong cards but we didn't know how to use them. We fell for a bluff that was easy to recognize as a bluff, even ... when our total nuclear power was so much greater than that of Soviets.

"If the Communists," he continues, "seem to be superior players to date, it is perhaps not so much because of their tactics in playing any particular hand, as because of their firmer adherence to sound optimal strategy." Then he presciently adds, "the United States has, with some justice, been criticized for being alternately too uncertain of its line ... and too rigid, as in our refusal to recognize Red China─the most populous country in the world and, in a few decades, sure to be one of the most powerful."

In March 1955, Eisenhower had pulled off a nuclear bluff against Mao Zedong over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu during a war between China and Taiwan. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles declared that the United States was considering a nuclear strike on the mainland, with Admiral Robert B. Carney adding that Eisenhower was planning "to destroy Red China's military potential." When the Soviets signaled an unwillingness to threaten nuclear retaliation for a U.S. attack, Mao backed down. But in 1960, Eisenhower got called, as it were, by Khrushchev when a U-2 spy plane was forced down in the heart of Russia─on May Day, no less. After initially denying it was a spy plane, Eisenhower was forced to admit that it was when Khrushchev produced the pilot and plane. Morgenstern describes Khrushchev as "alternately acting the clown, the bon vivant, and the ogre, yet never stepping completely out of character and managing to keep his non-Communist audience in a state of chronic uncertainty."

( ... ... )