THE COUNTERINTUITIVE IN CONFLICT AND COOPERATION

Abstract

Conflicts and cooperation offer two kinds of surprises: ition, mathematical analysis shows that the use of rea-those generated by a participant and those generated by sonable and traditional rules of thumb can lead to sur-the situation. Surprises of the first kind are familiar. For prising results for all participants. Mathematical analyses example, in The Art of War (1521), the Florentine bureau- of these models appear elsewhere. Here I describe only crat Niccolb Machiavelli counseled military commanders the models and their properties. to surprise their opponents; he gave many historical Because the training and intuition of different peo-examples of such surprises. How best to achieve surprise ple are different, one person's surprise is often another in political and military conflicts is person's so-what. In the examples still under analysis (e. g., Axelrod that follow, the claims that findings 1979). Mathematical models are surprising are accompanied by A second kind of surprise arises efforts to build up the appropriate when, because of the structure of of real-life problems intuition. To each such claim, the interaction among opponents or col- suggest that following qualification applies that the finding laborators, intuitively reasonable ac- is surprising at least to some people. tions or policies lead to an outcome one's intuition can It might be inferred from these that surprises everybody. I will call lead to results that examples that real conflict and coop-

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