Catch-22 and King-of-the-Mountain Games

Cycling, Frustration, and Power

Bibliographic Data

ID5917232
AuthorsSteven J Bram (0000-0003-3650-0392, corresponding author), Christopher B Jones (0000-0001-6847-7575)
Year1999
Volume11
Issue2
Pages139-167
Publication date1999-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRationality and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1043-4631 • E-ISSN: 1461-7358
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/104346399011002002
OpenAlexW2042934704
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited12

In his classic novel, Catch-22 (1961), Joseph Heller describes a thoroughly frustrating situation faced by a combat pilot in World War II. This is generalized to a `generic' 2 × 2 strict ordinal game, which subsumes 12 specific catch-22 games. These games, along with 4 king-of-the-mountain games, turn out to be the only games in which moving power is effective, based on the `theory of moves': each player can induce a better outcome when it possesses this power than when its opponent possesses it. These 16 games constitute 28% of the 57 2 × 2 conflict games, in which there is no mutually best outcome. A specific catch-22 game is used to model the conflict between the pilot and the doctor who can certify his sanity in the Heller novel; a different catch-22 game is used to model medieval witch trials. King-of-the-mountain games portray related situations in which there is a contest to come out on top, but the player who `loses' does not suffer as much as in a catch-22 game. In all these games, cycling is always possible and frequently observed, despite the presence of pure-strategy Nash equilibria in 10 of the 16 games

Adversary · Computer security · CONTEST · Economics · Game theory · Mathematical economics · Metagaming · Political science · Repeated game · Sanity · Simultaneous game · Witch · Artificial Intelligence in Games · Computer Science · Game Theory and Applications · Law

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