All is fair in love and war, on Zero-sum games in life

This piece seems to fundamentally misunderstand what zero-sum games are and why they matter.

There is no substantive difference between negative-sum and positive-sum games; the only difference is between zero-sum vs nonzero. If there's a possibility for both sides to be worse off, then there's a possibility for both sides to be better off (by avoiding the both-sides-worse-off outcome).

Even the "zero-sum subgames" are radically altered by the presence of nonzero-sum possibilities. This is the classic work of Schelling on negotiations (including things like salary negotiations, chores between a couple, or elections). The presence of negative-sum alternatives allows parties to use threats (i.e. threaten to make the negative-sum alternative happen if they don't get their way in the negotiation), which would not work at all in a true zero-sum game. In zero-sum, making the other party worse off is always better for me, so there's no reason to threaten - I just make them worse off whenever the opportunity arises.

The large majority of the examples in the post are nonzero sum, and even the exceptions are debatable - most real-world games allow some way for the parties to throw away resources.

even if you work together to increase the size of the pie, the question of how the pie will be divided always stays pressing and relevant.

Yes, the choice between "greater part of a pie" and "part of a greater pie" is somewhat a false dilemma; some people obviously have both. And when precisely those people tell you "please focus on making the pie grow, and forget about how it is distributed; don't worry, everything will turn out okay at the end", yeah, it sounds quite self-serving. It is obvious how they would benefit both from you making the pie grow and you not caring how the pie is distributed.

Funny thing is, if you take the opposite perspective... if you honestly believe that people who ignore the distribution of the pie and focus on making it grow, will somehow magically end up with a large part of the pie... then, the observed facts [people having the largest parts of the growing pie telling everyone that their mindset is focusing on making the pie grow] seem to match your belief, too.

And of course, yet another explanation is survivor bias: Some people focus on making the pie grow. Some of them succeed. Some of those also accidentally succeed at capturing a large part of the value they created... and those are the ones whose opinions get amplified because they are now the important people. Yes they are sincere, but no they do not describe a realistic picture. Anecdote is filtered [LW · GW] data.

Or perhaps this is a case of the law of equal and opposite advice: Maybe some people are naturally focused on getting the greater part of the pie... and it may be very useful for them to realize that helping the pie grow (and grabbing the part they helped grow) is a viable strategy. Meanwhile, some other people are naturally focused on helping the pie grow, and those would benefit from advice how not to let all that added value slip away from their fingers.

It seems to me that the nice-but-not-naive approach is to take care of growing the pie while also taking care that you get a certain share of it. -- Yes, this approach deserves to be called nice. A nasty one would focus exclusively on taking the larger part of the pie, assuming that most likely there are enough nice and naive people who will focus on making it grow, especially if you ask them nicely and appeal to their sense of hope, or if there are not enough such people then everything is doomed regardless of what you do.

For example, in the context of employment, clearly understand the difference between co-owners and employees. If you are an employee, your salary is the only part of the pie you will ever get. When your boss tells you "hey, if we get this project right, the company will be a fantastic success", remember that he is talking about his part of the pie, not yours. Yes, he may become a millionaire, and he is probably a nice and hard-working guy who deserves it. None of that is going to pay your bills or feed your children, though. (Well, maybe unless you plan to marry him. But even then I'd strongly suggest to marry him before he becomes a millionaire.)

A possible solution is to make a deal about splitting the pie first, and then you can fully focus on growing it. Even that is not 100% reliable -- people can have multiple projects at the same time, so after making the deal about fair share, your partner can leave most work to you, and focus on his other projects that seem to promise greater rewards per unit of effort (remember this if you happen to talk to a venture capitalist) -- but it is already a better deal than you would get in most situations. Perhaps cooperatives should be a more popular form of ownership, but coordination is hard.

I would trust Silicon Valley billionaires more if they promoted things like UBI. But looking at their anti-salary-growth cartels, I guess even the idea of paying their employees fair market wage is too futuristic for them.

Even if the status game is zero-sum, that alone doesn't necessarily imply how much the people at bottom will suffer. There is some necessary part, like, of course, anyone would resent being at the bottom. But there are all kinds of unnecessary suffering that higher-status people are free to inflict on the lower-status, simply because it is enjoyable for the higher-status, and if you care about it too much, you signal that you are not sufficiently high-status yourself. There is an option to treat the poor with dignity; we just collectively decided not to take it, because it is more fun to poke them and laugh. (We especially like to laugh at people who happen to be both at the bottom of the social ladder, and on the opposite side of whatever political divide we perceive.)

I don't think status is a zero-sum game.  Some people may play it as such, unfortunately.  But some ways to increase your social standing also confer benefits to others without anyone losing out. By being being kind and considerate (as well as knowledgeable, competent, etc.) you can notice people's good qualities and confer status to others, flattening the status hierarchy and making it more multi-dimensional (making sure different types of talents get noticed).

It also depends what kind of status you're after. If you care more about the approval of people with depth and good character, that's easier to achieve in ways that build others up than if you care primarily about the most shallow metrics of status.

From a strict game theory perspective, zero sum games have a technical definition, ie being zero sum, that is rarely met in practice. A zero sum game is one where the opponents are perfectly opposed to each other. So it does not contain any outcomes that all players consider bad. In a zero some game, for one player to win, another must loose. For one player to loose, another must win. (Game theory usually only talks about 2 player zero sum games, because these have a nice mathematical structure. )

If we take a perfectly zero sum game, and give one player the opportunity to headbutt a wall (which gives them -1 util and doesn't effect the rest of the game) then the game is no longer zero sum. If you take 2 zero sum games and play one after the other, the result is not in general zero sum. 

To see this consider Alice and Bob, two expected money maximisers playing a game that always has exactly one winner. They each get a (possibly different) prize for winning. (and can't transfer money between each other) A game where Alice can win £10, or Bob can win £1 is zero sum (up to Linear transformation of utility function). But follow that with a game where Alice can win £1, and Bob can win £10, and the result is no longer zero sum.

The set of games I think you are really talking about are the games where there is a big difference between the Nash equilibria society often lands in, and the Parito optimal.

Consider also that when a zero-sum game is embedded in a positive-sum one, often the most effective way to negotiate is to threaten to walk away from the positive-sum game if you don't get a bigger share of the spoils (e.g. threaten to leave the job if you don't get a rise). The simplified version is the ultimatum game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game. 

This also means that holding a positive-sum trade sacred has the side effect of freezing the zero-sum part of it to the status quo.

I wrote an article on this subject (i.e. why do we play zero-sum games while praising positive-sum games?)

https://native-wonder.blogspot.com/2020/12/things-people-want.html

Is this sentence correct, or is a verb missing after 'employee'? 'every extra dollar the employee is a dollar that the employer could have and vice versa'

I also think one of the are's is extra: 'Two questions that are worth asking: How important are the results of these games are to our well-being?'