Scientific Definition
Decisions depend on what other strategic actors will do.
Plain-English Definition
Decisions depend on what other strategic actors will do.
Feynman Explanation
You're not playing against the market. You're playing against everyone playing the market.
Core Principle
Decisions depend on what other strategic actors will do.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Decisions depend on what other strategic actors will do.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Anticipating competitor and counterparty moves.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
You're not playing against the market. You're playing against everyone playing the market.
Examples
- Pricing wars. Standards adoption. M&A.
- Anticipating competitor and counterparty moves.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Always model the second player. Never the first move alone.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Always model the second player. Never the first move alone.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Game theory adjusted for how humans actually play — including fairness, reciprocity, and limited reasoning.
One party's gain is exactly another party's loss.
Combine extreme safety with extreme risk; avoid the middle.
Allocating finite resources across many fronts when the opponent does the same — no dominant strategy exists.
Coordinated action that produces outcomes unavailable to individual actors.
Designing organizations to ride doubling curves — AI, data, compute, biotech — rather than linear improvement.
Individual rationality produces collective irrationality.
Causal chain from inputs to outputs to outcomes to impact.
Start cooperative; copy your counterpart's last move thereafter.
Where, how, what — in that order.
Players choose how much to contribute to a shared pot; selfish theory predicts zero, real humans contribute, and punishment of free-riders sustains cooperation.
Decision-makers should bear the consequences of their decisions.