MIR: Sweet lord, you play me false.
FERD: No, my dear'st love,
I would not for the world.
MIR: Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle,
And I would call it, fair play.
ALONSO: If this prove
A vision of the Island, one dear son
Shall I twice lose.
The Tempest. Act iv. Sc. 1
I read a post a while back where someone mentioned they could
possibly be pawns in a game. Well, the goal of Backgammon is to get all
of your checkers on your side of the board. Maybe here the goal is to
get all the players into the cave, or to the beach. Once all fifteen of
your checkers are on your side of the board you can start "bearing"
them off.
And oh, yes, "Tabula" was the Roman version of Backgammon.
I'm becoming convinced this has something to do with game theory and Backgammon
specifically. The clues are seemingly too numerous to be coincidence.
Badger32
Game Theory! This is a new one--please elaborate Badger!!
drabauer
Hey this is good. Maybe the island is alive. We have talked
about an ice side (to explain the polar bear) and a warm side(tropical
areas typically have crazy weather patterns). Maybe there are two people
controlling events and using the survivors to play the game. An example
possibly is the bad side causing the cave in and the good side making
the moth fly up so charlie can see it. Nice idea Badger. I like it!!
gscaleta
WOW!
That's the best theory I've heard on this board in quite a while.
Of course it would have to be a modified game of 15 total pieces instead
of 30.
b a fett
I do think that there are 2 forces at work here what they are simply good and evil ? Maybe. But i do think the black and white\backgammon thing is a very big part of the show. I mean im not very smart and much of the stuff on the boards is waaayyy over my head but hey im learning !! I just think that for the show to be the big hit that it is they are going to have to make it so that a whole lot of people try to figure it out and understand at least to some degree the things that are going on and the clues.
donnaypro1
Game theory is good!
Just prior to the scene with Locke and the Backgammon Board, wasn't a
hand shown briefly moving minature soldiers around a battlefield?
Southernmapart
I had a business minor in college and we had some game theory driven into our heads as a large part of our understanding of business and management. Game theory can be both elegant and complicated, depending on the situation you apply it to. A very basic way to explain game theory is that it is a study of the choices people can make in various situations based on the pay-offs of the outcomes. What is really interesting about game theory (to me, at least) is the discussions it can raise based on philosophical beliefs, values, and cold, hard numbers.
One simple example of game theory is the "Prisoners' Dilemma".
There are many examples of Prisoners' Dilemma, so whatever I say here
may not be exactly what other people have heard, but the concept is a
main building block in the theory. In this "game" Person A and
Person B have been caught red handed and are being seperately interrogated.
For the sake of example, let's say that if they both confess to the crime,
they will both serve 5 years in prison; if one person confesses and the
other rats out their accomplice, the confessor will serve 10 years while
the rat will go free; and if they both rat out each other, they will both
serve 7 years. Game theory tells us that A and B will both choose to rat
out their accomplice and end up serving 7 years each.
You may look at the example and think that confessing is the best strategy,
but game theory assumes that all participants are rational and logical
and make choices strictly for the quantifiable payoff. This is where morality
and such get thrown into the discussion, but game theory is based around
logic and rationality.
So that’s a little game theory intro. If you want more, check out
plato.stanford.edu/entries/game-theory/. After a quick Google search,
it looks like this place has loads of content. From Plato to John Nash,
to many years in the future, game theory has been discussed, revised,
and added to. This could be a very interesting way to look at the actions
of the Lost characters.
valenos