Signal Intelligence: Embracing Win-Win Dynamics

In a previous post here, I talked about game theory and Professor Robert Axelrod setting up a battle of prisoners’ dilemmas.

When all of the different strategies played each other, the winning strategies were usually Kind, Forgiving, Retaliatory, and Clear.

Kind meant they didn’t defect first, and assumed the good in others.

Forgiving meant they didn’t hold a grudge and would cooperate again.

Retaliatory in that they would hold the other play accountable for bad behaviour.

Clear was that they wouldn’t be doing random things so the other player could start to accept certain behaviour.

This is all and good in a controlled environment but what happens when random noise and errors get involved, you know because life is messy.

An unknown Russian soldier stopped World War 3 and his decision might help you be a better leader.

What Could Have Been?

In 1983, a soldier sits at his desk and watches a screen. Little did anyone know this man might save the whole world.

An alarm goes off.

This is not any alarm, this is the Soviet satellite Early Detection Warning system. What it is telling the soldier is that the US has fired a nuclear weapon at Russia.

Not one missile, but it is showing five missiles being launched from the US.

Shit has officially hit the fan.

The soldier, then a 44-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov had to decide whether the threat was real. If it was, he would have to send the message up the chain and it would start World War 3.

If he was wrong, he would do nothing and let his country be attacked before they could do anything about it.

He did nothing. He had a hunch. “When people start a war, they don’t start it with only five missiles.”

He thought it was a false alarm. He thought the best of the opponent and he thought this was an unclear signal.

Signal vs Noise

Life is messy, and noisy, and difficult.

Meaning gets lost in translation and you can take umbrage at anything if you are inclined to see the worst in people.

On the flip side, you can see the best in people and assume they are trying to be helpful.

The world isn’t played with perfect rules and communication and things will get complicated.

Life is mostly, not for Petrov, not full of life or death decisions. You get to keep playing.

We can approach things like they are not zero-sum games. We get to play again.

I have talked about Simon Sinek’s Infinite Game idea before. The games keep going so looking as if every decision is final or fatal takes you to some dark places.

You can strive for win-win situations through cooperation, respect, trust and transparency.

Co-operation pays, we can’t always get exactly what we want but we can find situations where all parties do better. This should be the aim, how to make it best for everyone, not just best for one party.