Martin Ward

There’s something supremely saddening and enraging about seeing a hospital running on bare minimum power. Thinking about dialysis patients, babies in NICU, and others tonight in Cuba. This is a blockade of death.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

A student asked an MIT professor to explain Game Theory without jargon. He drew two stick figures on the board. That was the entire lecture. "These two people are you and everyone you've ever negotiated with," he said. "Every decision one makes changes the best decision for the other. That's the whole thing. That's all of Game Theory." The student laughed. The professor didn't. "You think I'm simplifying. I'm not. Every war in history. Every corporate merger. Every raise you didn't get. Every co-founder relationship that exploded. All of it traces back to two stick figures making decisions that affect each other." Then he said the thing nobody writes down. "The reason most people lose negotiations isn't that they're less intelligent. It's that they're optimizing for the wrong outcome. They want to win the moment. The other person is playing for something else entirely." He paused. "Figure out what they're actually optimizing for and you will never lose a negotiation again." I've used that single framework in every business conversation since. The textbook version of Game Theory takes a semester. That professor taught the only part that matters in 4 minutes. Some MIT lectures should cost $100,000. That one was free.