Substantive: Ender's Game

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is one of the few science fiction works which seems to have universally been accepted as a teenage right of passage. The book itself has all the makings of a story which strikes at the heart of young people: crazed familial relationships, a lonely protagonist, and memorable characters. I have to admit, I'm probably one of the most biased fans of the book, considering that for years my online handle was Ender. It was easy for me to relate, consider that Ender and I share the same name, same position in the family (thirds are clearly the best), same siblings (unfortunately for me though, my eldest brother isn't out to conquer the world), and the same sense of intelligence. I only wish I could invoke the same feelings I had when I first read the book! But this, being my third time reading through Ender's journey, was different. It was different because the book is clearly more than a tragic tale of a young boy who is swept up in a world of controlling adults. This time, it was a tragedy for the human race.

Ender's True Game - The Prisoner's Dilemma

But wait, Ender's "game" (without giving away too many spoilers) is just literally that, right? The book throws us through countless games that Ender plays, like Buggers and astronauts, to the more advanced battle room, and finally to the simulator in command school. But, when we say that these were Ender's games, we wrap a bubble of understanding around them. Of course it's okay for Peter to bully Ender, it's just a game. Of course it's okay to shoot your fellow students, it's just a game. Of course it's okay to blow up simulated starships, it's just a game.But if we take the side of Ender, and question the adults in the book for their true intentions, perhaps we can also question what Orson Scott Card means when he says Ender is playing games.

The prisoner's dilemma is one of the most widely applied "games" from a field of mathematics called game theory. The game has been applied to countless fields, from economics, to international relations, and even to evolutionary biology (with the two later subjects implicitly important when considering Ender's Game). In the thought experiment, it involves two potential prisoners. They're being interrogated by the police for a crime they're suspected of committing together (in the game, it doesn't really matter if they've actually committed the crime). If both prisoners deny that they committed the crime, both walk out scot-free. If one denies that they've committed the crime, and the other implicates the first suspect, than the first suspect goes to jail, and the turn-coat gets a reward for putting a criminal behind bars. The same is true if the first suspect is the turn-coat, and the second suspect denies involvement. The final option, of course, results in both suspects implicating each other, resulting in long prison sentences for the both of them. The most important aspect of this game is the prisoner's inability to speak to one another. Here, there isn't any collusion between the two; there can't be any deal making to ensure that both deny the charges and get off. Of course there are theoretical iterations of the game that allow for that collusion to take place, but it's this lack of communication built into the original prisoner's dilemma that makes it such a fascinating case into behavioral logic. It's also the lack communication that's built into the heart of Ender's universe.

Just how much do we know about the Buggers from a reader's perspective? Really, we know about as much about this threat to humanity as Ender does. There have been two attacks against humanity - the first and second invasions. Later in the book we find out that the first invasion was more of a bugger scouting mission, and not really a full out invasion per say. The second invasion, on the other hand, WAS a true invasion, and as we learn, included a queen Bugger. Let's try and put this into our prisoner's dilemma framework. Since we don't know many details about the first invasion, it might be similar to our last option, where both suspects implicate one another. In this case, each species attacking each other leads to a bloody war. The second invasion is probably more indicative of our middle cases of the prisoner's dilemma, where one suspect implicates the other while the other denies it. Here, the Buggers attacked the humans, and the humans did NOT attack with an equal and opposite force. As we know, the humans barely won that battle. So what does that leave the humans to do in Ender's game? The answer lies in Anatol Rapoport's strategy for the prisoner's dilemma: tit for tat.

In 1984, Robert Axelrod designed a tournament for the prisoner's dilemma. The goal of the tournament was to determine the best strategy for winning the prisoner's dilemma. Each outcome was given a certain point value, with cooperation having a high value, deceiving your opponent and succeeding having the highest value, being deceived having the lowest value, and simultaneous deception having a low (but not the lowest) value. From this setup, the strategy that consistently had the highest score was probably the most simplistic - do whatever your enemy does. Anatol Rapoport named his strategy tit for tat, where if your opponent cooperates, you automatically cooperate in return. But, if your opponent deceives you, your continual return deception guarantees you'll never suffer the greatest loss.

From this, it's pretty clear that Card at least on some level agrees with the tit for tat strategy, and employs the human race in Ender's Game as the player ready to respond just as his opponent had in the last round. So then, why is this more than just a tragedy for Ender, but a tragedy for the human race? It all comes back to the lack of communication. We learn that it's built into Bugger biology that they've never had any need for what we understand as communication. Because all the workers are psychically linked with the queen, they're more like hands than individuals. That completely undermines a need for language, writing, or even speaking. So it's easy to see how the Buggers could be incapable of understanding humans. Therefore, neither of the species can collude and prevent war. The tragedy is that under these conditions, war isn't only more likely, it's BETTER for both species to destroy each other than to take the chance of attempting to collude. Ender's xenocide was inevitable.