In Game Theory
In game theory, a "no-win" situation is one in which no player benefits from any outcome. This may be because of any or all of the following:
- Unavoidable or unforeseeable circumstances causing the situation to change after decisions have been made. This is common in Text adventures.
- Zugzwang, as in chess, when any move a player chooses makes him worse off than before
- A situation in which the player has to accomplish two mutually dependent tasks each of which must be completed before the other or that are mutually exclusive (a Catch-22)
- Ignorance of other players' actions, meaning the best decision for all differs from that for any one player (as in the Prisoner's Dilemma).
Read more about this topic: No-win Situation
Famous quotes containing the words game and/or theory:
“Wild Bill was indulging in his favorite pastime of a friendly game of cards in the old No. 10 saloon. For the second time in his career, he was sitting with his back to an open door. Jack McCall walked in, shot him through the back of the head, and rushed from the place, only to be captured shortly afterward. Wild Bill’s dead hand held aces and eights, and from that time on this has been known in the West as “the dead man’s hand.””
—State of South Dakota, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)