What in the world is “Traponomics?”
It is the ability to use game theory and incentives to trick guilty people into confessing.
I ran across an article in the Wall Street Journal on 9 May 2014 entitled, “How to Trick the Guilty and Gullible into Revealing Themselves”. Written by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, the article talks about real life situations where the truth is reached through Machiavellian thinking. However, the authors postulate that it is actually done through game theory—the art of beating your opponent by anticipating their next move.
Machiavellian thinking in action
King Solomon identified the real mother of the baby by threatening to cut the child in half and giving each woman one half. One woman kept silent while the rightful mother told the king to give the child to the other woman. He knew the real mother would prefer to lose the baby rather than see it killed.
David Lee Roth, lead singer of Van Halen, wrote into their concert contracts that a bowl of M&M’s were to be provided but under no circumstance were there to be any brown M&M’s in the bowl. Was he a prima donna? At first you’d think so. But he wanted to make sure that the promoter read the entire contract (there were many safety issues included in the contract that needed the promoter’s attention). If Roth saw brown M&M’s in the bowl, he knew the promoter didn’t read it carefully enough. It was a way of identifying the guilty.
King Charles VI of France ruled for a long time. The problem was he was incapacitated by madness. During his periods of madness, his younger brother, Louis I (of Orléans) assumed command of the country. Louis was not well liked by the Parisians and others for many reasons. On the evening of 23 November 1407, Louis was viciously murdered by a mob of men. The murder of a royal family member, let alone the brother of the king, was an act that had far reaching implications. Read More Traponomics
