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Wikipedia Trails: From Ravana to the Zero-Sum Game

This week, I continue a Wikipedia trail that interestingly starts out with Ravana, and ends up at the Zero-Sum Game theory from economics.

Ravana is one of the main characters of the Ramayana, stealing Sita away from Rama, and opposing Rama in great battles. He is depicted as the Rakshasa king within the poem, and the king of Lanka. He is depicted with ten heads, and he is considered to be one of the greatest devotees of Shiva. One Ravana's page, there is a link to...

Political Science. This is the field that studies governance, policy implementation, fields of law, etc. Essentially the study of the interaction between people and politics of any kind. It's focuses are on the roles, decision-making, and allocation of power within each different area of government. While it can be similar across cultures, it is often thought to be a different field of study when compared to two different governments, such as China and the United States. On the page of Political Science, there is a link to...

Power (social and political). Succinctly, power and authority are thought to be the capacity that an agent has to control or influence people within a group. For example, the President has more power than the governor over federal matters for people of the United States, but the local officer of a British town likely has more power (directly) over their district than the President of the United States. While power is often associated with threat and coercion, it need not involve them, and it could very easily be a consensual trade-off of power and rights. On the page for Power, there is a link to...

Zero-Sum Game. This is a type of "game" in economics where the overall sum of values is zero at all times. Similar to a thermodynamically closed system, everything is finite, and when something of value is taken by one player, there is less overall for the remaining participants in the system. There are different theorems for "solving" each game such as minima/maxima criteria and the famous Nash Equilibrium from game theory.

Overall, this trail seems to have been the most interesting so far, as we journeyed from a Rakshasa king to a theory of economics.


Our endpoint for this week found itself in economics. Source: PixaBay

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