What Game Theory Can Tell Us About a Possible Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict.

The four-year-old International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University (ISET) in Tbilisi, Georgia was founded to unite students and faculty from all three South Caucasus countries for a Western-style education in economics. And, as if undergoing a rite of passage in its growth as an institution, it underwent its first major academic controversy this year.

What caused all the fuss? — A master’s thesis that used  game theory to create a model for the probability of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Ani Harutyunyan, 23, originally of Vanadzor, Armenia, set out last November to create a model that could determine the probability of all-out war breaking out between the two countries over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh based on a variety of factors.

Now, mind you, creating a game theory model is not the same as predicting whether war will happen or not – it’s not a magic eight ball.

Basically it works like this: say you are hungry and the two main factors governing your action are price of the food and deliciousness of the food. You have three options to choose from:

1.) Don’t eat. You save your money, but you don’t resolve the problem.

2.) Throw something together at home. You expend very little money, but, although your bachelor-pad-borne concoction is filling, it’s hardly gourmet.

3.) Go out to eat. You’ll have to pony up some dough, but you’ll get some good food out of it.

And so, if you make a formula out of those choices and input subjective number values for your culinary pickiness and current level of poverty, one can compute which action you are most likely to take.