Transcriber: wang li Reviewer: Emma Gon
All right, so let’s play a game.
In the book, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens,
we are in kind of a very dark yet intriguing character
that brings to life one of those feelings
that we universally shared as human beings -
heartbreak.
Dickens’ novel revolves around Pip’s expectations through his life.
But we also get to know a character named Amelia Havisham.
Amelia was a very rich woman
who had inherited most of her father’s fortune,
and she had fallen blindly in love
with a man named Compeyson.
Compeyson’s sole purpose was to steal her riches, though.
So although Amelia had been forewarned
about Compeyson’s possible ulterior motives,
she ultimately decided to put her heart first before anything else,
including her rationality.
On her wedding day, she received a letter from Compeyson himself
stating that he indeed had defrauded her
and that he was leaving her at the altar.
In some type of emotional breakdown,
she simply decided to never remove her dress and only wear one shoe
because that’s exactly what she was wearing
when she had learned of Compeyson’s betrayal.
She even set out all of the clocks
in her mansion to 20 minutes to nine,
because that’s the exact time
of which she learned of Compeyson’s betrayal.
She even let the wedding cake out until it all turned to mold and dust,
because that’s exact same way the table was arranged,
when she learned of Compeyson’s Betrayal.
To a certain extent, it is very easy to try
to relate to Amelia’s heartbreak.
Now, I'm not saying that I will leave rotting food on the table like that,
but what I'm saying is I'll probably grab a bottle of wine,
put some of Adele’s songs on
and cry myself out for a couple of days.
Heartbreak is a very convoluted feeling to unpack
that feeling of being undone
by someone just walking out on us.
Our heart may sink as we come to the realization
that the person who we unconditionally loved
simply decides to give up on us.
Heartbreak can also make us act very irrational.
This is the period of time where we may do very stupid things,
such as calling our ex in the middle of the night leaving drunken voicemails,
or, you know, even rereading those loving text messages
we once sent back to each other,
just reminiscing and wondering
where and why did everything go wrong?
Irrationality or the constant lack of judgment in decision making
is one of the pillars of game theory.
So game theory is the branch of mathematics in economics
that teaches us economists how to study decision making.
That is we’re trying to answer the question,
why do people make the choices that they do?
And to a large extent, people make the choices that they do
because that's what makes them happy.
Now is crying your eyes out
a choice that will make you happy?
Of course not.
We’re not just a bunch of algorithms
that can get the right answer all the time.
We have feelings.
We’re altruistic.
We get wounded.
And we’re healing from wounds right now.
At the end of the day, we are very complex individuals.
But what if I told you that game theory
can actually help us get over our heartbreak?
Obviously, this wouldn’t be a quick fix or a magic pill,
but it will have to be a process that will had to be repeated
over and over again until it all makes sense.
So let’s start from the point of heartbreak.
When our heart is broken,
the initial reaction is to be overwhelmed with emotions.
Crying is understandable.
Talking on hours on end with a friend is understandable.
Even planning out a revenge body is understandable.
However, I think that heartbreak happens
because there is an enormous information asymmetry.
That is, we know how we feel and what we did in the relationship,
but we don’t really know how they feel
and their rationale behind their choices.
Of course, it's easy to look inwards and, you know,
try to rationalize from our point of view.
We may think about the good times
we had our holiday parties with our families.
We may think about the good times
we had at cute dates by the Chicago River.
Or those days we spend watching Netflix the entire day by the sofa.
Reaffirming and reimagining all of these old memories
and thoughts at this point in time
is one of the least productive things one could do,
because it doesn’t address the point of our heartbreak.
Now,
the decision making system that we have in place
has been developed along since we were children.
So since a very young age,
we ultimately developed a type of decision making system
that grew with us as we became adults.
We did good things,
we might have received good things.
We did bad things,
and we may have some pushback.
So it is at this point in time
where we develop some type of decision making system,
a compass that guides us through adulthood.
So at the end of the day, everybody in this room
is working on some type of autopilot decision making system
that has been ingrained with us since we were children.
And just as we are running on this type of autopilot decision making system,
so is our ex-partner.
And I think it is here where the hardest pill
to swallow can be found.
That is, in order to understand the question,
why did they leave us?
We will need to understand every single thing
that there is to know about them.
We will need to know every single detail
that has led them to the people they are today.
We will need to understand
the nurturing and the type of relationship
they have with their parents and siblings.
We need to understand their deepest passions.
We need to understand their darkest secrets.
We need to understand the wounds that they have healed from.
We need to understand who they want to be
as a person at the end of the day.
We need to understand how they see us in their lives
and how do we play a role into their lives.
We are all participants in the game of love.
That is, we are all playing by our own rules
and we want different things out of it.
Some people may be looking for long term companionship,
while others may be looking for short term affection.
Some people may be looking for someone to take care of them,
while others may be looking for someone to take care of.
So, as we are venturing to this love game,
the chances of finding someone that perfectly matches our senses
is pretty much irrational.
So the next time you actually get that Tinder match,
the probability of that person being the one for you
is probably zero.
So, let’s go back into Compeyson and Amelia’s type of game, right.
So we understand the Compeyson had two choices.
We knew that Compeyson had a choice not to betray or to betray.
And Amelia, at the end of the day,
also had two choices, to continue living her life
or to get stuck in a loop of sadness.
So the game can actually be arranged in this manner.
At the start of the game. Compeyson has two choices.
If he chooses to, you know, to not betray her,
the game ends and they live happily ever after.
However, if he chooses to betray her, then Amelia has two choices.
She can either get stuck in the loop of sadness,
or she can just move on with her life.
As we saw in the rest of the novel,
the ultimate outcome of the game was this,
where Compeyson decided to betray her,
and Amelia ultimately decided to get stuck in that,
you know, sadness, state of mind.
So, fine, this is the result of the game.
But what about Compeyson’s backstory?
We know that he had a choice.
We know that he could either go. He could go either way.
So it is at this point in time when we truly need to see
who Compeyson is as a person
and why is he the man he is today?
So, in order to understand better, we need to sort of, you know,
extrapolate back into his lifetime, right?
So we kind of have to see, you know,
what played into the role that made him the man that he is today.
And so maybe has something to do
with the type of nurturing that he had as a child
or maybe has to do something with the romance
between their parents or their grandparents.
You know, there are intricacies, a plethora of options
that could play out into who he is today.
And only by understanding all of these factors,
we will get to the answer why Compeyson betrayed Amelia.
Now, just as we are analyzing the situation,
we also realize that there are multiple versions of Compeyson.
We ultimately know that he decided to betray her
and that’s the end of the game,
but what about all of the hypothetical versions
of who he could have been?
He could have been any one of those options
by just simple tweaking Compeyson’s past.
And this is where we actually find nested interactions,
where someone made a choice in the past
and that made Compeyson the man that he is today.
So it is at this point where we’re trying to make
an understanding for our ex-partner.
Just as we’re analysing Compeyson in this manner,
we kind of have to put our ex-partner in this same platform,
where we truly get to realize that there are complexities all around,
in order to understand why did they decide to leave us?
Now, Amelia also had a choice
to either move on with her life
or to get stuck in a loop of sadness.
It is at this point where we say, well,
Amelia ultimately decided to get stuck in a loop of sadness. So then what?
Amelia’s actions actually cause more heartbreak
and chaos in the rest of the novel.
We can actually see that she tarnished
the relationship between Pip and Estella,
her adopted daughter, ultimately causing Pip’s heartbreak
and Estella to run with some man.
We actually see that just as people have effects on us,
we have effects on other people.
Heartbreak doesn’t have to be filled with sadness.
A broken heart can actually teach us how to be more understanding
and understanding that there are complexities
to the decision making of other people.
So, next time you encounter a broken heart,
instead of running into old memories,
trying to seek comfort,
try to make understandings that making choices is very difficult
and we will never be able to get to the question,
why did they decide to leave us?
Because that’s such an impossible question to answer.
We can only be responsible for our own choices
and the ramifications of those choices.
Thank you.