Truth-Inducement in Greek Myth

Truth-Inducement in Greek Myth D. Felton James D. Miller University of Massachusetts, Amherst Smith College Although Achilles is fated to be the greatest warrior the Greeks had ever known, his mother tries to keep him out of theTrojan war by disguising him as a girl. Her plan is foiled only by Odysseus’ clever use of what we now call “game theory,” a sub-field of economics that often deals with truth-telling and truth-inducement. Odysseus pierces Achilles’ disguise by employing what is known as a “separating equilibrium.” Odysseus himself is recruited to fight at Troy only after a separating equilibrium establishes his own sanity. In game theory, separating equilibria can be used to induce truth. For example, assume that a person is either of type X or type Y. No one but this person initially knows his type and this person wants people to think he is of type X. If the individual is rational, asking him what his type is will provide no useful information . To achieve truth-inducement, one would have to create circumstances in which type X and type Y would act differently or have different characteristics. Separating equilibria, commonly taught in undergraduate economics courses, provide a unique and useful approach to studying truth-inducement in Greek myth.1 Such an econom1 Silver, one of the few authors to apply an economic approach to Greek myth, discussesmainlytreasuries,merchants,commerce,andtheuseoffinancialagents. Charron analyzes the Greeks’ role in inventing modern game theory (“rational choice theory for strategic situations in which one outcome is jointly determined by the actions of two or more agents,” 1), but his analysis does not include material from Greek myths. He focuses instead on Aristotelian formal logic, and includes a mathematical model for the Melian Debate from Thucydides. Detienne and Vernant, in their discussion of mh`ti~, also do not consider the particular episodes from myth included here, nor does Wilson. Russell’s work on information gathering in Classical Greece applies aspects of game theory or information theory to espionage work during wartime, and like the others, does not deal with the specific stories included here. FELTON AND MILLER: TRUTH-INDUCEMENT 105 ics-based analysis shows in detail how certain kinds of tricks are related and gives us insight into exactly how trickster figures such as Odysseus operate.This paper presents eleven brief scenes from classical Greek mythology that can be used to illustrate truth-inducement through separating equilibria. The myths presented in this paper illustrate five methods to induce the truth: 1) asymmetric price increase, in which the cost to one type of party not to reveal his type is increased, thus causing the party to reveal his type voluntarily; 2) surprise, in which the tested party is taken by surprise and does not have time to contemplate or control his actions, with the result that shock and haste cause the party to act irrationally and reveal his true nature; 3) deception, in which the tested party is fooled into believing that circumstances are different from what they really are, causing him to reveal information that, had he been fully informed, he would have preferred to keep hidden; 4) impossibility, in which the tested does something that another type could not possibly do; and 5) credible threat, in which the tested is coerced by a threat into revealing information. These five methods of truthinducement do not correspond directly to categories of scenarios in modern game theory, which are based primarily upon mathematical structures of the solution concepts used in games. Rather, to explain the gaming aspect of truth-inducement in Greek myth we have here created five non-mathematical categories more accessible to the humanities scholar. I. Truth-Inducement Through Asymmetric Price Increase In the economic concept of asymmetric price increase, the cost to one type of party not to reveal his type is increased. The cost increase causes the party to reveal his type voluntarily. A well-known story that illustrates this concept is the biblical tale of Solomon and the baby from I Kings 3–4, in which two women are fighting over a baby, each claiming that the baby is hers. To solve the dispute, Solomon threatens to cut...