Photo: Valerie’s Genealogy Photos Genesis 20:1-18 tells of Abraham visiting Avimelech and offering him Sarah (who, so Abraham tells Avimelech, is his sister, when she is also his wife). Despite Avimelech’s ignorance of the true relation between Abraham and Sarah, and despite the fact that he hasn’t slept with Sarah, G-d is angry at him and renders the women of his household sterile. G-d asks Avimelech to free Sarah. Presumably, the men in Avimelech’s household are not happy about their wives’ infertility, which causes Avimelech trouble.
Avimelech’s and G-d’s strategies seem described by the?payoff bi-matrix:
Avimelech does not have a?dominant strategy, nor does G-d.? But G-d doesn’t play strategies – he gets what he wants from people and causes them to do the right thing.? Avimelech knows this too.?Knowing that G-d will make the women in his household fertile again if he frees Sarah, and knowing that his best position is freeing her and having fertile women in the household, he does so.? (Free, Fertile) is a?Nash equilibrium, and all ends well.
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Let’s ignore for a second the problem that you and I, as a mere creatures, cannot possibly aspire to know what goes inside G-d’s mind. Is it resonable to give G-d zero value in having fertile women when Sarah is around? What about “Be fruitful and multiply?”). Only if you reverse engineer G-d’s supposed action (which is cheating, IMHO).
Also, that Avimelech loves Sarah less than he cares for the contraceptive status of other women is, again, reverse engineering.
So, I think what we have here is a case of what we call in consulting “keep hammering the spreadsheet until it gives the results you want it to”. Excel has an automated procedure for that: GoalSeek.
Predicting the past is an exact science, indeed.
@Trey – it’s what’s done, in certain traditions.
Jewish tradition, you don’t write out the name of the deity so you use a title or write G-d. Some people who are not Jewish choose to do this out of respect for others. In fact, Cardinal Arinze, one of the Vatican’s theology experts, has recently requested that in liturgical prayers and songs, Catholics also not prounounce the Hebrew name for the Lord (the one that begins with Y, the tetragrammaton or “four letters” in Hebrew, or Anglicized with vowels). This was the practice until recently, when the Y name has crept in, especially in one popular hymn which should change to “Lord, I know you are near…”
I remember that a while back there was a discussion on whether “G-d” on the computer screen was necessary or whether using all three letters was OK since it wasn’t physically written. Is there a consensus on this or do different traditions approach it differently?
I disagree with payments.Best situation for Avi is to keep Sarah and the women fertile. But whatever it changes nothing.
The payoff matrix doesn’t look right to me. Unless I’ve misunderstood the story, surely Keep/Fertile is a better outcome for Avimelech than Free/Fertile? Currently they are 8 and 10 respectively.
In that case Avimelech *does* have a dominant strategy, which is to keep Sarah. Only his confidence in God’s cooperation allows him to make the choice to free her.
I am consistently disappointed in the lack of rigor, depth and insight in posts by Prof. Hamermesh. They have an unprofessional quality I don’t observe in most other Freakonomics contributors.
This sounds like the Book of Orgies.
I always thought you have to be above average in intelligence to practice polygamy or keep a mistress or two or three.
It is a game with multiple variables, bets, bluffs, and positions. Who can keep track of all the lies and various states of information? It’ll give you an ulcer. Sometimes it is better to stay in the Chilean mineshaft.
The word G-d is not being bleeped out.
In the Torah G-d has no name, I am what I am He says.
In the Jewish Tradition it has always been the custom to spell the name this way.
Hey Daniel,
Why is Avimelech’s payoff from freeing Sarah higher than from keeping Sarah, given that God chooses the action “Fertile”? Following the conventions of payoff matrices, the first number in each couplet in the first column should display Avimelech’s payoff assuming that God’s action is a foregone conclusion. It seems logical that if God’s action is “fertile”, Avimelech should keep Sarah (and have his cake and eat it, too, so to speak). Or am I misunderstanding the final paragraph, where you state that God doesn’t play strategies?
Peace homey,
Jay