game theory

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

While sick in bed rereading the novel THE SPY IN THE OINTMENT (1966) by Donald Westlake I came upon the following passage. The hero, J. Eugene Raxford, a pacifist pretending to be a terrorist (acting as an undercover agent for the Feds) meets Tyrone Ten Eyck, a real terrorist who must keep his identity secret:
 
"The briefest of silences fell. We met one another's eyes, both unblinking, both urbane, both well aware of at least one set of hidden truths. Ten Eyck had use of me, for the moment, but only the time would come when he would surely try to kill me, if only because I knew his real name. I knew this, and he knew I knew it, and I knew he knew I knew it, and so on through an infinity of facing mirrors, each of us aware of the receding levels of the other's knowledge, neither of us with any intention of voicing that knowledge aloud. 
 
"If I were actually the man Ten Eyck thought me, what would I do now? It seemed to me I would smile and appear to believe everything he had said, and plan to kill him myself as soon as I knew nothing more could be gained from him. And he of course, must even now be thinking that was what I would plan.
 
"What a nerve-racking way to live! If I'd never found any other reason to advocate pacifism, this would be it; it is so much easier on the nerves not to be perpetually be circling your fellow man, hand warily on the hilt of your knife."
 
this is an excellent statement of the game-theoretic way of thinking, seen in its starkest way in the kind of paranoia that characterized John Nash. It also points to the often-unnoted psychic costs of thinking that way. 
 
I hope I'm not giving anything away, but Ten Eyck does try to kill Raxford. Is that the solution that Nash would suggest?
 
BTW, the book is a lot of fun. It's the best I've read by Westlake. 
 
Jim Devine