With the hyperbole and snark characteristic of This or That feature writing (and Internet media, more broadly), I'll use this fancy mathematical model to assert that The Joker isn't a villain. He's just misunderstood. He's only trying to help us solve a collective action problem, guys!


So before I explain the whole Joker thing, I need to give you a primer on evolutionary game theory. Don't worry, I've got some intellectual credibility on this front. And don't worry, you don't have to do any math.

If you haven't figured it out already, my ToT handle, "Brash Equilibrium," is a play on "Nash equilibrium," discovered by famous mathematician and game theorist John Nash. By the way, Nash was not as physically attractive or entirely heterosexual as Russell Crowe's portrayal in A Beautiful Mind.


Nash was, however, almost as crazy. In addition, his wife was about as hot as Jennifer Connelly. Check it out. (His wife was not, however, as hot as my wife.)

The Nash equilibrium concept is part of game theory. Essentially, game theory thinks about social interactions as a game where people can choose from a bunch of different strategies. A Nash equilibrium happens when each player in the game of life chooses a strategy that is the best response to everyone else's strategy. An example is the game Rock, Paper, Scissors, where the best strategy is to randomly choose to play rock, paper, or scissors. If you deviate from the best strategy, you don't do as well in the game. And people always want to win the game, right?

And that's the problem with classical game theory. It assumes people are rational. That people are smart. Look around you. Remember your dorm roommate who purposefully lit his own balls on fire so he could film a video of you and the rest of the guys stomping it out?

Yeah, people aren't that smart. That's where evolutionary game theory comes in. Evolutionary game theory doesn't need to assume people are rational or smart (although it can if you want it to). It assumes, instead, that people who do better reproduce more rapidly or die with less probability than people who do worse (that's why it is "evolutionary" game theory; it involves the $#%&ing and dying that Darwinian fitness entails). If you ignorantly believe evolution isn't a fact (which it is), you can instead think of evolutionary game theory as describing the "fitness" of an idea rather than a biological trait. Say, better ideas are more likely to be imitated. Then again...


Okay, with that primer out of the way, I'm going to describe how that group of Spanish mathematicians and physicists proved in principle that The Joker, not Batman, could be the savior of us all. I'm going to cook down their sophisticated model to its bare essentials.

Imagine a world where people play a game that we'll call a "public goods game." People contribute effort to creating a public good that can be shared by all members of a group. For example, people can use fewer resources to help ensure the sustainability of the environment for everyone. There are three "strategies" that people can play:

1. Cooperators generate a benefit, shared by all, but they pay a cost to do so. The cost could be increased effort or reduced consumption or waiting for hours to cook a hot dog using only the heat of the sun.
2. Defectors say "Ef that." They sit back and enjoy the group benefit without paying the costs (e.g., the financial industry; most of the people you work with, and probably you, too). For you DC Universe nerds, you can think of Defectors as the organized crime of Gotham, and the city officials they've bought. Lex Luthor is another example.
   
3. Jokers are crazy, sadistic bastards who care nothing about the group benefit (so they don't consume it), but they do care about destroying things. They usually do so while cackling and making bad puns. They closely resemble Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, or Heath Ledger (depending on the decade), or sound like post-Star Wars Mark Hamill (the best Joker of all time).

The authors analyzed the equilibrium outcome of this evolutionary game. That is, when will the proportion of Cooperators, Defectors and Jokers become stable over time? Will Cooperators reign (ha)? Will Defectors beat out Cooperators (likely)? And what happens when you introduce Jokers into the mix (other than lots of structure fires)?

Here's what they found out. There are three possible outcomes:

1. Without Jokers, Defectors do better than Cooperators...which makes everyone on average worse off (and which is why you should really reconsider your political stance if you are a staunch fiscal conservative).
2. If you include Jokers in the mix, here's the first thing that can happen. Suppose being a lone Cooperator in a population of maniacal Jokers is a good thing because you produce a sizable benefit for yourself, and the Jokers aren't that good at destroying it. Here's what happens. First, say Cooperators are most common. Then, Defectors take over because they enjoy the benefits of the public good without paying the costs. Once Defectors take over, Jokers beat out Defectors because they brazenly destroy whatever benefit is generated by the small numbers of remaining Cooperators.. Finally, Cooperators take over again because they do better than Jokers (who don't enjoy the public good). The cycle repeats indefinitely. It's not the best case scenario (that is, everyone cooperates), but it's better than Scenario 1 above.
   
3. Suppose instead that Jokers are really good at destroying stuff so that being a lone Cooperator in a population of Jokers doesn't pay. In this case, Jokers take over, beating out both Cooperators and Defectors, ensuring perpetual chaos and mayhem. Fun!

Think about it, though. Scenario 2 is more likely than Scenario 3. If it weren't, I bet we would, at this moment, be living in complete chaos and anarchy. Such is not the case even in Somalia, which doesn't have a functioning government. Hell, even pirates are organized.

If Scenario 2 holds (and I think it will), then we must reconsider The Joker and his minions in a positive light. If we allowed them to persist, the Lloyd Blankfeins wouldn't do as well, at least not for long. DC Universe nerds: now it makes so much more sense why Lex Luthor (when he was the President of the United States) was so hellbent on killing The Joker!
More to the point, The Joker solution to the problem of Defectors is more stable than the Batman solution. Here's why. Batman punishes Defectors. But he does so at great cost to his sanity, physical well-being, and love life. If Batman were real, Wayne Enterprises would have crumbled long ago, or been bought out by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway (leaving Bruce Wayne without a corporate coffer to fund his vigilantism). For that matter, if Batman were real, then Bruce Wayne would probably have gotten iced on his first night wearing the cape and cowl.

This is a basic result in evolutionary game theory. Punishment is often costly, which produces yet another collective action problem. Punishers are worse off than people who let others punish. In other words, who watches the watchmen? That's the problem Alan Moore explored in...well...The Watchmen. And for those of you who've read that genius of a comic series, the Joker effect I just described reaffirms the decisions of Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan.


Batman also punishes Jokers, which neutralizes the beneficial "Joker effect" that our Spaniard geniuses devised.

Unlike Batman, you don't have to monitor the Jokers like you have to watch the watchmen. You don't even have to pay them. You just have to let them cause a ruckus once in a while. Then we'll circle our wagons and live in solidarity for a time.

But as the cyclic pattern of Scenario 2 illustrates, and as the final earthly words of Dr. Manhattan encapsulate:

"Nothing ever ends."

Oh, Dr. Manhattan. You were so much more than a big, blue wang.