The first diary, Beautiful Minds needed to reach across the Divide can be found here
If interested, please read that diary to provide context for the following. It seemed that my previous diary touched a few nerves and exposed some commenters here at kos as extremely bitter, angry and unable to look past their particular causus belli.
An example from gaming theory just in case the example from the movie (don't go for the blonde beauty) isn't precise enough:
In this example of Hawk vs. Dove the opposing sides are not meant to be literal animals but postures taking by noncooperative sides vying for a Valued resource. If they both go Hawk then there is conflict and so Cost is deducted from any Value gained. Here's the diagram: (note:diagram didn't take the formatting I would have liked. It's a little tough to read. It's a 2 by 2 square matrix)
Hawk Dove
Hawk (V−C)/2,(V−C)/2 V, 0
Dove 0, V V/2, V/2
The best outsome for both sides occurs when both are dove as then they share the Value equally. Otherwise either one side is left out completely (hawk v. dove) or the Value is divided after being reduced by the cost of the conflict (hawk v. hawk).
In other words conflict interfers with getting what can best benefit all the players of a game, to include the "games" of life and (especially) politics.
Sun-Tzu had a similar idea: "The greatest general is not the one who wins 100 victories in 100 battles. The greatest general is he that wins without fighting."
I quite like the notion that a nobel laureate and one of the most repsected strategic thinkers in history have my back in this discussion.
I'll leave you with one last quote: "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster."
I will grant that neocon behavior is often beyond monstrous, but the sad thing is that some posters here at Kos have been consumed by their hatred and occasionally act like monsters themselves.