Tournaments in Everything*

---> *with apologies to MR and TC

Despite the disapproval of economists, tournaments are a ubiquitous feature of economic life. The big bopper of tournaments is life itself – Richard Dawkins has pointed out that we all are ultimately just vehicles for our genes to compete in the big tournament of evolution. Tournaments exist at subtler scales as well.

One small but important tournament venue is our own brain. One of its most crucial functions is choosing among alternatives: should I take a nap, or go to the party? Should I have Brussels’ sprouts and ginger ale or beer and pizza? Should I exchange pawns or try to maneuver my knight to the kingside?

It’s a crucial feature of this type of decision that intermediate values are not useful. The proverbial mule who fails to choose starves between the two haystacks. No decision is worse than any decision. Many neural systems have features that enhance this sort of all or nothing behavior: after a buildup of potential, an irreversible act of amplification takes place, committing the system to an alternative and the host organism to a choice.

Some have chosen to see the quantum measurement process in the same terms. A typical quantum mechanical system, for example a silver atom, is in a superposition of angular momentum eigenstates until we run it through our Stern-Gerlach analyzer. At that point it is forced to choose up or down.

The common feature of all these “tournaments” is a bifurcation that transforms a potentiality into an actuality. At the start of the NCAA’s March basketball madness there are sixty-four – at the end, only one. In the case of these sporting events, the eventual choice is almost beside the point. The real point is not the winner but the competition. The winner, like the losers, is a character in the drama, necessary not because we need a winner but because otherwise the drama would lack a plot.

That’s not true for all tournaments. Leadership of most organizations is decided by series of tournaments. Usually it’s hoped that the tournament will choose a good leader, but the choice is the real point. If a leader is needed, some way of choosing a leader is needed, and choice is almost always a tournament.

The goal of the tournament is usually not just to choose, though, but to choose well. Otherwise it could just be a lottery. The problem with tournaments, so the economists tell me, is the waste – all the seemingly pointless efforts of the ultimate losers. The lottery avoids the waste, or most of it, but does nothing about discovery of the best choices. A well designed tournament should somehow try to choose well with minimal waste.