Collective decision making and paradoxical games

TL;DR

This paper investigates how groups playing Parrondo's paradoxical games can use strategic decision-making and fluctuations to enhance collective performance, addressing the challenge of conflicting individual preferences.

Contribution

It introduces and analyzes strategies for collective decision-making in Parrondo games, highlighting the role of fluctuations in improving outcomes.

Findings

Certain strategies leverage fluctuations to optimize collective gains.

Decision-making strategies can mitigate frustration among players.

Fluctuations can be exploited to turn paradoxical losses into gains.

Abstract

We study an ensemble of individuals playing the two games of the so-called Parrondo paradox. In our study, players are allowed to choose the game to be played by the whole ensemble in each turn. The choice cannot conform to the preferences of all the players and, consequently, they face a simple frustration phenomenon that requires some strategy to make a collective decision. We consider several such strategies and analyze how fluctuations can be used to improve the performance of the system.