[Ads-l] zero-sum game

[Barretts Mail]

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game), a zero-sum game is a situation in which each participant’s gain/loss is balanced (exactly) by the loss/gain of the other participants. That is, there is a sum of zero when the pluses and minuses are added together. 

1. On 1 June 2012 (http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2012-June/119788.html), I said I had trouble understanding “zero-sum” game, giving the following example:

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 "On Facebook, 'Likes' Become Ads" by Somini Sengupta in the New York Times (on post-gazette.com)

> http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/business/technology/on-facebook-likes-become-ads-638516/
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 "So Sponsored Stories creates a zero-sum game," Mr. Goldman wrote. "I as a user probably don't get any value from the public presentation of my implicit endorsement (if anything, it might hurt my position with my friends), but Facebook and its advertisers benefit from it."

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2. In this month’s edition of _Archaeology Today_, Roger Atwood writes in “All Roads, Eventually, Lead to Rome”:

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Sometimes Rome won, sometimes it lost. “Roman expansion wasn’t a cultural zero-sum game. There were winners and losers on both sides,” says Anthony Tuck, an early Roman specialist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “The surviving historical narratives tend to focus on militarized territorial expansion because republican Romans saw that as worthy of description. The archaeological record, however, suggests a more nuanced and socially complicated picture."
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3. Here’s a quote that refers to a zero-sum game as being a situation where one side gets one point and the other does not. I suppose 

https://slate.com/culture/2018/10/the-conners-review-roseanne-barr-abc.html
"The Conners Is the Roseanne Revival We Should Have Had" in _Slate_
Willa Paskin

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Although some conservatives will view any Barr-less version of Roseanne as a victory for the other side, in the long run—if there is one for this show—her removal frees _The Conners_ from being treated like a zero-sum game, with every storyline a point for one side or the other.
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I suppose the “The Conners” situation can be viewed as a zero-sum game in which there are a +1 winner and a -1 loser, but the description is of a +1 winner (and by implication a 0 loser, not a -1 loser per se).

What seems to be going on is that a zero-sum game is being viewed as a situation where there is a complete winner and a complete loser, perhaps from the idea that one of the participants is zeroed out.

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA 
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org