The Optimal Retort

Quan-Hoang Vuong

No 26-010, Working Papers CEB from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: In Highest Honor (Vuong, 2024), Kingfisher’s committee builds a prize around three criteria chosen because he excels at them, announced on a banner as “Strength - Beauty - Fraternity.” Hawk wins by reading the same hyphens as minus signs: Honor = Strength − Beauty − Fraternity. This note shows that reversal is not merely clever but mathematically optimal: flipping a criterion’s sign changes a candidate’s margin by exactly twice the rival’s lead on it (Proposition 1), so the reading that damages a favorite most is unique, flip every criterion he leads on and nothing else (Proposition 2), and this is exactly Hawk’s reading.

Keywords: sign reversal; self-serving standards; optimization; social choice; fable (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08-27
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