In general use, a no-win situation is one where a person has choices, but no choice leads to success. If an executioner offers the condemned the choice of dying by being hanged, shot, or poisoned, since all choices lead to death, the condemned is in a no-win situation. Less drastic situations might also be considered no-win situations: if I have a choice for lunch between a ham on rye sandwich and a roast beef sandwich on a roll, and I don't like rye bread or roast beef, that might be considered a no-win situation, even if it's possible I could talk the server into putting the ham into a roll.
A no-win situation, as defined in game theory, is a situation where no one wins (benefits in some way), and often where both sides (or whoever is included in the situation or affected by it) lose (are affected negatively in some way).
This is a common situation, usually due to:
- unavoidable or unforeseeable circumstances causing the situation to change after decisions have been made
- Zugzwang, as in chess, when any move chosen will leave one worse off than before they moved.
- a situation where no winning options exist in the first place (a catch-22)
- a wrong evaluation of the situation
- the best decision for individuals leading to a suboptimal result for everyone involved (as in the "Prisoner's Dilemma")
Some cognitive biases such as anchoring and framing, or emotional biases , such as greed, fear, and herding, are reasons why people create no-win situations are potentially avoidable.
Clausewitz's advice never to launch a war that one has not already won characterizes war as a likely no-win situation. An example of war as a no win situation is the Pyrrhic victory, in which a military victory is too costly to actually be a real "win". (Looking at the victory as a part of a larger situation, the situation could either be no-win or a win for the other side than the one that won the "victory".)
Captain James T. Kirk on the television program Star Trek had a unique approach to the very concept of a no-win situation. While at Starfleet Academy, Kirk had to pass the infamous Kobayashi Maru simulation, in which the cadet is placed in command of a ship answering the distress call of the game's eponymous freighter, which is damaged and stricken in a no-fly Neutral Zone. Aiding it, regardless of humanitarian motives, incurs the wrath of Klingon ships whose parameters, abilities and numbers far outstretch their real-world counterparts; the scenario, in other words, cheats to ensure that the cadet will lose, as the whole point is to assess the cadet's response to the very real possibilty that their actions might lead the loss of their ship, their crew and themselves. (The cadet is aware that the scenario is rigged, but knows little else.) Kirk's solution to the game was to counter-cheat: after failing the scenario several times, he snuck into the simulator complex after hours and surreptitiously reprogrammed the entire war game. The next time he went up, the simulated Klingons retreated upon hearing that they were facing the "legendary Kirk." Thus Kirk became the only cadet ever to beat the no-win scenario and was actually commended by the Academy for his ingenuity. As Kirk put it, "I don't believe in the 'no-win' scenario."
See also