Conquer Club

I've recently thought of a good metaphor for an accurate representation of how I view / take on life and people in general. I kinda felt like writing it down and writing it down and sharing it... so yeah. I guess that's what a forum is for.

The metaphor is Prisoner's Dilemma. If you don't know what that is, it's a famous game-theory scenario in which there are two prisoners who were accomplices in a crime, who are being interrogated separately. They both are confronted with the same deal: if they "defect" - meaning they rat out their partner, they will get 5 years of prison. If they don't defect, but their partner does, then they will get 10 years. If neither of them defects, they will walk free because there isn't enough evidence to convict. So while cooperating gives the best result, this only happens if you trust the other prisoner, because you can also get the worst if the other prisoner betrays you. If you don't trust the prisoner, you defect and take the lesser of two evils.

If you make this kind of game repetitive, and keep score by tracking the number of years you go to prison, then strategy enters into the game. In my first computer science course, we had to write a procedure for what to do, before the entire class's procedures were paired off one on one, with score being kept track (by a program, of course).

At first, mine was one of the best. But after running the program once, the teacher would remove the ones who did worse. After doing this only a couple times, mine quickly dropped to the bottom and was eliminated. Eventually, the ones who started at the middle of the pack rose to the top and arrived at a stalemate.

This was because in those procedures, they did something very simple: in the first round they cooperated (meaning they didn't defect). From then on, they checked to see whether the other person defected or not the last round. If they defected, they defected. If they cooperated, they cooperated. Since there were a lot of bad procedures that were rather random at first, they were more middle-of-the-pack procedures, since they sometimes cooperated when the other defected. But once those other procedures did bad in general, they quickly dropped out, allowing the better ones to rise to the top as they encountered such procedures less and less.

You might see where this is going by now in terms of philosophy. I'm kind of tired of writing so I'll keep it short. Basically, I believe in trusting other people by default - and only mistrusting them when they give me a reason to. Because although I will probably be betrayed often enough, it will be worth it in the end. This is more of a general view than a rule, though.

Discuss?

That was needlessly complicated explanation for a rule of thumb many people already choose to live by.

Not me though, I listen to the wise words of Deep Throat!
"Trust No-one"

Minister Masket wrote:I listen to the wise words of Deep Throat

That was a pretty good film...

Minister Masket wrote:That was needlessly complicated explanation for a rule of thumb many people already choose to live by.

Not me though, I listen to the wise words of Deep Throat!
"Trust No-one"

You listen to wisdom from a porno movie?

I think you`ve made a mistake in explaining the prisoner dilemma.
It should be that:
1. if you keep silent and your friend rats you out, you get the full charge, 10 years
2. if you rat your friend out and he also rats you out, you two share the charge, 5 years each
3. if you both keep silent, the cops can`t prove the main charge so they get you on something minor, 6 months each
4. if you rat your friend out, and he keeps silent, you walk away for cooperating, 0 years

The thing is, it is obvious that the most mutually beneficial arrangement would be for you both to keep silent.
However, if you look at it logically, there`s scenario:
a. your friend will keep quiet, in which case it would be best for you to rat him out and walk away
b. your friend rats you out, in which case it would also be in your best interest to rat him out.

Therefore two logical people would always rat each other out, thus reaching a far less satisfying solution.

Like you said the fun starts when you add the repetitive rule. I`ve also participated in some competitions revolving around this concept. It`s funny, but in almost all cases the simple program that cooperates first and then copies the other programs action seems to be one of the best, if not the best.

And yeah, i`d say that it`s a pretty good base for real life interactions too.
There`s no way you can function properly if your default position is mistrust.(what if this change i got is fake money, what if the waiter poisoned my dinner, what if the mechanic messed up my breaks and so on and so forth) The only way of life for someone whose default position is mistrust would be a hermit, possibly.

Minister Masket wrote:That was needlessly complicated explanation for a rule of thumb many people already choose to live by.

Not me though, I listen to the wise words of Deep Throat!
"Trust No-one"

*Enter, A Pedantic Arse*
King Herod said that to yer man Claudius, a few thousand years before deep throat.
Obviously Robert Graves IS fact

Haggis_McMutton wrote:I think you`ve made a mistake in explaining the prisoner dilemma.
It should be that:
1. if you keep silent and your friend rats you out, you get the full charge, 10 years
2. if you rat your friend out and he also rats you out, you two share the charge, 5 years each
3. if you both keep silent, the cops can`t prove the main charge so they get you on something minor, 6 months each
4. if you rat your friend out, and he keeps silent, you walk away for cooperating, 0 years

The thing is, it is obvious that the most mutually beneficial arrangement would be for you both to keep silent.
However, if you look at it logically, there`s scenario:
a. your friend will keep quiet, in which case it would be best for you to rat him out and walk away
b. your friend rats you out, in which case it would also be in your best interest to rat him out.

Therefore two logical people would always rat each other out, thus reaching a far less satisfying solution.

Like you said the fun starts when you add the repetitive rule. I`ve also participated in some competitions revolving around this concept. It`s funny, but in almost all cases the simple program that cooperates first and then copies the other programs action seems to be one of the best, if not the best.

And yeah, i`d say that it`s a pretty good base for real life interactions too.
There`s no way you can function properly if your default position is mistrust.(what if this change i got is fake money, what if the waiter poisoned my dinner, what if the mechanic messed up my breaks and so on and so forth) The only way of life for someone whose default position is mistrust would be a hermit, possibly.

Adam Smith would disagree, and there in lies (part) of the importance of Prtsoners Dilema -it privides a useful theoretical defence against classical/ne0classical/monetarist economics.

I don't think I mentioned that this was basically my train of thought as I was eating bread, cheese, and salami... so I was in a very good mood

InkL0sed wrote:I don't think I mentioned that this was basically my train of thought as I was eating bread, cheese, and salami... so I was in a very good mood

That sounds delicous:D

So does all this explain why people keep remarrying after the first, second, third failed marriage?

mpjh wrote:So does all this explain why people keep remarrying after the first, second, third failed marriage?

Probably...

Haggis_McMutton wrote:
There`s no way you can function properly if your default position is mistrust.(what if this change i got is fake money, what if the waiter poisoned my dinner, what if the mechanic messed up my breaks and so on and so forth).

There are, however, things one should always mistrust as a default (others can feel free to add to this list):

* The sound investment strategy of playing the Lottery.
* Guys named Chad
* Dick Cheney (he might shoot you in the FACE)
* The McPoyle Brothers.

Haggis_McMutton wrote:what if the mechanic messed up my breaks and so on and so forth

You mean if he brake them?

DaGip wrote:

Minister Masket wrote:That was needlessly complicated explanation for a rule of thumb many people already choose to live by.

Not me though, I listen to the wise words of Deep Throat!
"Trust No-one"

You listen to wisdom from a porno movie?

Don't you?

FOOLS!
I was referring to The X-Files.

Haggis is right. That's the metaphor for an actual gambling game. You have a defect card and a cooperate card.

Defect - Cooperate = 5 points for you, -2 points for the other person.
Cooperate - Cooperate = 3 points each
Defect - Defect = 0 points each
Cooperate - Defect = -2 points for you, 5 points for the other person.

Obviously you would defect, because no matter what card they play, you would do better by defecting. But in the long term, even if you were just selfishly looking out for your own interests, it would be better to cooperate. Lets look at two scenarios:
Scenario 1:
Round 1: Defect - Cooperate = 5 points
Round 2: Defect - Defect = 0 points
5 + 0 = 5

Scenario 2:
Round 1: Cooperate - Cooperate = 3 points
Round 2: Cooperate - Cooperate = 3 points
3 + 3 = 6.

There's lots of real life analogies for this. It's fall and the leaves come down.
Scenario 1: Take out your leaf blower and blow them into your neighbor's yard. The next day he will come out and blow them back.
Scenario 2: Do nothing.
In each scenario, your yard has an equal number of leaves in it by the end, but in 2, you have to work all day to maintain that level, or it will skyrocket.
You're at a football game. At an exciting part, you stand up to see better. One by one, everyone else stands up. Now everyone is craning there necks and pushed each other and missing more than if they just sat down.
Several businesses in the same industry sign a secret deal and they all up their prices. Someone can get a temporary advantage by lowing their prices, but in the long term, everyone's better if prices stay the same.

But it's a trust thing. You need an enforcer. A good analogy is 6 people hired to row a boat hire a guy to whip anyone who slacks off. Let's take that to the actual example of the prisoners. They're part of the mafia and they get caught. If they defect, the mafia will kill there family. In the leaves example, you could put a fine on leaf blowers.

There's a whole chapter of this in the Selfish Gene. (Snorri, don't even think about it.)
A guy had people put strategies into computer programs and test them against each other.
It was an example of natural selection, cause some would live and reproduce, while others would die out. It's all an enviornment thing. The "nice" stragegies won, but if there was mostly "nasty" strategies, they would've lost. Nice could coexist. Nasty could only live by feeding off of nice.