Well, one thing that makes the show version a bit different is that the players can confer, which allows for a bit of brinksmanship. In the "canon" scenario, the prisoners are in separate interrogation rooms, with no means of communication.
In the canon scenario, though, you have past knowledge of the person's character, which is probably more valuable than a few minutes during which to tell a person, "Hey, I have no reason to not fuck you sideways, but I totally promise not to." Morality plays a distinct role in canon. In the case of the game show, it's just a functional of greed and naivete.
Honestly, if I was on the show, I would state "I'm selecting Foe. You can either pick no money, or I will give you 25% of the earnings."
Are you allowed to do that? I mean promise money other than what the show awards? (Never seen the show, so don't know the rules.)
Why not? What I'm saying is that I will select Foe, no matter what. However, I'm offering you an incentive to choose Friend - I'll give you some of the winnings. Now, I'm not going to give you half, but I'll give you a quarter.
I remember in my AP Gov't class, my teacher had something similar to this. On one of our tests, the whole class was allowed to vote for "A" or "B." "A" was the one where the group benefits, while "B" was the one where it screws the group over. Theoretically, if everyone voted "A," everyone would get an additional 6 pts on their test, while if everyone but one person voted "A," the person who screwed everyone would get 4 pts, while everyone else gets 1 to 2 pts. Needless to say, the results were ~50/50, and no class ever received the 6 pts. It astonished me that people would vote for themselves, so that kinda opened my eyes (I had voted "A"). Even with previous classes telling their buddies and spreading the word for everyone to vote "A," with promises, etc, it never worked.
Was the grading curved such that there was an equal distribution between A's and failing grades?
Edit: Or was the percentage based on the highest score in the class rather than being 100 percent?
I think it was a regular bell curve, most ppl were in the C to B range. It was only on one test, so it didn't make that much of a difference, as most people regarded it as a slack class (the other assignments we had to do were fairly simple, and would get most ppl a B or an A).
I've never seen the show, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing this is how it works:
If you both vote to cooperate, you both get $X. If one of you votes not to cooperate but the other one votes to cooperate, the guy who voted to cooperate gets nothing, and the one who voted not to cooperate gets $Y., where Y > X. If you both vote not to cooperate, you both get nothing.
Now, let's look at this from Contestant A's perspective:
A can decide to cooperate. If he does, and B does too, they both get, say, hypothetically, $1000. If B chooses not to cooperate, A get's nothing.
If A decides not to cooperate, and so does B, A gets nothing. But if B chooses to cooperate, A gets $2000.
So, regardless of what choice B makes, from a monetary perspective, A is better off choosing not to cooperate. If B chooses to cooperate, A gets an extra $1000 from not cooperating. If B chooses not to cooperate, A gets exactly the same that he would have otherwise, $0.
I guess you have to decide how much "feeling guilty over being a dick" is worth to you, but based on the rules of the game, I wouldn't feel guilty at all, because, shit, that's how the game is played.
Well, strictly speaking A is not 'better off' choosing not to cooperate if that's what B has chosen - as you say, A will then get nothing either way. And by your logic, B will certainly choose not to cooperate, so there's no way A will win any money whatever he does. In fact he might win, precisely because it's more complicated than just that, and choosing to cooperate is a defensible strategy.
They both get $0 if they both don't cooperate, so A is equally as bad off not cooperating as cooperating if B chooses not to cooperate, and better off not cooperating if B chooses to cooperate. Given that you only play the game once, and your goal is to make as much money as possible, I don't really see how choosing to cooperate is defensible. It's strictly dominated by not cooperating.
This is all happening on TV though, right? So you have to weigh the value of a couple of thousand dollars against advertising to everyone who knows you, along with total strangers, that you're a prick.
I think the thing about the prisoner's dilemma that needs to be understood in order for it to work is that it's designed around the idea that the value of all variables is captured in the outcome boxes, and that these values are all perfectly transparent and commensurable. Part of what makes real life dilemmas so different to this is that people tend to have different sets of values and different ways of judging situations that makes their way of judging the outcomes of situations a lot harder to capture or quantify.
The big issue is always that the dilemma exists in isolation - whatever experiment you set up, it's controlled and isolated from the larger continuous timeline, so there's essentially no repercussions. Now, invariably when their are no repercussions people will usually choose to be "bad" precisely because their are no repercussions.
Setup wider ranging experiments where the outcomes and future consequences are less clear and watch how people behave. Plus all those sociology experiments where they found people would suffer greater losses for retribution against a previous betrayer then merely personal gain and you're looking at a pretty complicated issue hardly satisfied by the traditional dilemma.
I've never seen the show, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing this is how it works:
If you both vote to cooperate, you both get $X. If one of you votes not to cooperate but the other one votes to cooperate, the guy who voted to cooperate gets nothing, and the one who voted not to cooperate gets $Y., where Y > X. If you both vote not to cooperate, you both get nothing.
Now, let's look at this from Contestant A's perspective:
A can decide to cooperate. If he does, and B does too, they both get, say, hypothetically, $1000. If B chooses not to cooperate, A get's nothing.
If A decides not to cooperate, and so does B, A gets nothing. But if B chooses to cooperate, A gets $2000.
So, regardless of what choice B makes, from a monetary perspective, A is better off choosing not to cooperate. If B chooses to cooperate, A gets an extra $1000 from not cooperating. If B chooses not to cooperate, A gets exactly the same that he would have otherwise, $0.
I guess you have to decide how much "feeling guilty over being a dick" is worth to you, but based on the rules of the game, I wouldn't feel guilty at all, because, shit, that's how the game is played.
Well, strictly speaking A is not 'better off' choosing not to cooperate if that's what B has chosen - as you say, A will then get nothing either way. And by your logic, B will certainly choose not to cooperate, so there's no way A will win any money whatever he does. In fact he might win, precisely because it's more complicated than just that, and choosing to cooperate is a defensible strategy.
They both get $0 if they both don't cooperate, so A is equally as bad off not cooperating as cooperating if B chooses not to cooperate, and better off not cooperating if B chooses to cooperate. Given that you only play the game once, and your goal is to make as much money as possible, I don't really see how choosing to cooperate is defensible. It's strictly dominated by not cooperating.
This is all happening on TV though, right? So you have to weigh the value of a couple of thousand dollars against advertising to everyone who knows you, along with total strangers, that you're a prick.
I think the thing about the prisoner's dilemma that needs to be understood in order for it to work is that it's designed around the idea that the value of all variables is captured in the outcome boxes, and that these values are all perfectly transparent and commensurable. Part of what makes real life dilemmas so different to this is that people tend to have different sets of values and different ways of judging situations that makes their way of judging the outcomes of situations a lot harder to capture or quantify.
It's a game show, though. Those are the rules to the game. I don't really think choosing the logical choice makes you a prick.
Thanatos on
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
I really don't understand why CS Lewis is held up as this paragon of Christian philosophy.
Simple, realistic truth: evolutionary psychology. We ought'n to be selfish because we are social creatures.
You might have said why we aren't selfish, but you haven't said why we oughtn't be.
I honestly don't see it as a Christian thing myself. Not being a dick is something several societies and cultures 'round the world seem to hold dear. Not just Christians.
Dawkin's the Selfish Gene goes into detail about why populations would develop "morality". The simple explanation is that a population only needs to be stable, and so whatever mixture of behavior types achieves that allows the population to continue reproducing. Note that it is a mixture--in some populations the stable ratios might be purely "dicks" that prevent a glut of resources from unbalancing the population. In human populations the ratios that tend to survive have few dicks. It isn't mystical, it's just evolution.
The big issue is always that the dilemma exists in isolation - whatever experiment you set up, it's controlled and isolated from the larger continuous timeline, so there's essentially no repercussions. Now, invariably when their are no repercussions people will usually choose to be "bad" precisely because their are no repercussions.
Setup wider ranging experiments where the outcomes and future consequences are less clear and watch how people behave. Plus all those sociology experiments where they found people would suffer greater losses for retribution against a previous betrayer then merely personal gain and you're looking at a pretty complicated issue hardly satisfied by the traditional dilemma.
We did this a little bit in philosophy. I recall there was this study where various computer programs played games of prisoners dilemma, or friend or foe or whatever you'd call it in order to determine what the most beneficial strategy overall is.
It turned out to be "Tit for tat", basically, start as friend, then just copy whatever your opponant did last round. If they go foe, go foe as well, if they go back to friend "forgive" them and go back to friend again. Over a series of games against different bots the "tit for tat" bot will come out ahead eventually.
It's a game show, though. Those are the rules to the game. I don't really think choosing the logical choice makes you a prick.
But if other people will judge you differently than you judge yourself, and the effect on you of their judgement is greater than the value of the prize, it ceases to be the logical choice.
It's a game show, though. Those are the rules to the game. I don't really think choosing the logical choice makes you a prick.
But if other people will judge you differently than you judge yourself, and the effect on you of their judgement is greater than the value of the prize, it ceases to be the logical choice.
Yes, that is true.
However, most of my friends would probably call me an idiot for picking "friend." So, there's further disincentive to pick it.
An interesting thing about Friend or Foe that it seems like no one notices is that even before the end of the show, there are a number of other people who are also trying to screw you over for their own benefit. The only difference is that there really isn't a Friend/Friend option, either they manage to knock you out or they get knocked out themselves. If they try to win, does that make them assholes for trying to make you lose?
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Well, one thing that makes the show version a bit different is that the players can confer, which allows for a bit of brinksmanship. In the "canon" scenario, the prisoners are in separate interrogation rooms, with no means of communication.
In the canon scenario, though, you have past knowledge of the person's character, which is probably more valuable than a few minutes during which to tell a person, "Hey, I have no reason to not fuck you sideways, but I totally promise not to." Morality plays a distinct role in canon. In the case of the game show, it's just a functional of greed and naivete.
Honestly, if I was on the show, I would state "I'm selecting Foe. You can either pick no money, or I will give you 25% of the earnings."
If I were on the show and someone told me that, I'd immediately choose "Foe", despite any previous inclinations. I'd rather us both walk with nothing than have someone manipulate me like that.
As for the more general situation in the show, it's obvious that mathmatically speaking, it's always a better shot to pick foe. However, this is going under the assumption that it's a true 50/50 shot, like someone said above. I don't know that this is necessarily the case in real life. If your options are:
A) Pick Foe and have a 50/50 shot at either $2000 or nothing. Pick Friend and have a 50/50 shot at either $1000 or nothing.
Then A is obviously a more efficient answer in terms of possibly maximizing your gain. However, the person sitting across from you also has these same options, and their choice will usually also be A. What this means for you is that, in option A, it isn't really a 50/50 shot between $2000 or nothing. Because the other person is much more likely to pick "Foe", your chances of winning nothing are much greater. In option B, pretty much the same thing happens because your opponent still has a much higher probability of choosing "Foe".
So ultimately, from a statistical standpoint, both people are more often than not going to end up with nothing because both will choose "Foe". So more than likely, you're going to end up with nothing no matter which option you pick. If both people realize this, they should realize that the only real chance of winning anything will be if they pick "friend". Of course, most people aren't going to take all of this into account, so most of this probably wouldn't apply to a real life situation anyway.
Since the most logical choice is to screw over the other player, the best way to think about it is probably to assume that you're probably not going to get any money, and choose Friend or Foe based on whether you want the other person to get the money or to get nothing.
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GoslingLooking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered Userregular
Are you allowed to do that? I mean promise money other than what the show awards? (Never seen the show, so don't know the rules.)
According to the show rules, you're not. If you pick Foe, and win money, you were not allowed to give the other person part of the winnings. (I don't know about a Friend/Friend scenario, but that's how it worked if you picked Foe.)
Gosling on
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
Well, one thing that makes the show version a bit different is that the players can confer, which allows for a bit of brinksmanship. In the "canon" scenario, the prisoners are in separate interrogation rooms, with no means of communication.
In the canon scenario, though, you have past knowledge of the person's character, which is probably more valuable than a few minutes during which to tell a person, "Hey, I have no reason to not fuck you sideways, but I totally promise not to." Morality plays a distinct role in canon. In the case of the game show, it's just a functional of greed and naivete.
Honestly, if I was on the show, I would state "I'm selecting Foe. You can either pick no money, or I will give you 25% of the earnings."
If I were on the show and someone told me that, I'd immediately choose "Foe", despite any previous inclinations. I'd rather us both walk with nothing than have someone manipulate me like that.
As for the more general situation in the show, it's obvious that mathmatically speaking, it's always a better shot to pick foe. However, this is going under the assumption that it's a true 50/50 shot, like someone said above. I don't know that this is necessarily the case in real life. If your options are:
A) Pick Foe and have a 50/50 shot at either $2000 or nothing. Pick Friend and have a 50/50 shot at either $1000 or nothing.
Then A is obviously a more efficient answer in terms of possibly maximizing your gain. However, the person sitting across from you also has these same options, and their choice will usually also be A. What this means for you is that, in option A, it isn't really a 50/50 shot between $2000 or nothing. Because the other person is much more likely to pick "Foe", your chances of winning nothing are much greater. In option B, pretty much the same thing happens because your opponent still has a much higher probability of choosing "Foe".
So ultimately, from a statistical standpoint, both people are more often than not going to end up with nothing because both will choose "Foe". So more than likely, you're going to end up with nothing no matter which option you pick. If both people realize this, they should realize that the only real chance of winning anything will be if they pick "friend". Of course, most people aren't going to take all of this into account, so most of this probably wouldn't apply to a real life situation anyway.
Yeah, it seemed to me that the show's makers are either clever dicks or poor mathematicians. In real life, co-operation makes sense when it's not zero-sum. That means that co-operating often gets you much more individually than if you were selfish.
This show would be fairer and more realistic if it was, e.g. share 20,000 for Friend/Friend (10k each obviously) or 5k for Foe.
But then, that wouldn't make for some of that Schadenfreude 'reality' TV.
I think it's interesting that with all this discussion about the show, nobody is mentioning the third party: the game show itself. Do the odds change at all when you add in the fact that picking friend always screws over the game show?
I would probably pick friend, just to stick it to the producers, let alone the chance of both of us getting money.
I think it's interesting that with all this discussion about the show, nobody is mentioning the third party: the game show itself. Do the odds change at all when you add in the fact that picking friend always screws over the game show?
I would probably pick friend, just to stick it to the producers, let alone the chance of both of us getting money.
I very much agree. If only as a TV watcher, I would feel wrong about no one walking away with anything.
Im pretty certain that I would choose friend in just about every circumstance, both for the reason above and that I would want the other person to have money rather than both of us get nothing.
The way I would play it is to swear up and down that I am picking 'foe' beforehand, absolutely refuse to negotiate and then pick 'friend'. I think that would be the best way to ensure that we are both walking away with money.
Dawkin's the Selfish Gene goes into detail about why populations would develop "morality". The simple explanation is that a population only needs to be stable, and so whatever mixture of behavior types achieves that allows the population to continue reproducing. Note that it is a mixture--in some populations the stable ratios might be purely "dicks" that prevent a glut of resources from unbalancing the population. In human populations the ratios that tend to survive have few dicks. It isn't mystical, it's just evolution.
Just to give credit where credit is due, I think the insight that altruism was compatible with the "seflish gene" idea was Robert Trivers'.
themightypuck on
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Then A is obviously a more efficient answer in terms of possibly maximizing your gain. However, the person sitting across from you also has these same options, and their choice will usually also be A. What this means for you is that, in option A, it isn't really a 50/50 shot between $2000 or nothing. Because the other person is much more likely to pick "Foe", your chances of winning nothing are much greater. In option B, pretty much the same thing happens because your opponent still has a much higher probability of choosing "Foe".
So ultimately, from a statistical standpoint, both people are more often than not going to end up with nothing because both will choose "Foe". So more than likely, you're going to end up with nothing no matter which option you pick. If both people realize this, they should realize that the only real chance of winning anything will be if they pick "friend". Of course, most people aren't going to take all of this into account, so most of this probably wouldn't apply to a real life situation anyway.
Wait, what? How is the only real option of winning anything to pick "friend?" If you pick "friend," you've got a 50% chance of getting nothing; in fact, if your opponent chooses the strategy that gets you nothing with "friend," it doesn't matter which strategy you pick, you're getting nothing.
Then A is obviously a more efficient answer in terms of possibly maximizing your gain. However, the person sitting across from you also has these same options, and their choice will usually also be A. What this means for you is that, in option A, it isn't really a 50/50 shot between $2000 or nothing. Because the other person is much more likely to pick "Foe", your chances of winning nothing are much greater. In option B, pretty much the same thing happens because your opponent still has a much higher probability of choosing "Foe".
So ultimately, from a statistical standpoint, both people are more often than not going to end up with nothing because both will choose "Foe". So more than likely, you're going to end up with nothing no matter which option you pick. If both people realize this, they should realize that the only real chance of winning anything will be if they pick "friend". Of course, most people aren't going to take all of this into account, so most of this probably wouldn't apply to a real life situation anyway.
Wait, what? How is the only real option of winning anything to pick "friend?" If you pick "friend," you've got a 50% chance of getting nothing; in fact, if your opponent chooses the strategy that gets you nothing with "friend," it doesn't matter which strategy you pick, you're getting nothing.
Well, that's the reason why it isn't the standard prisoner's dilemma. If your opponent chooses foe it doesn't matter what you choose, whereas in the prisoner's dilemma you are strictly better off if you betray if your opponent betrays. Also, friend/friend is not strictly optimum either, since it pays the same total value as friend/foe.
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Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
Then A is obviously a more efficient answer in terms of possibly maximizing your gain. However, the person sitting across from you also has these same options, and their choice will usually also be A. What this means for you is that, in option A, it isn't really a 50/50 shot between $2000 or nothing. Because the other person is much more likely to pick "Foe", your chances of winning nothing are much greater. In option B, pretty much the same thing happens because your opponent still has a much higher probability of choosing "Foe".
So ultimately, from a statistical standpoint, both people are more often than not going to end up with nothing because both will choose "Foe". So more than likely, you're going to end up with nothing no matter which option you pick. If both people realize this, they should realize that the only real chance of winning anything will be if they pick "friend". Of course, most people aren't going to take all of this into account, so most of this probably wouldn't apply to a real life situation anyway.
Wait, what? How is the only real option of winning anything to pick "friend?" If you pick "friend," you've got a 50% chance of getting nothing; in fact, if your opponent chooses the strategy that gets you nothing with "friend," it doesn't matter which strategy you pick, you're getting nothing.
If both people are looking at their options objectively, then both of them already know that choosing "Foe" gives them a higher probability for the most amount of money, and they will both be inclinced to choose this option. Because of this, the chances of both people choosing Foe/Foe and both people walking away with nothing become much greater. I'm just saying that if both people realize this - that they're probably going to walk away with nothing anyway - they should both realize that choosing friend will at least give them a shot of winning some money.
Of course, you could then say that one person knows the other will realize this, and so that person chooses Foe and walks with all the money. But then you're back where you started. It really is kind of a circular argument if you think about it too much. It's probably better not to.
Then A is obviously a more efficient answer in terms of possibly maximizing your gain. However, the person sitting across from you also has these same options, and their choice will usually also be A. What this means for you is that, in option A, it isn't really a 50/50 shot between $2000 or nothing. Because the other person is much more likely to pick "Foe", your chances of winning nothing are much greater. In option B, pretty much the same thing happens because your opponent still has a much higher probability of choosing "Foe".
So ultimately, from a statistical standpoint, both people are more often than not going to end up with nothing because both will choose "Foe". So more than likely, you're going to end up with nothing no matter which option you pick. If both people realize this, they should realize that the only real chance of winning anything will be if they pick "friend". Of course, most people aren't going to take all of this into account, so most of this probably wouldn't apply to a real life situation anyway.
Wait, what? How is the only real option of winning anything to pick "friend?" If you pick "friend," you've got a 50% chance of getting nothing; in fact, if your opponent chooses the strategy that gets you nothing with "friend," it doesn't matter which strategy you pick, you're getting nothing.
If both people are looking at their options objectively, then both of them already know that choosing "Foe" gives them a higher probability for the most amount of money, and they will both be inclinced to choose this option. Because of this, the chances of both people choosing Foe/Foe and both people walking away with nothing become much greater. I'm just saying that if both people realize this - that they're probably going to walk away with nothing anyway - they should both realize that choosing friend will at least give them a shot of winning some money.
Of course, you could then say that one person knows the other will realize this, and so that person chooses Foe and walks with all the money. But then you're back where you started. It really is kind of a circular argument if you think about it too much. It's probably better not to.
Choosing friend doesn't change your odds of walking away with money at all. The only thing your choice affects is whether or not your opponent walks away with any money. In fact, other than convincing your opponent to vote "friend," there's absolutely nothing you can do to affect your odds of walking away with any money.
Well, one thing that makes the show version a bit different is that the players can confer, which allows for a bit of brinksmanship. In the "canon" scenario, the prisoners are in separate interrogation rooms, with no means of communication.
In the canon scenario, though, you have past knowledge of the person's character, which is probably more valuable than a few minutes during which to tell a person, "Hey, I have no reason to not fuck you sideways, but I totally promise not to." Morality plays a distinct role in canon. In the case of the game show, it's just a functional of greed and naivete.
Honestly, if I was on the show, I would state "I'm selecting Foe. You can either pick no money, or I will give you 25% of the earnings."
D'oh... I already had a long post detailing that situation when I got to this point in thread.
I'll just add that I would choose to Split if I think he might Steal just out of spite (since he doesn't trust me). If he saw reason and Splits, we just split on the show. If he Steals, there's always a chance that he will have a change of heart when he sees my choice and agrees to an after-show split even though it wasn't his idea.
Oh, and I think you'd be better off saying 50% since it makes the proposal sound more fair. You can always change your mind about the % after the show if you are so inclined. Just don't let him think you're an asshole while he still has control of your money.
...
Actually, you know what? I figure you'll end up with both people claiming they'll pick Foe... Thus they're both intimidating their opponent into picking Friend.
I'd be quite surprised if this strategy hasn't been used in the show at some point already.
If I were on the show and someone told me that, I'd immediately choose "Foe", despite any previous inclinations. I'd rather us both walk with nothing than have someone manipulate me like that.
Manipulate? That's the only way to break the Prisoner's Dilemma: Remove it from the vacuum.
Choosing no money over possible money is just stupid.
Are you allowed to do that? I mean promise money other than what the show awards? (Never seen the show, so don't know the rules.)
According to the show rules, you're not. If you pick Foe, and win money, you were not allowed to give the other person part of the winnings. (I don't know about a Friend/Friend scenario, but that's how it worked if you picked Foe.)
Then you should try to do it secretly, I suppose. Were you close enough on the set to slip notes to your partner?
Rephrasing a bit, assuming A does not really know what B will chose:
A has to chose between two options with the following results:
1) 50/50 chance of getting $2000 or getting nothing
2) 50/50 chance of getting $1000 or getting nothing
Looking at it this way of course does not include the intangible benefit of "not being a dick", but since intangible benefits are by their nature difficult to measure and in this case subjective, I haven't included it in the above.
Yeah I'm not so sure what everyone is going on about... the above is the prisoner's dilemma solved. In one case your average payout is $500, the other, $1000. You go with the $1000. Changing the numbers around can change the rational choice. If the numbers come out equal, then it's a coin toss, basically, except with the whole psychological gag of trying to convince the other and anticipate what he'll vote.
I like this variant, because it accentuates the pyschological factor: Person A is given $X. He has to offer Person B some portion of it. It's up to A how much to offer, but he only gets to make one offer. B knows the amount A has, and knows the rules of the game (as does A). If B accepts the offer, the deal is done. If B declines, all money is forfeit. So you really are trying to figure out an exact numerical amount (not just "friend" or "foe") that you think will be enough buy off the other person's psyche. Will B stick to principle and refuse anything except 50/50, or will he be perfectly rational and accept one red penny? Or, will the "don't be a dick" principle hold out and he'll even accept a zero offer? Likely none of those. And it depends on just how much X is.
Also, clearly I cannot choose the wine in front of me.
I'm gonna use my 30 seconds conversation to try and work out whether my opponent is a nice guy or and arsehole. If he is I'm going with Friend, otherwise it'll be Foe.
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Honestly, if I was on the show, I would state "I'm selecting Foe. You can either pick no money, or I will give you 25% of the earnings."
Why not? What I'm saying is that I will select Foe, no matter what. However, I'm offering you an incentive to choose Friend - I'll give you some of the winnings. Now, I'm not going to give you half, but I'll give you a quarter.
This is what I meant by brinksmanship.
Edit: Or was the percentage based on the highest score in the class rather than being 100 percent?
I think it was a regular bell curve, most ppl were in the C to B range. It was only on one test, so it didn't make that much of a difference, as most people regarded it as a slack class (the other assignments we had to do were fairly simple, and would get most ppl a B or an A).
This is all happening on TV though, right? So you have to weigh the value of a couple of thousand dollars against advertising to everyone who knows you, along with total strangers, that you're a prick.
I think the thing about the prisoner's dilemma that needs to be understood in order for it to work is that it's designed around the idea that the value of all variables is captured in the outcome boxes, and that these values are all perfectly transparent and commensurable. Part of what makes real life dilemmas so different to this is that people tend to have different sets of values and different ways of judging situations that makes their way of judging the outcomes of situations a lot harder to capture or quantify.
Setup wider ranging experiments where the outcomes and future consequences are less clear and watch how people behave. Plus all those sociology experiments where they found people would suffer greater losses for retribution against a previous betrayer then merely personal gain and you're looking at a pretty complicated issue hardly satisfied by the traditional dilemma.
You might have said why we aren't selfish, but you haven't said why we oughtn't be.
I honestly don't see it as a Christian thing myself. Not being a dick is something several societies and cultures 'round the world seem to hold dear. Not just Christians.
We did this a little bit in philosophy. I recall there was this study where various computer programs played games of prisoners dilemma, or friend or foe or whatever you'd call it in order to determine what the most beneficial strategy overall is.
It turned out to be "Tit for tat", basically, start as friend, then just copy whatever your opponant did last round. If they go foe, go foe as well, if they go back to friend "forgive" them and go back to friend again. Over a series of games against different bots the "tit for tat" bot will come out ahead eventually.
But if other people will judge you differently than you judge yourself, and the effect on you of their judgement is greater than the value of the prize, it ceases to be the logical choice.
However, most of my friends would probably call me an idiot for picking "friend." So, there's further disincentive to pick it.
Neither do I. I'm not particularly impressed with CS Lewis' argument, I'm just not particularly impressed with Wonder_Hippie's either.
As for the more general situation in the show, it's obvious that mathmatically speaking, it's always a better shot to pick foe. However, this is going under the assumption that it's a true 50/50 shot, like someone said above. I don't know that this is necessarily the case in real life. If your options are:
A) Pick Foe and have a 50/50 shot at either $2000 or nothing.
Then A is obviously a more efficient answer in terms of possibly maximizing your gain. However, the person sitting across from you also has these same options, and their choice will usually also be A. What this means for you is that, in option A, it isn't really a 50/50 shot between $2000 or nothing. Because the other person is much more likely to pick "Foe", your chances of winning nothing are much greater. In option B, pretty much the same thing happens because your opponent still has a much higher probability of choosing "Foe".
So ultimately, from a statistical standpoint, both people are more often than not going to end up with nothing because both will choose "Foe". So more than likely, you're going to end up with nothing no matter which option you pick. If both people realize this, they should realize that the only real chance of winning anything will be if they pick "friend". Of course, most people aren't going to take all of this into account, so most of this probably wouldn't apply to a real life situation anyway.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
Yeah, it seemed to me that the show's makers are either clever dicks or poor mathematicians. In real life, co-operation makes sense when it's not zero-sum. That means that co-operating often gets you much more individually than if you were selfish.
This show would be fairer and more realistic if it was, e.g. share 20,000 for Friend/Friend (10k each obviously) or 5k for Foe.
But then, that wouldn't make for some of that Schadenfreude 'reality' TV.
I would probably pick friend, just to stick it to the producers, let alone the chance of both of us getting money.
I very much agree. If only as a TV watcher, I would feel wrong about no one walking away with anything.
Im pretty certain that I would choose friend in just about every circumstance, both for the reason above and that I would want the other person to have money rather than both of us get nothing.
The way I would play it is to swear up and down that I am picking 'foe' beforehand, absolutely refuse to negotiate and then pick 'friend'. I think that would be the best way to ensure that we are both walking away with money.
Just to give credit where credit is due, I think the insight that altruism was compatible with the "seflish gene" idea was Robert Trivers'.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Well, that's the reason why it isn't the standard prisoner's dilemma. If your opponent chooses foe it doesn't matter what you choose, whereas in the prisoner's dilemma you are strictly better off if you betray if your opponent betrays. Also, friend/friend is not strictly optimum either, since it pays the same total value as friend/foe.
Of course, you could then say that one person knows the other will realize this, and so that person chooses Foe and walks with all the money. But then you're back where you started. It really is kind of a circular argument if you think about it too much. It's probably better not to.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
D'oh... I already had a long post detailing that situation when I got to this point in thread.
I'll just add that I would choose to Split if I think he might Steal just out of spite (since he doesn't trust me). If he saw reason and Splits, we just split on the show. If he Steals, there's always a chance that he will have a change of heart when he sees my choice and agrees to an after-show split even though it wasn't his idea.
Oh, and I think you'd be better off saying 50% since it makes the proposal sound more fair. You can always change your mind about the % after the show if you are so inclined. Just don't let him think you're an asshole while he still has control of your money.
...
Actually, you know what? I figure you'll end up with both people claiming they'll pick Foe... Thus they're both intimidating their opponent into picking Friend.
I'd be quite surprised if this strategy hasn't been used in the show at some point already.
Manipulate? That's the only way to break the Prisoner's Dilemma: Remove it from the vacuum.
Choosing no money over possible money is just stupid.
Then you should try to do it secretly, I suppose. Were you close enough on the set to slip notes to your partner?
Since you're not allowed to give your partner the money, then promise to donate the half to a charity of his choice.
I like this variant, because it accentuates the pyschological factor: Person A is given $X. He has to offer Person B some portion of it. It's up to A how much to offer, but he only gets to make one offer. B knows the amount A has, and knows the rules of the game (as does A). If B accepts the offer, the deal is done. If B declines, all money is forfeit. So you really are trying to figure out an exact numerical amount (not just "friend" or "foe") that you think will be enough buy off the other person's psyche. Will B stick to principle and refuse anything except 50/50, or will he be perfectly rational and accept one red penny? Or, will the "don't be a dick" principle hold out and he'll even accept a zero offer? Likely none of those. And it depends on just how much X is.
Also, clearly I cannot choose the wine in front of me.