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In the prisoners’ dilemma, it is true that even a single bad actor has the ability to disrupt the rest. One limitation of that thought experiment is that it as

In the prisoners’ dilemma, it is true that even a single bad actor has the ability to disrupt the rest. One limitation of that thought experiment is that it assumes defection is guaranteed to achieve a certain outcome. I think it’s reasonable to assume that any cooperative strategy has some computable “defection tolerance” and a variant on the prisoners’ dilemma that accounts for this could have very different outcomes than the classical formulation. Furthermore, once you start playing multiple times with the same players, you establish an algebra of trust that also drastically changes the game. The ability to influence other players between rounds also changes the game.

ColanR 7y ago
> One limitation of that thought experiment is that it assumes defection is guaranteed to achieve a certain outcome. That's a premise, and it's what creates the dillema in the first place. > Furthermore, once you start playing multiple times with the same players, you establish an algebra of trust that also drastically changes the game. The ability to influence other players between rounds also changes the game. Actually, the wikipedia article on the dilemma discusses this. The nash equilibrium is actually for all players to defect. There is no engendered trust. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...
- notduncansmith 7y ago
  > The nash equilibrium is actually for all players to defect. Only in games where players know the number of rounds (e.g. a suicide bomber defects because they’ve decided to cap the number of rounds they’re going to play). The same Wikipedia article describes that in studies where the number of rounds is unknown to players, superrational strategies are sustainable and that the “always defect” strategy becomes only one of several paths to Nash equilibrium.

ColanR 7y ago

> One limitation of that thought experiment is that it assumes defection is guaranteed to achieve a certain outcome. That's a premise, and it's what creates the dillema in the first place. > Furthermore, once you start playing multiple times with the same players, you establish an algebra of trust that also drastically changes the game. The ability to influence other players between rounds also changes the game. Actually, the wikipedia article on the dilemma discusses this. The nash equilibrium is actually for all players to defect. There is no engendered trust. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...

notduncansmith 7y ago
> The nash equilibrium is actually for all players to defect. Only in games where players know the number of rounds (e.g. a suicide bomber defects because they’ve decided to cap the number of rounds they’re going to play). The same Wikipedia article describes that in studies where the number of rounds is unknown to players, superrational strategies are sustainable and that the “always defect” strategy becomes only one of several paths to Nash equilibrium.