4 ms·

This seems to make the same assumption as analysis of the prisoner's dilemma. That is that it's an isolated decision. If you take the decision into any kind of

This seems to make the same assumption as analysis of the prisoner's dilemma. That is that it's an isolated decision. If you take the decision into any kind of realistic context, you'd never say something as cold as "I'm sure you'd do it anyway" (similar to defecting in the case of the Prisoner's Dilemma) as any reasonable analysis will show it to be suboptimal. I've often encountered thought experiments like this with a moral along the lines of "Some times it pays to be bad, it's upsetting, but it's the truth and here's the maths that proves it" but it's always been equally interpretable as "look how bad a job naive game theory does at explaining real life".

dredmorbius 11y ago
Iterated prisoners dilemma. The interesting developments start appearing toward the end of a finite set of iterations. How long do you keep cooperating? Who defects first?
- gohrt 11y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainstore_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainstore_paradox
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    I'm not following that at all. But thanks.
philh 11y ago
(Author here.) Very few people would outright say "I'm going to defect here, you'll do the work anyway". They might say "that sounds like a great idea, but I promised my kids we'd go to Disneyland this weekend". And next week, "I promised my wife some alone time". Then, "my herd is coming down with something, I need to pick up some antibiotics". And so on, until you give up and dig it yourself. And if you install a pump in a village and ask people to pay to use it without enforcing that, they might say "I'm not going to pay, water should be free". It would be naive to try to model everything as a simple one-shot game. It would also be naive to think that simple one-shot games don't usefully model real life at all. Just look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Real-life_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Real-life... and see how many players defect. However, I agree that I should probably have included some discussion of iterated versions.

dredmorbius 11y ago

Iterated prisoners dilemma. The interesting developments start appearing toward the end of a finite set of iterations. How long do you keep cooperating? Who defects first?

gohrt 11y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainstore_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainstore_paradox
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  I'm not following that at all. But thanks.

philh 11y ago

(Author here.) Very few people would outright say "I'm going to defect here, you'll do the work anyway". They might say "that sounds like a great idea, but I promised my kids we'd go to Disneyland this weekend". And next week, "I promised my wife some alone time". Then, "my herd is coming down with something, I need to pick up some antibiotics". And so on, until you give up and dig it yourself. And if you install a pump in a village and ask people to pay to use it without enforcing that, they might say "I'm not going to pay, water should be free". It would be naive to try to model everything as a simple one-shot game. It would also be naive to think that simple one-shot games don't usefully model real life at all. Just look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Real-life_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Real-life... and see how many players defect. However, I agree that I should probably have included some discussion of iterated versions.