Prisoner’s dilemma is a problem commonly featured in game theory. Each player is given an option to be either nice or nasty. Each combination of player plays multiple number of rounds. When tested against different strategies, it is found that the best performing strategies are :
- nice first ( they don’t start the provoking),
- retaliatory (when opponent is nasty they also resond nasty),
- forgiving (they don’t hold grudges),
- clear (their strategies are clear for opponent to interpret) and
- generous (when the opponent has been nasty, they do not retaliate 10℅ of the time )
How does this explain that the world is essentially ruled by ruthless billionnaires? The strategies referenced may be vindicated, but that doesn’t preclude them from being eclipsed by another, even greater strategy, that of total domination.
Or is anyone going to tell me straight-faced that all those people are great examples of our species and should be revered? None of them got where they are by playing nice.
Take away the power to tit for your tats, and now you can be almost as nasty as you want.
The prisoner’s dilemma is of course, a highly simplified model. If you could just submit a strategy like “my opponent doesn’t get to play, so I take all the points” then yeah, that would beat tit for tat.
This isn’t really about the current global economic situation, more about like human behaviour.
In the prisoner’s dilemma, aggressive options tend to do well only in the short term, so you could see ruthless billionaires as short-sighted, considering their reaping of the earth will end up destroying the ecosystems we live in.