Saturday, April 21, 2012

Give this guy a job in politics (UPDATE: Kobayashi Maru in action)



The only problem is that his trick doesn't work on a repetitive basis.  Someone that imaginative could come up with something else, though.

7 comments:

John Mashey said...

This of course, is an example of the classic 2-player Prisoner's Dilemma (N=1 step)from game theory, also often studied by psychologists. (I learned about this in high school, and in college, happened to get into an experiment, where fortunately the other person understood the issue and we both cooperated.)

Of course N=1 is awkward, since defection (steal) wins. The Iterated PD (IPD) (N more than 1, especially if random) produces more cooperation.

Country willingness to accept CO2 restrictions is a kind of multiplayer IPD with rather higher stakes.

Arthur said...

Yes, except the interesting thing is the play here allowed discussion between the two - ordinary prisoner's dilemma doesn't - and that allows the rules of the game to be changed through the exchange of verbal understanding between them. When player 1 here convinced player 2 he would "steal" and proposed to share what he stole, the expected payoff for player 2 changed to make it more advantageous to "split".

So - can convincing the other players we're going to be bad be a good strategy for getting their cooperation? Sounds like something George W. Bush would do...

Anonymous said...

It reminds me of the other dilemma, the money splitter:

Player A gets to decide how a $10 pot will be split. Player B gets to decide whether to accept to split, or return the money to the house. If it is a one-time game, what does player B do when player A offers a 9/1 split? Homo economicus would take the $1, because, hey, the choice is between $1 and $0. But homo sapien sapiens would spit in A's face and say, better lose $1 than let some jerk walk away with $9...

So, how unfair of a split would _you_ take? (I'm hoping most of the readers of this blog would offer a 50/50 split, so that's not as interesting of a question)

-MMM

bill said...

MMM - what's really interesting is to add zeroes.

$10 and you offer me $1? = bite me!

$100 and you offer me $10? = ditto.

$1000 and $100? Phhhtt...

But when you start talk $10 000 I'm going to start wondering whether spitting in the face of a dick is worth sacrificing a grand of what is, after all, free money.

Of course, if I could talk to the potential dick, as we see above...

John Mashey said...

See Wikipedia.
That mentions cigarette vendors. It turns out that for many years, they had a "gentleman's agreement" not to raise health issues against each other, akin to avoiding MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).

Anyway, the most basic PD has no communication, but many studies have been done with pre-play or per-stage communication in IPD.
Many real-world cases have communication. Of courser, this is an interesting one because it is N=1, so the question is whether or not you trust the other person (either to use SPLIT, or to use STEAL and still give you money.)
OF course, given the game-show nature, it's different from the standard PD. Here, if you lied, a whole lot of people know you did it and you may become unpopular.

Brian said...

The trick here was announcing he would steal within the game structure, while giving some unknown possibility that he might share the money afterwards. The other player, if convinced the first player truly would steal, had no incentive to steal himself, and some possibility of gaining afterwards. It becomes more like the game MMM talks about. Cadet James T Kirk would've been proud.

Anonymous said...

Well color me stoopid, that why they call me stoopid.

I do believe, this was done long ago in another century, with far more panache, with just one question.

In the year of 1975, in the month of November. A simple popular BBC children's TV show Called "Dr Who", starring Tom Baker and Elizabeth Sladen. The episode is, "The Pyramids of Mars", time stamp is 10 minutes.

Youtube video link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUNYn0jJPvg