YSK : Moral values of being nice, forgiving and generosity are justified by game theory to be successful strategies
YSK : Moral values of being nice, forgiving and generosity are justified by game theory to be successful strategies
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 )
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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.
So basically you can take advantage of the nice people in the first round of every game... Play multiple games with many people and become an evil billionaire.
There is a reason a lot of game theory breaks down, once you pass the Dunbar limit on group sizes. It allows for issues like this. This is where super-tribe and in-group vs out-group kicks in. It allows for larger scale cooperation, with less issues with parasitical behaviours.
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.
Because they conform to the prisoners dilemma, they set up mutually beneficial relationships to get to where they are. That's what jobs are. "wahh wahh they don't pay enough" maybe not to what we would want, but obviously they're not slaves, so it's working to an extent. Business deals, collaboration, that's how they scale their businesses for them to be valued so highly.
This is also how the West has largely operated their foreign policy and why that's working pretty well too, with the EU, NATO and such. People are more often than not cooperating. Doomer online people are just blind to it.
Best take imo. Yes, the "bliss" is that we are ruled by ruthless billionnaires instead of cruel dictators. At least some of us.
As pointed out in my top level comment, the post is quite one-sided, omitting the dark truths. Cooperation is the overall best strategy, but so is to exploit as much as you can. Both are true, the combination is true.