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i have never really liked the prisoner's dilemma, mostly because it is an aesthetic game, having only to do with how you would like to imagine yourself acting in a situation.
these dilemma things usually work via a series of frame assumptions that are more or less absurd: in this case, biographical criteria are included in place of information that would be more relevant in real time (like relative positions, speed of the train, etc.) and such ethical content as there is to whatever choice one makes follows from meta-criteria that would be brought to bear on that choice--why x and not y kind of thing.
so i do not know what i would do.
there is a train.
it is approaching.
who really cares about the intricacy of the biographies of each person on the tracks?
if this was taken as a way of modelling a choice, then the problem it raises lay in the problem itself, simply because by the time you sorted out your most "ethical" choice, both would no doubt be dead and you would have watched it happen.
but maybe the real lesson of the prisoner's dilemma is: all that matters is that you were "Grappling with a Problem" as you watched both get spattered.
that way, you can tell yourself that you "Grappled with a Problem" instead of doing anything and once the shock wore off, i am sure that this would have great therapeutic effect.
thinking about it more....what gilda said seems reasonable. whomever is closest.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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