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Kyo · 09-21-2003, 05:01 PM

I actually don't have much argument with TIT FOR TAT - I have a suspicion that I put in my own 2 cents for the sake of being argumentative (it's too enjoyable to me, somehow). It has been shown that given a random population, TIT FOR TAT will eventually take over - even against an exploitive strategy such as 'always defect', by putting 'evolutionary pressure' on the other strategy to cooperate. I'm sure you've read about it and agree, so no, I don't know why I'm bothering.

The reason I bring up the dollar auction is the evidence of discord - obviously these people are incapable of cooperating. If TIT FOR TAT is such a dominant strategy - which has been proven again and again - why don't people follow it? I other words - TIT FOR TAT is evolutionarily stable, and would explain where our tendency for cooperation came from - except that the tendency to cooperate doesn't seem to exist in modern-day society!

In other words - in the actual prisoner's dilema (with real prisoners), how many prisoners would actually choose to cooperate, even if they had reasoned it out? Can you count on the other person to reason it out? Can you count on them not to take advantage of you even if you know they can reason it out?

In other words - taking a single-iteration prisoner's dilemma is a more accurate representation of our various decisions and conflicts than a repeated prisoner's dilemma. If you don't have a chance to retaliate - what do you do? It has been shown, through (and seems intuitive enough, anyway), that people will overwhelmingly tend towards defection.

Greed is all: Note that in a prisoner's dilemma with a finite number of iterations, you can defect at the last iteration to 'beat' the other person - since they will still be cooperating if they are playing a TIT FOR TAT strategy. However, if they wise up to that, they will also know to defect on the last iteration - so you will have to defect on the second-to-last iteration. But they will reason similarly, so you end up defecting at the third-to-last. Fourth-to-last. Fifth-to-last. Etc. Until the entire game is one massive defection.

That's the way real life tends to play out. TIT FOR TAT doesn't really help us in real-world situations. Even Axelrod admits that.

09-21-2003, 05:01 PM	#16 (permalink)
Kyo Crazy	I actually don't have much argument with TIT FOR TAT - I have a suspicion that I put in my own 2 cents for the sake of being argumentative (it's too enjoyable to me, somehow). It has been shown that given a random population, TIT FOR TAT will eventually take over - even against an exploitive strategy such as 'always defect', by putting 'evolutionary pressure' on the other strategy to cooperate. I'm sure you've read about it and agree, so no, I don't know why I'm bothering. The reason I bring up the dollar auction is the evidence of discord - obviously these people are incapable of cooperating. If TIT FOR TAT is such a dominant strategy - which has been proven again and again - why don't people follow it? I other words - TIT FOR TAT is evolutionarily stable, and would explain where our tendency for cooperation came from - except that the tendency to cooperate doesn't seem to exist in modern-day society! In other words - in the actual prisoner's dilema (with real prisoners), how many prisoners would actually choose to cooperate, even if they had reasoned it out? Can you count on the other person to reason it out? Can you count on them not to take advantage of you even if you know they can reason it out? In other words - taking a single-iteration prisoner's dilemma is a more accurate representation of our various decisions and conflicts than a repeated prisoner's dilemma. If you don't have a chance to retaliate - what do you do? It has been shown, through (and seems intuitive enough, anyway), that people will overwhelmingly tend towards defection. Greed is all: Note that in a prisoner's dilemma with a finite number of iterations, you can defect at the last iteration to 'beat' the other person - since they will still be cooperating if they are playing a TIT FOR TAT strategy. However, if they wise up to that, they will also know to defect on the last iteration - so you will have to defect on the second-to-last iteration. But they will reason similarly, so you end up defecting at the third-to-last. Fourth-to-last. Fifth-to-last. Etc. Until the entire game is one massive defection. That's the way real life tends to play out. TIT FOR TAT doesn't really help us in real-world situations. Even Axelrod admits that.