Strategy For The Classic Prisoners' Dilemma
The normal game is shown below:
| Prisoner B stays silent (cooperates) | Prisoner B betrays (defects) | |
|---|---|---|
| Prisoner A stays silent (cooperates) | Each serves 1 month | Prisoner A: 12 months Prisoner B: goes free |
| Prisoner A betrays (defects) | Prisoner A: goes free Prisoner B: 12 months |
Each serves 3 months |
Here, regardless of what the other decides, each prisoner gets a higher pay-off by betraying the other. For example, Prisoner A can (according to the payoffs above) state that no matter what prisoner B chooses, prisoner A is better off 'ratting him out' (defecting) than staying silent (cooperating). As a result, based on the payoffs above, prisoner A should logically betray him. The game is symmetric, so Prisoner B should act the same way. Since both rationally decide to defect, each receives a lower reward than if both were to stay quiet. Traditional game theory results in both players being worse off than if each chose to lessen the sentence of his accomplice at the cost of spending more time in jail himself.
Read more about this topic: Prisoner's Dilemma
Famous quotes containing the words strategy, classic and/or dilemma:
“That is the way of youth and life in general: that we do not understand the strategy until after the campaign is over.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“The great British Library—an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or “pure English, undefiled” wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.”
—Washington Irving (1783–1859)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)