colonel@gloria.UUCP (George Sicherman) (05/08/84)
[If this sentence is true then the Bug does not exist.] Right, but that's not the Prisoner's Dilemma, it's the Unexpected Hanging Paradox. The Prisoner's Dilemma is the two-player game where the prisoner goes free if he impeaches his partner, but only if his partner does not impeach him. -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel
gwyn@brl-vgr.UUCP (05/09/84)
Oops. I believe you are right; I had forgotten the name of the Paradox of the Unexpected Hanging and "Prisoner's Dilemma" came to mind. The paradoxes do have some similarities... On the real Prisoner's Dilemma: Years ago there was a Scientific American article by Anatol Rapoport (spelling?) on a similar "paradox" in 2-player, non-zero-sum game theory. I think it is really the same as the PD: table of outcomes (A,B): Player B strategy B1 strategy B2 strategy A1 (A-1,B-1) (A11,B-2) Player A strategy A2 (A-2,B11) (A10,B10) The "paradox" is this: Player A will select strategy A1 because no matter what player B does, he gains more with strategy A1 than with A2. Similarly, player B will select strategy B1 as dominant. Then the outcome is -1 for each player. HOWEVER, reasons Rapoport, a "higher" mode of game-theoretic reasoning would lead both players to choose strategy 2, so that each would get a payoff of 10 rather than -1. His article was an attempt to explain this reasoning. The quibble I have with that is that this was explicitly assumed to be a NON-COOPERATIVE game, so that collaboration between the players is not permitted. I believe Rapoport was trying to get IMPLICIT collaboration with his theory that called for socialist reasoning even in a game under these conditions. I would love to play this game against him if he uses his suggested strategy! I dropped my subscription to Scientific American because of their preference for nice "liberal" lead articles like this one and the several on global military & political strategy. I got tired of statements like "it would seem to be possible, however, ..." and "although this would appear to be the case, future political realities may ...". Shades of the State Science Institute's analysis of Rearden metal!