REM@MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP (09/22/83)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC> Assuming full MIRVs such as MX on both sides... As a two person game, with payoffs sort of like the "prisoner's dilemma", the optimal strategy will be to strike first in any crisis, any time we lose trust of the other side. But in the overall context of which civilization survives to inhabit the galaxy, it may be something like the round-robin, where the overall winner may lose every one of his one-on-won battles but because he gets in fights less he survives overall better than the winners do. Suppose that lots of different technological lifeforms evolve around the galaxy, each with different ways of looking at the Universe and what to do in it. On each planet two superpowers are in control at the critical time when nuclear weapons have been invented but space hasn't yet been habitated. If both of those superpowers are "winners", they'll have a crisis and anihilate each other. If both are "losers", they'll survive. I don't think the case of one "winner" and one "loser" would produce the balance of terror that we're considering. In any case the one "loser" would go away and the one "winner" would fragment and result in two "winners" at the critical stage. Now imagine this experiment all over the galaxy. Most planets have the two "winners", and they promptly go away. Those rare planets with two "losers" would end up populating the galaxy. Is Earth a 2-winner dinosaur, or a 2-loser rare gem? I don't know. When the inevitable crisis occurs, we'll find out. (Thanks for Hofstadter's article a few months ago in Sci.Am. for getting the basic idea in my brain churning around until now.)