Chapter 12 prisoner in the newspaper

My wife thinks I'm hiding a criminal secret.Whenever I read the newspaper and said "Prisoner's Dilemma", she would look up at me strangely and ask, "Which prisoner?" "Nothing." This was my answer.Every day I am amazed at how many examples of this dilemma I can find in the news.Let me start by explaining this for those readers who don't know the term yet. The "Prisoner's Dilemma" is a model in game theory that helps us understand social behavior, such as the following example. The two suspects were charged with the crime at the same time and were held in two cells and interrogated separately.The promise they got was: "If you can prove the other person's crime, then you will be free, and he will take full responsibility, be sentenced to a heavy sentence, and go to prison for five years; Two years in prison; if you identify each other - please note that this is the heart of the matter - you will be sentenced to three years at the same time. This is the prisoner's dilemma." The "criminal" is not difficult to explain, both will end up in a cell, and You will be threatened to be locked up for a long time.Regarding the concept of "dilemma", if we understand the following facts, it will be clear quickly.On the one hand, the suspects can limit their sentence to the shortest possible time, that is, two years, provided that they cooperate with each other, admit nothing, and neither betray the other.On the other hand, each of them wants to get the best for himself by betraying the other, that is, acting selfishly.In the end, it's better to not be punished yourself and let another person suffer a heavy punishment than to spend three years in prison each.

Now comes the problem.The two parties were clever enough to calculate the small accounts, but they blamed each other and were sentenced to three years in prison at the same time!No matter how stupid it sounds, that's usually how we behave.This mode can be played with the help of a computer as a game.I won't go into the specific technical details, as long as we understand that what the computer simulations show is that if the game is played only once, selfishness will always win over cooperation.If you played multiple times in a row, each time each suspect had to make a selfish or cooperative choice, the picture would be very different: cooperation pays off!Abandoning selfishness and choosing cooperation will bring many benefits in the long run, in this case, reducing the penalty time.

Is this model just for fun?No, not just for fun, because this model -- in this case the Prisoner's Dilemma -- can be used to explain social behavior, including cooperation.Over the course of evolution, selfishness has not always won out over cooperation.If the animals have known each other for a long time, cooperation can bring more benefits than fighting for power for themselves. As I wrote in the first paragraph, it is interesting that this pattern can be seen everywhere in life, and I will have to find a chance to explain it to my wife.If the "game" is played several times in a row, people tend to choose to cooperate.Your boss pays you every month in exchange for what you do at work.He may also have a whim and decide not to pay you for a certain month. In this way, his financial situation is better, but he will soon give up this crazy idea, because the "game" will appear immediately The following situation: You will stop working for the company, that is, terminate cooperation with your boss and go directly to another job.You'd think that selfish boss with a reputation like that wouldn't be able to find new employees.This repeated cooperation of work-for-money and money-for-work ensures a stable system that enables the stable development of our society.

The same story happens every time we pay for bread, or borrow eggs from a neighbor who is sure you will pay them back.The crux of the matter is that through these repeated behaviors, both parties know that their cooperation will be exchanged for the cooperation of others, that is, mutual giving.In human societies, though, this balance isn't always so obvious. We sometimes see selfishness in various forms, but a little thought can drive it away.What we think about is the social interest.Take the specific example in the newspaper.In the financial crisis, such as what we suffered in 2008 and 2009, if people can save less money and spend more money together, the crisis can be alleviated, the economy can thus run well, and the crisis can be alleviated. This is a good thing for society as a whole, that is, for all of us.But most of us don't do that!Everyone still wants to save money so that their lives can be more guaranteed, but this aggravates the crisis, which is not good for everyone.The idea behind this behavior is that it would be good for us all if everyone else spent a little more money, but I don't have to do it myself yet.Most people think so.But what no one thinks is that everyone will have such an idea, and everyone is selfish.In this way, the economy lost momentum.Here's how the Prisoner's Dilemma works in this situation: If I save money, I gain a lot of personal gain, and it's society as a whole that pays the price.So the crisis got worse and worse, and eventually everyone sank the ship together.But why don't we cooperate?Because once the repetition is interrupted, the cooperative mechanism can't work, and it's all because we don't see the benefits that social behavior can bring.

Another article in the newspaper also provided an example of the pros and cons of posting online whether or not a pedophile lives near a residence.The Netherlands already has this kind of website, and Belgium also wants to introduce it. "Okay," said some worried parents, "we're worried about the kids and want to know if there are any pedophiles roaming around in the neighborhood." "No," said the government and related child protection organizations, "we can't have a website like this , that way, the pedophiles would run or hide, and we would lose control of them, and more people would be victimized.” Abandoning that site was for the collective good, and it was a form of cooperation: out of The common good puts self-interest aside.If everyone could see the broad benefits, the site wouldn't exist.It's a pity that some people will say: well, no place else needs this website except my neighborhood, and I want my children to be safer than other children in this country.People don't see the benefit of not building a website because the benefit doesn't come back.The game is only played once, and self-interest wins.

Selfishness always wins over cooperation, as the computer predicted with the Prisoner's Dilemma, provided the punishment or reward is not repeated enough times.As in the example above, repetition does not always occur.But the availability of information may help.Perhaps when people fully understand that there are higher social interests, they will put aside their personal interests.But this is not what people experience for themselves, but learned through science, such as this story I wrote.We need to make everyone aware that they are participating in a serious prisoner's dilemma every day.

We can imagine, purely hypothetical, of course, that if everyone fully understood this dilemma and realized that choosing a selfish strategy is asking for trouble, then another article would appear in the newspaper and I would shout What I want is "cooperation", and then my wife will think I am talking about her.