Does the prisoner's dilemma (from game theory) shed light on our notion of honesty?

It seems to me that we have constant uncertainty about what is going on inside the minds of others. We have to make assessments of other people's honesty and integrity all the time, without adequate information.So it seems to me that we make calculations based on variations of the prisoner's dilemma in real life all the time. One example being how we score each other on Askville.

It seems to me that it makes sense to live with the presumption that people are fair and honest. But others may not live that way. What is your presumption about other people, in general?

Do you assume they are fair, until proven otherwise? Do you assume they are crooked, and that you must protect yourself first, and everyone is out to get you, if you don't get them first? Asked by Zhop 46 months ago Similar questions: prisoner's dilemma game theory shed light notion honesty Science > Psychology.

Similar questions: prisoner's dilemma game theory shed light notion honesty.

No, I don't see that honesty is a big factor in the Prisoner's Dilemma Game. The prisoner’s dilemma is one of the subset of games studied in that branch of human thought known as Game Theory. If you aren’t familiar with Game Theory, here is a very short synopsis: "Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics which is used in the social sciences (most notably economics), biology, computer science and philosophy.

Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, where an individual’s success in making choices depends on the choices of others. While initially developed to analyze competitions where one individual does better at another’s expense (zero sum games), it has been expanded to treat a wide class of interactions, which are classified according to several criteria. Traditional applications of game theory attempt to find equilibria in these games—sets of strategies where individuals are unlikely to change their behavior.

Many equilibrium concepts have been developed (most famously the Nash equilibrium) in an attempt to capture this idea. These equilibrium concepts are motivated differently depending on the field of application, although they often overlap or coincide. This methodology is not without criticism, and debates continue over the appropriateness of particular equilibrium concepts, the appropriateness of equilibria altogether, and the usefulness of mathematical models more generally."Although some developments occurred before it, the field of game theory came into being with the 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern.

This theory was developed extensively in the 1950s by many scholars. Game theory was later explicitly applied to biology in the 1970s, although similar developments go back at least as far as the 1930’s. Game theory has been widely recognized as an important tool in many fields.

In total eight game theorists have won Nobel prizes in economics and John Maynard Smith was awarded the Crafoord Prize for his application of game theory to biology. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory The Prisoner’s Dilemma Game is described as: "The Prisoner’s Dilemma was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. Albert W.

Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence payoffs and gave it the "Prisoner’s Dilemma" name (Poundstone, 1992). The classical prisoner’s dilemma (PD) is as follows: Two suspects, A and B, are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal: if one testifies for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence.

If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must make the choice of whether to betray the other or to remain silent.

However, neither prisoner knows for sure what choice the other prisoner will make. So this dilemma poses the question: How should the prisoners act? The dilemma can be summarized thus: Prisoner B Stays Silent Prisoner B Betrays Prisoner A Stays Silent Each serves six months Prisoner A serves ten years Prisoner B goes free Prisoner A Betrays Prisoner A goes free Prisoner B serves ten years Each serves five years "The dilemma arises when one assumes that both prisoners only care about minimizing their own jail terms.

Each prisoner has two and only two options: either to cooperate with his accomplice and stay quiet, or to defect from their implied pact and betray his accomplice in return for a lighter sentence. The outcome of each choice depends on the choice of the accomplice, but each prisoner must choose without knowing what his accomplice has chosen."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma The Prisoner’s Dilemma Game assumes that both of the prisoners are guilty. So there is not a temptation to lie to get an advantage.

Rather, the dilemma of each prisoner is in deciding whether or not to trust his or her accomplice to keep silent. I submit that because both prisoners are guilty, the analogy is inexact and inapplicable to the life situations that you suggested. On Askville, until we were able to appeal adverse ratings, the temptation was to "go along to get along" and not stray very far from the norms or ideation of the group for fear of attracting someone’s ire and getting a negative rating in return.

Since the appeals process was initiated, it is almost impossible to get away with giving someone a low rating.In life, I assume that everyone is sort of honest, but until someone has proven their honesty to me over time, I’m always quite skeptical. However, I’m too polite to accuse people of dishonesty without good reason. Instead, I elect to follow the great philosophy of Finely Peter Dunne’s Mr. Dooley: "Trust everybody, but cut the cards."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finley_Peter_Dunne Truer words have never been spoken. Sources: personal opinion and cited above Snow_Leopard's Recommendations Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War Amazon List Price: $12.95 Used from: $12.953 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 2 reviews) Observations by Mr Dooley Amazon List Price: $12.953 Used from: $12.953 I Love Finley Peter Dunne T-Shirt Mr. Dooley's Philosophy Amazon List Price: $112.953 Used from: $12.953 Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of s Countrymen Amazon List Price: $12.953 Used from: $12.953 Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction Amazon List Price: $12.953 Used from: $12.953 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 14 reviews) Game Theory for Applied Economists Amazon List Price: $512.953 Used from: $20.00 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 26 reviews) Prisoner's Dilemma Amazon List Price: $112.953 Used from: $12.953 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 39 reviews) .

Iterated prisoner's dilemma A key variation of the Prisoner's Dilemma game is called the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD). The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is the same game, except that you play it over and over, and you can remember the results of the last time and adjust your strategy. In some ways it models real life better, because our relationships with people are not just one-off.

That is, we DO get to find out whether or not people are honest, at least based on their track record. The most effective IPD strategy in almost every scenario is called "tit for tat". That is, you start out assuming that the person you're playing with is honest, and cooperate.

But if they cheat, then you take revenge by cheating. In a community of pure tit-for-tat players, everybody wins all the time. That matches your intuitive sense that it's best to presume that people are fair and honest.So we end up with a much more positive result than the regular Prisoner's Dilemma, where the most effective outcome is for you to cheat.

But it's not that simple, because as in the original Prisoner's Dilemma there are reasons to cheat. If your goal is to win, not just to get the maximum points possible, you'll do better if you occasionally cheat. And when that happens, your opponent can start a cycle of retribution, or one of you will eventually have to settle for losing before being able to get back to procuring the maximum points.

In a population that "evolves", where players with the most effective strategies reproduce and those with ineffective strategies die off, what you often end up with is a society of people who are mostly cooperative, but a few cheaters leaching off the rest of the system. Those few cheaters cause a LOT of damage overall, even though there are few of them. They can't become too numerous, because otherwise there will be nobody for them to leach off of.

And they can't die out, because as long as there's one still there that one will do very well. That mimics what we observe in real life: most people are generally nice most of the time, but a few people make trouble and cause a lot of grief.It's to your best interest to assume that people are nice, but it means you'll get taken advantage of occasionally. It doesn't do you any good to get angry about it, or to turn cheater yourself.

All you can do is reconcile yourself to occasionally being taken advantage of (and remembering who took advantage of you if you ever see them again). As it applies to Askville, it can be tricky, because the "game" is murky: we don't know who gave us what rating most of the time, so it's hard to be retributive. Even if you continually rate other players with the lowest score, it will take a while before people are certain it was you.

Because of that it's really just our basic goodwill that keeps ratings fair, a goodwill that we inherit as a general strategy in life. People who come in trying to game the system rarely do well anyway: the scoring system favors people who have been here longest, and new players hoping for shortcuts won't be rewarded very much. They tend to leave before they get very far.

Askville is also different because unlike PD, there's an "oracle" watching all of the games and taking action. I don't know if they have a program that raises attention if somebody gives out only the lowest possible scores every time, but it would be an easy for them to do and for all I know they DO have one. Or they may not.

Wikipedia is a good example where good people outnumber jerks by enough to make a lot of productive value.It would fail if the vandals became too numerous, because people would stop coming and cleaning up after them. Human nature, however, has imbued most of us with a general sense of fair play, and it seems to be working thus far on both Wikipedia and Askville. Let's hope it continues.

PamPerdue's Recommendations The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author Amazon List Price: $15.95 Used from: $6.00 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 268 reviews) An interesting application of game theory to both genetics and animal (and human) behavior.

You get a group of people and split them into three teams. Each team has to vote each round either red or green. Representatives from each team meet before each round to consult before the votes are cast.

Points are then awarded on the following basis:All vote red - All teams lose 200 points2 vote red, 1 votes green - Reds gain 100 points, Green loses 100 pointsAll vote green - All teams gain 100 pointsThe object of the game is left to be somewhat ambiguous in that each team is encouraged to gain as many points as possible. Invariably, the teams initially take this to mean "more than the other teams" when the real goal of the game would be to vote green all the way through and each team would have the highest possible, albeit identical, score. Usually, the first round of consulting ends with all teams walking away promising to vote green and one or all reneging on the agreement.

Depending on the group, they start to figure out how they can cooperate to make their overall situation better through negotiation. The game is a lot like Askville, in my opinion. The difference is that in the game, you get feedback after each round what the other team did and how that affected our team.

On Askville, that is not always the case. Perhaps naively, I believe most people are honest and I think there are few that would actually try to game the system. But when I feel this has happened, I tend to react harshly because that is not how I have conducted myself on this site.

Sources: my Graduate school experience .

In a way, but the prisoner's dilemma is a very specific circumstance. Since the beginning, trust has needed to be earned, and not just assumed at first. With small things, you can give the other person the benefit of the doubt.

But more valuable situations require demonstrations of trustworthiness. Child care requires certification, inspections, etc. Buying a house requires an escrow agent or title company to hold the money and the title and make the switch.It is in your best interest to take precautions in case your trust is betrayed, but for the most part I give a new person the benefit of the doubt. I trust them in every day situations until they demonstrate they are not worthy of that trust.

I don't trust my kids with people that I am familiar with until we have a candid conversation about what is allowed and what is not allowed, and how they would handle emergencies. The prisoner's dilemma describes a situation where it is in the prisoner's best interest to betray a fellow prisoner. This is not always the case in real life or Askville.

It is not a betrayal to vote accurately. When votes are inaccurate or there is a dispute, there is an appeals process. I try to vote regardless of how I think others will vote.

I try to treat others with respect and politeness, regardless of how they treat me or others in everyday life. I hope this helps.

The prisoner's dilemma is based on a fixed model and Askville has an individual objective for each citizen: yes, it has. A SUNRISE OVER THE MEDITERRANEAN OVER THE MEDAS ISLANDS, POSITIONED OPPOSITE ESTARTIT The prisoner’s dilemma shows a negative concept. Your question takes ’scoring of Askville citizens’ as an example.

The following phrase generalizes and jumps to a conclusion: it makes sense that people (in general? In Askville? ) are fair and honest.

I take Askville-citizens as the starting point of my answer and answer the ’generality’ with the only answer possible: it depends of the person and his circumstances. The Spanish philosopher José Ortega and Gasset himself defined it as: ’Yo soy yo y mis circumstancias’ translated into English: ’I am me and my circumstances’. He was a nice man who never considered his work as really finished.

He had a funny relation with his publishers who came home to pull the manuscripts out of his hands. Most of them were written on the table with his family around him doing their things. I made Ortega’s statement mine and will write about my motivation to take part in Askville.

I slowly noticed that circumstances changed for me. From simply not knowing even about the existence of a project like this, I started to learn a lot about individual Americans and it influenced my attitude towards their country. The most important of that change is the much too big and too uncontrollable power your President has.

The Askvillers turned out to be kind and helpful and received me as one (European) American more. I love the presence of a spelling-corrector and I deeply hate the ’ayax’es. And I learned a lot and also taught.

When I once got very emotional and used a question to get rid of a deep frustration - human life is only partly explainable by practicalities: emotions are much more important - I immediately got help from Mr. X That brings me to the last of your statements. I don’t think people just crooked or bad. They are basically good.

But in some cases I learned to be ’false and friendly’ when I had reasons to suspect that somebody tried to cheat me or abuse of my situation. Spain is not my native country, people are very different and live together, coming from many regions. Catalonia where I live with my Spanish/Catalan wife simply is a really different country, much more European oriented than other parts of Spain.

That’s all. Sources: My Askville experiences in some five months janosj's Recommendations Goethe - Dilthey Used from: $15.00 Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction Amazon List Price: $10.95 Used from: $6.56 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 14 reviews) Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict Amazon List Price: $31.50 Used from: $37.82 Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 (based on 6 reviews) José Ortega and Gasset is not translated and that's something I simply don't uunderstand. He is one of the great philosophers of last century Google Map View Larger Map The Europe I live in .

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.