In Theory, there is no Practice.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE (Part 1)

Hmm, this is interesting. It is better to cooperatively retaliate than always screw the other guy or to be screwed by the other guy.

Wow. This is really weird. I can’t even really describe the article. Just go read it yourself. But here is a taste:

The Prisoner’s Dilemma, therefore, is an analogy we use to test the results of how people treat each other(emphasis mine).

Now, if this game is played one time, the winning strategy invariably is to Screw the Other Guy. If he doesn’t screw you, you get off free. If he does, you serve two years. But if you didn’t, and he decided to screw you – ten years. No one wants to risk that. Screw the Other Guy is the only smart position, and when the game is run thousands of times on computers it comes out the very clear winner.

But! What happens if the game is played again and again, against the same person? Does Screw the Other Guy continue to be the best strategy?

It does not!

The best strategy for a repeating game (called the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma) is not Screw The Other Guy, and — surprisingly at first glance — it’s not Always Cooperate With The Other Guy, either.

The winning strategy is Tit-for-Tat. That is, you do to the guy what he did to you last turn. If he cooperated, you cooperate. If he screwed you, you screw him back. Over thousands and millions of computer runs, using every strategy from complete aggression to complete forgiveness, Tit-for-Tat “wins” every time – that is, it results in the least jail time for you.

So a lot of the problems we see in other cultures is an insufficient scope of the interactions. That is, they actors focus on the present interaction, not on the ongoing series of interactions. They focus on the things that are seen (the one-in-the-hand) rather than the things that are not seen (the two-in-the-bush).

This isn’t that easy. This requires more thought…