From: Joe Jenkins (joe_jenkins@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Jul 14 1998 - 13:44:30 MDT
---Daniel Fabulich <daniel.fabulich@yale.edu> wrote:
>
> Er, no. I was referring to the Prisoner's Dilemma, a classic game
from
> the perpective of game theory and an interesting situation from the
> perpective of rational philosophy.
>
>
Communications breakdown, sorry, I didn't mean to cause you to explain
the basics of the Prisoners' Dilemma. I usually use the term
"cooperate" in place of your "keep silent" term especially when
comparing to "defect". This is probably because I tend not to think
in terms of the original example that gave title to the Prisoners'
Dilemma. The original author could have given a little more thought
to that example and used something more appropriate like birds picking
fleas off each other or something IMHO.
We both agree that the best known strategy for iterated Prisoners
Dilemma is "tit for tat" for both egoism and utilitarianism. I know
Prisoners Dilemma is a well developed field of study and we both agree
it can be a useful tool for evaluating ethics philosophies. Although,
I never understood what Richard Dawkins was getting at in "The Selfish
Gene" when he commented that he does not advocate the use of Prisoners
Dilemma to develop a system of ethics. Maybe he was referring to the
mismatch with a lot of real word situations. Anyway, if ethics is to
be rational, IMHO game theoretics allows a more critical evaluation
than any other I know of. We must have a leg to stand on even if it
is a little shaky. Thats why its still a philosophy.
You have stated that non-iterated Prisoners dilemma does not render
evolutionarily stable systems. Intuitively, this does not play well
between my ears. But even if so (assuming you've seen the results of
some computer simulation), again intuitively, would not some
strategies be better than others in this game. I would bet on a "tit
for tat" strategy before going all out with "always cooperate"
(utilitarianism) or "always defect" (egoism) even if I'm
non-rationally "tit"ing this guy because that other guy "tat"ed me. I
can see "always cooperate" as the best strategy only in utopia which
we both agree does not exist. Oh logic where have I failed thee.
Even if I'm right, our only disagreement could be that utilitarianism
evokes the "always cooperate" strategy in non-iterated prisoners
dilemma. Maybe then we find that egoism and utilitarianism evokes the
same strategy for iterated and non-iterated versions of the game. If
so, maybe this is what Dawkins warned us about. This would leave us
the exercise of finding a version of game theoretics that evokes a
different strategy for egoism and utilitarianism. If it cant be
found, maybe this implies as I originally suspected, that
utilitarianism depends on pockets of egoism and they both work
together to form an evolutionarily stable system.
Joe Jenkins
joe_jenkins@yahoo.com
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