From: Joe Jenkins (joe_jenkins@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Jul 15 1998 - 21:55:40 MDT
Daniel Fabulich wrote:
>Anyway, this game is especially obvious in the version I originally
>posted, the situation under which the prisoners, though known to each
>other, will never play again. In that case egoism absolutely demands
that
>both players defect; despite the fact that it results in suboptimal
>consequences.
We agree that the best known strategy in both egoism and
utilitarianism is tit for tat in iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. These
are both "nice" strategies. Not the nicest possible, but pretty high
up there. Now, when we switch to non-iterated Prisoner's Dilemma you
contend that Mr. Ulitarian becomes the nicest of saints (always
cooperate) and Mr. Egoist becomes the meanest of devils (always
defect). I am now hallucinating major red flags being raised all
around me. I tend to put egoism in a category close to greed and it's
been my experience that greed is compatible with utiltarianism. No, I
wasn't infected by Aristotle's virus, but a certain David Freeman
managed to pass a couple of infections that whizzed right by my immune
system. It is my suspicion that Mr. Egoist and Mr.Ulitarian may not be
ready to concede to such simple strategies after returning from the
drawing board.
Maybe the strategies for non-iterated Prisoner's Dilemma need to be
much more complex than iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Iterated
Prisoner's Dilemma allows simple strategies to find an Evolutionarily
Stable System because they don't all find themselves quickly defecting
on every move. For non-iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, we need to be more
witty. Let me propose an example strategy: Our participant carries a
psuedo-random number generator and starts the game cooperating 50% and
defecting 50%. Every 10 iterations, the population is analyzed for
percentage of defectors and our original 50/50 split is adjusted
appropriately to match the population. If anyone knows about the
existence of or is inclined to write this simple program, I would be
interested to play some games with this and some other strategies I
have in mind.
Joe Jenkins
joe_jenkins@yahoo.com
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