THE PRISONER'S DILEMMA

By Nicholas Scrivanich

   This bargain presents each prisoner with a very unsettling dilemma. “Should I trust the other prisoner and attempt to cooperate with them? Or is the other prisoner going to take advantage of me and get out free? Maybe the other prisoner is going to try to cooperate… perhaps I can become free today!” Imagine being in this situation yourself. What would you do?

   This predicament is called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. It was originally postulated back in the 50’s by mathematicians Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher as a game theory problem. The problem not only presents an ethical dilemma, but strategic one as well. There have actually been giant round-robin tournaments held where mathematicians from around the globe compete in iterated forms of this game, and whoever racks up the least “years” by the end of the tournament is the winner.

   You, as a law-abiding citizen, may be wondering, “Why does this matter to me? I’m not going to prison any time soon.” Well, actually, you face the prisoner’s dilemma every day. Whenever you make a deal with another person, you trust that the person will hold up their end of the bargain. Although, the other person may decide to rip you off and refuse to honor their side of the deal while benefitting from what you promised them. You can do the same and betray the other person if they decide to trust you. The problem with being selfish, however, is that if neither person decides to trust the other, than no deal takes place, and no one gets to benefit from cooperation.

   If everyone in a family decides to clean their dish when they are finished eating, then the cleanup process is easy for everyone. But, if any one person decides to not clean their dish, they will save time and may suffer little consequence, while everyone else has to make up for their laziness by cleaning extra dishes. However, if everyone puts off cleaning their plate, then no one is going to have a clean dish for the next meal.

   There are many serious situations, such as macroeconomic interactions and treaties, that resemble the Prisoner’s Dilemma as well. Consider the Cold War. The “worst case scenario” for either of the superpowers involved would be to refrain from attacking the other with nuclear weapons, but then be utterly destroyed by a nuclear attack from their opponent, becoming too crippled to retaliate. Then the opposing superpower would be able to proceed without serious threat in spreading their ideology across the world. The “mutual default” form of this dilemma would be each side, fearing of the situation just explained, immediately attacking the other and destroying each other. Fortunately for us, both superpowers chose to cooperate, and no nuclear attacks were carried out in that decades-long dilemma. Alas, there have been other situations in battle where cooperation was not so common. In every war, there is always an agreement that supersedes all grievances -- that neither side will commit war crimes. As you may be well aware, often times this dilemma does not end in mutual cooperation.

   Finally, an occurrence of the Prisoner’s Dilemma that you are likely very familiar with is within your own mind. More often than you may realize, you play this game with your future self. You always tell yourself, “Do not procrastinate this project this time!” You decide that you are going to work all weekend to get the project done. Come Saturday, you face a decision: Are you going to actually work on it today? Or will you procrastinate? Mutual cooperation, in this context, would be both you and your future “Sunday” self working all day both days to get the project done. This sounds nice and easy -- but for some reason, it is a rarity. Many times, you may “default” on you future self by procrastinating on Saturday, forcing you to work twice as hard on Sunday to finish the project. Or there may be a mutual default, where you put it off both days and never even touch the project. Lastly, your future self could default on you if you work all day Saturday to get the first half done, but when Sunday rolls around, you procrastinate finishing it; this means all the hard work you put in on Sunday was meaningless, as you did not get the project done on time anyway. This dilemma with oneself not only applies to finishing a project, but many other things as well, such as losing weight, addiction, and even keeping your room clean.

   Whenever you are faced with the Prisoner’s Dilemma in real life, what do you do? Do you default often, finding it hard to trust other people, or simply being selfish? Or are you a cooperative person, who understands the benefits and “good person points” that come out trusting someone? If you think you are the latter, think again: how often do you rip your future self off by procrastinating? Understanding a dilemma like this will not only aid you in helping yourself and others; it can help world powers to cooperate as well. So next time you think about leaving your dirty plate on the counter, think about the Cold War: would you have wanted Russia to do the same?