Having spoken about the Prisoners’ Dilemma, a few people have brought my attention to the quiz Goldenballs. For example, this email:
I was thinking about the prisoner dilemma in relation to rational egoism you were talking about in the lecture on friday and it reminded me of this game show called “Golden Balls”. Theres a pretty interesting clip here that presents an alternative moral dilemma and method of attaining the desire of money. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qjK3TWZE8. Just thought you might find it interesting.
This game show is obviously based
on the Dilemma model and economic reasoning. Here the contestant knows he cannot trust people and makes sure that he puts the other person in the position of having to trust him no matter what (because he will lose anyway). He changes the desire-preferences of his opponent quite ruthlessly. Hobbs would have been proud of such reasoning.Interesting to note here is that this could not be repeated as a tactic the week after. This is known as the problem of iteration in the Prisoners’ Dilemma. You can get people to do what you want once, but they quickly learn. Some theorists have tried to show that learning and being prepared to lose a few dilemmas can generate trust between agents. Perhaps, but I don’t think it is consistent with Hobbes as I shall talk about in lectures.
Thanks to all of you who pointed this out to me, although I feel it may reveal you are watching too much daytime TV when you should be reading. (Mind you, when I was an undergraduate, I developed an unsurpassed knowledge of Sesame Street!)
Received another message about issues arising from lectures/tutorials. Basically, the stuff about talking animals. Enjoy,