the prisoner's dilemma is the worst parable for real-life collaboration
tl; dr: individual rationality is a really, really bad delineator for both individual and collective decision making.
why prisoner’s dilemma?
The prisoner’s dilemma is used as a motif for
payoff and imprisonment under the typical game theory setup
In the typical prisoner’s dilemma setup, you have two prisoners being interrogated at the same time for a crime they are accused of. Each prisoner has a choice - either rat out to the prosecution (which we will call ‘defection’), or stay silent and do nothing (which we will call ‘cooperation’). However - the prosecution is smart. In order to incentivize an outcome from both of the prisoners, this is the decision space they offer to them. Each number here represents the years that they spend in prison.
| (p1 down, p2 across) | cooperate | defect |
|---|---|---|
| cooperate | (1, 1) | (10, 0) |
| defect | (0, 10) | (5, 5) |
Therein lies the question - since each one of the prisoners can’t talk to another, what is the most optimal decision that they can make? To frame it around the