The Prisoner's Dilemma and Religion

[David Sklansky]

Two smart but selfish brothers get arrested the day after robbing a seven eleven. They are about to be questioned in seperate cells and are given alternatives along the lines of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Right before their questioning their father visits them both in their respective cells and tells them that if they talk they will have hell to pay when they get out plus will be cut out of the will. Because of that they both choose the normally suboptimal strategy, and are better off because of the fear of their father.

Some smart guy realized all this a few thousand years ago and took a vacation up a mountain. That's the real story. I'll let others elaborate.

[flair1239]

[ QUOTE ]
Two smart but selfish brothers get arrested the day after robbing a seven eleven. They are about to be questioned in seperate cells and are given alternatives along the lines of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Right before their questioning their father visits them both in their respective cells and tells them that if they talk they will have hell to pay when they get out plus will be cut out of the will. Because of that they both choose the normally suboptimal strategy, and are better off because of the fear of their father.

Some smart guy realized all this a few thousand years ago and took a vacation up a mountain. That's the real story. I'll let others elaborate.

[/ QUOTE ]

OK, I am Dumb... what is the prisoner's dilemma?

[Cerril]

Basically it works like this, in the classic example:

Take the first sentence to start, two guys are arrested and put in seperate cells. There's no proof they committed the big crime (10 year sentence) but they were caught running a red light at 80 (1 year).

They're told this:

If you talk, tell us that the other guy committed the crime, you'll get off your 1 year sentence and walk free. He's being given the same option.

If neither talks both get 1 year.
If one talks, one gets 10 years and the other gets to go free.
If both talk, both get 10 years.

So which is right? Well in the dilemma, it's better EV to talk, since your going to jail for 10 years or not is entirely dependent on the other guy. The outcomes look like this for A and B where t=talks and d=doesn't talk.

For A
AtBt = 10
AtBd = 0
AdBt = 10
AdBd = 1

And likewise for B. So it's always in A's best interest to talk, though if both do the thing in their best interest both get the worst possible outcome.

By the way, check out some work by Brian Skyrms, a professor of mine back at UCI. One paper which may or may not be published (on the Stag Hunt) seemed to give some pretty good solutions. I could dredge up the paper I wrote for his class, or at least try to (I lost a lot of stuff in a crash recently).

[slickpoppa]

This version of the prisoner's dilemma is slightly wrong. If they both talk, they both get a reduced sentence that is greater than 1 year but less than 10. They do not both get 10 years if they both talk.

[andyfox]

Here's what I found that, having not heard of The Prisoner's Dilemma, explained it most clearly to me when I Googled it:

Tanya and Cinque have been arrested for robbing the Hibernia Savings Bank and placed in separate isolation cells. Both care much more about their personal freedom than about the welfare of their accomplice. A clever prosecutor makes the following offer to each. "You may choose to confess or remain silent. If you confess and your accomplice remains silent I will drop all charges against you and use your testimony to ensure that your accomplice does serious time. Likewise, if your accomplice confesses while you remain silent, they will go free while you do the time. If you both confess I get two convictions, but I'll see to it that you both get early parole. If you both remain silent, I'll have to settle for token sentences on firearms possession charges. If you wish to confess, you must leave a note with the jailer before my return tomorrow morning."

The "dilemma" faced by the prisoners here is that, whatever the other does, each is better off confessing than remaining silent. But the outcome obtained when both confess is worse for each than the outcome they would have obtained had both remained silent. A common view is that the puzzle illustrates a conflict between individual and group rationality. A group whose members pursue rational self-interest may all end up worse off than a group whose members act contrary to rational self-interest. More generally, if the payoffs are not assumed to represent self-interest, a group whose members rationally pursue any goals may all meet less success than if they had not rationally pursued their goals individually.

[onegymrat]

Hi Cerril,

You may have gotten some of the specifics wrong about the Dilema. The sentence for both talking is definitely less than if only one talked. In your analogy, it would be more like 3 years. My professor in Sociology of Social Dilemas was an Axelrod freak, and had us spend over half the class studying this game. I can't believe how much I've forgotten!

I disagree with your solution though, it has always proven to be better to cooperate (not talk) in the long run. It is not in the best interest to talk. With one specific situation, you may chance a harsh outcome, but it is definitely cooperate that is more +EV.

[Cerril]

Interesting idea, but you make Moses out to be a great moral leader (as well as an astounding intellectual, intuitively or intentionally). That's a lot of respect no matter how you angle it. For that matter, it's a couple steps above 'religious founding father' as far as the scientific community's assessment goes.

[Matt Ruff]

[ QUOTE ]
Interesting idea, but you make Moses out to be a great moral leader (as well as an astounding intellectual, intuitively or intentionally).

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, he makes Moses sound like a Mafia crew boss.

-- M. Ruff

[James Boston]

I know that people's opinions on this are always so deep-seated that I'm not going to change them, but here's a point. For thousands and thousands of year's man has had laws. Failure to adhere to those laws has resulted in harsh punishments, yet people have never stopped breaking the law. So, what if Moses did apply the prisoner's dilemma to gain compliance? Whose compliance was he trying to gain? What did Moses have to benefit by making people fear something other than himself? And why did people continue to adhere to the laws Moses set forth for so long when the results were unreckognizable until death? So while man's law, which has immediate consequences when broken, has been overlooked by so many for so long. Meanwhile, God's law has been followed for an equally long amount of time. Many people will claim that this is done to avoid critical thinking. I don't see how millions of people, over thousands of years, have been void of the ability to think for themselves and had to fabricate an almight being to explain the unexplainable. There has to be something more to it. There have always been dissenters and somehow their beliefs never took over, as logical as they may have been. You obviously don't beleive the Bible. But it does offer explanations. Jesus turned a minimal amount of fish and bread into a meal that fed the multitudes. You probably don't beleive that. I bet if you were one of the people he fed you would, and you would probably think there was something more to what that guy was saying. Miracles occur throughout the Bible. Have I ever seen one? No. All I'm trying to get at it that while you personally may not have any proof of the existence of God, the belief in God would not have survived for so long if NO ONE ever had ANY reason to believe.

[andyfox]

"All I'm trying to get at it that while you personally may not have any proof of the existence of God, the belief in God would not have survived for so long if NO ONE ever had ANY reason to believe."

But the reason may be completedly invalid. The Amerindians (and most "aborigines") believe in earth gods, not sky gods. Their attitude towards nature and wilderness (among other things) is consequently far different than sky god religions'. Both Cherokees and Spaniards may have had a reason for belief in God (or gods) but those reasons might have been fear or superstition or tradition. And certainly at least one of them was wrong is their beliefs. (I mean wrong in the sense that they both couldn't have been correct is their definition of god.)

Lots of beliefs survive for a long time despite the fact that they're wrong. People in power have an interest in perpetuating those beliefs, or the beliefs just become "commmon knowledge" over a period of time. Most people, for example, believe that stone age people's lives were nasty, short and brutish. Yet there is evidence that, to the contrary, they lived lives of leisure and satisfaction. The nasty, short and brutish theory was developed by western philosophers/economists who reasoned that since the stone-agers had very little, they must have been unhappy. But, more likely, they wanted very little, so they were not unhappy with what they had (a sort of zen approach to life).

The survival of a belief is indeed evidence of a need to belive it, but not evidence of its accuracy or truthfulness.