Claire Doyle - Blog Post 3

    After our class discussion on Game Theory and Cooperation, I have been thinking a lot about the Prisoners Dilemma. Being one of the participants, and also being a participant that told on my "partner", I have been thinking about this a lot. 

    During my junior year of high school I took a class that focused primarily on morals and ethics. During this class, we also discussed the prisoner's dilemma. When I was in high school I did not understand this concept very well, but after taking part in the example, reading and studying about it, and listening to our class discussion, I have gained new perspectives on the importance of this game: the framework of cooperation and competition. 

    Before this year, I learned about this "game" that is the Prisoners Dilemma, and never fully understood the point. I thought it was a weird documentary from Stanford that I watched and would never learn about again. After taking various political science and economics courses at Bucknell, and learning a variation of the Prisoners Dilemma in every single one, I have realized the importance of this concept. This game provides a critical analysis of decision making, competition, and cooperation. 

    There is a fine line when balancing cooperation, competition, decision making. This game analyzes how two rational people might not cooperate, even if their best interest appears to be at stake. In our class example, there was a bank robbery and two suspects. Both suspects were brought back into the police station and were separated into two rooms and given different options. These two "partners" were given the options: tell on their accomplice (defect) or stay silent (cooperate).

    So, the questions that comes up is: what do they do? 

    When I participated in this, my partner wasn't anonymous. We actually lived on the same hall together last year, and I knew how good of a kid he was, that he wouldn't tell on me. Though I could've been wrong, and then we both be sentenced, I took my educated guess, and predicted he would stay silent for mine and his benefits. He took the benefit of the doubt, and assumed I would stay silent as well. 

    Because of this, I ended up going free, and receiving candy, and he got sentenced to jail for 25 years, and given no candy. From this, I cooperated, while my partner defected. Though my best interest would have been to stay silent, knowing my partner was going to, I took the risk to tell on my accomplice and ending up getting out of any "trouble". 

Comments

  1. Keri GilliganNovember 12, 2021 at 3:34 PM

    I only learned about the Prisoners Dilemma last year while studying the behavior of large firms in oligopolies. I found engaging to analyze the behavior of the firms and what this could mean for competition between corporations. It is interesting to read about your evolution of thought surrounding this particular idea. I am curious to know about what other ways this may apply outside of the context you wrote about.

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