Real Life Prisoners Dilemma with $100k at Stake [vid] | Hacker News Reader

Real Life Prisoners Dilemma with $100k at Stake [vid]

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15 pointsbokonist11 comments

Spoiler warning

When watching this the first time the facial expression at 2:29 clearly gives away the outcome. The pinched lips is a classic poker tell for discomfort in honesty. While in a poker game an experienced player can hide or mix in false tells, this completely jumped out at me.

Not actually the Prisoners' Dilemma - the payout matrix is wrong, but close enough, and gut wrenching. From the interviews after it seems that there's some baggage from the earlier parts of the game.

Interesting to see it (or something close enough) in action.

Not the classic payoff matrix, right. But isn’t the end result the same? The best answer to split is steal (100% > 50%). The best answer to steal? Well, they look the same (you get 0% no matter what you pick), but you don’t know what your partner picks. And steal is the dominant strategy. So in the end you should pick steal. And that’s a classic prisoner’s dilemma. Any faults with my logic?

(This all obviously assumes that your utility is equivalent to the amount of money. It might not be. You might value not coming across as an asshole pretty high.)

In general, yes. Stealing is the way to go. http://lesswrong.com/lw/tn/the_true_prisoners_dilemma/

Wow, somebody is going to be friendless for a very long time. But in my opinion, it's better to be betrayed than betray someone.

P.S. Please don't spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet.

It's quite interesting how emotionally involved I got watching a couple of these. I had to stop because it was making me angry.

When I first read about the Prisoner's Dilemma in a Douglas Hofstadter book (probably Godel, Escher and Bach although I'm not sure) I went around reading everything I could about it as I felt it was saying something important about society. Today I'm not entirely sure that's the case but it still fascinates me...

Can anybody explain what's the most rational decision?

I believe that you should always call "steal". On average (assuming you don't know what the other person will choose) you get more money (1.0 if you steal versus 0.5 if you split) and you can never be betrayed.

More than that: each player decides whether the other player takes any money or not. However since the players decisions are independent it doesn't make sense to say 'split'.

Yeah, stealing would be the most rational thing to do (in the strict sense, disregarding any feelings of guilt a person might have).

This game really illustrates the importance of repeated games and quid pro quo in human relationships. What makes human society function is that we can actually create binding contracts, and that we increase trust with people over time, on the basis of mutual give and take.

“Yeah, stealing would be the most rational thing to do.”

But only if your utility (roughly) corresponds to the money involved. The sums of money might just be big enough for that to be (roughly) true.

Right.

If they split, you are best off stealing.

If they steal, you are best off stealing.

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