re: #158 Citizen K

I was linked before to an interesting thought game on the Prisoner’s Dilemma that re-frames it a bit differently and opens it up more for the different elements you talk of, both by repeating the process over several ‘rounds’, allowing for different approaches, and showing how certain behaviors will breed and encourage reciprocal behavior in some way.

The Evolution of Trust

Occasionally, an organization sets up a competition for contestants to submit programs that play the Prisoner’s Dilemma repeatedly against other programs. Again this is a game where morality is irrelevant. For example, if a program adheres to a principle of always cooperating and never striking back, the correct process of the other program is to betray the first program every time; i.e. the game teaches that if the other side cannot fight back, it’s ok to treat them like trash.

It’s really designed for a situation of parties with equal power and identical ethics.