frog vs. scorpion
Thu, Feb 21, 2002 at 10:05:56 am PST
The native American story of the Indian and the Snake is often told with a scorpion and a frog in the main roles. Here’s a page that looks at the parable through the lens of game theory: The Prisoner’s Dilemma.
It is the scorpion that pulls humanity down. If you are not yourself a scorpion, you still are unable to play every move of every game in the cooperation zone, because sooner or later you will meet a scorpion. Not every scorpion is a suicide bomber; the law partner who made a successful motion to cut my draw, forcing my resignation from a law firm, suffered the symbolic fate of the scorpion when the firm's biggest client (the one I alone knew how to service) left as a result, and the firm folded. Yeats' judgment that "things fall apart, the center cannot hold", because "the worst are full of passionate intensity" is a recognition of the fact that there are scorpions.
