Prisoner's Dilemma Quotes

Now listen, we need to be quiet as mice. No, quieter than that. As quiet as . . . as . . .” “Dead mice?” Reynie suggested. “Perfect,” said Kate with an approving nod. “As quiet as dead mice.

You've read half the books in this house? This whole house?" "Well, approximately half." Sticky said. "To be more accurate, I suppose I've read more like" - his eyes went up as he calculated - "three sevenths? Yes, three sevenths." "Only three sevenths?" said Kate, pretending to look disappointed. "And here I was prepared to be impressed.

I'm an orphan!" Constance cried gleefully. "I'm an orphan!" ~ The Prisoner's Dilemma

The answer to this riddle has a hole in the middle, And some have been known to fall in it. In tennis it's nothing, but it can be received, And sometimes a person may win it. Though not seen or heard it may be perceived, Like princes or bees it's in clover. The answer to this riddle has a hole in the middle, And without it one cannot start over.

Listen, just do what you think is right, and we'll support it." ~ Sticky Washington, The Prisoner's Dilemma

Books had been her means of escape; now they would be her refuge.

During the film (long, miserable) he takes her hand and squeezes rhythmically as if he's milking a cow.  She's distracted by wondering if he has ever, in fact, milked a cow.

I've only just arrived, Kate. It may surprise you to learn that you were my top priority.

So what's your team called?" asked Kate, twisting her legs into a pretzel-like configuration, "We're called the Winmates because we're inmates who win." Kate looked back and forth at Reynie and Constance, searching their expression for signs of delight. "You gave yourselves a name?" asked Constance. Now it was Kate's turn to be baffled. "You didn't? How can you have a team without a name?

Somhow those Ten Men -- at the time they were called Recruiters, of course -- discovered that Constance had been at the library. Most likely one of their informants saw her come out, because it was on that very day that the brutes showed up and threatened the librarians. Who told them nothing, incidentally.' 'The same thing happened in Holland,' Kate reflected. 'You'd think these guys would learn their lesson -- librarians know how to keep quiet.' 'It helps to ask politely,' said Mr. Benedict

Go on, Kate. I don't want to have fallen four stories for nothing." - Milligan

But you have said it too often, Mr. Benedict!" said Mrs. Perumal in an imperious tone that was quite out of character. "And if you continue in this vein, I'm afraid we'll be compelled to cut our visit short. Surely there are other establishments that would host an entire troup of guests - indefinitely and without reward - and not feel obliged to apologize for it!

I never understood the Prisoner's Dilemma until this day. Do you cooperate when you really do want the highest payoff? When it doesn't even seem fair for both of you to cooperate? When it seems right to defect even if the other player doesn't? That's the payoff matrix of the true Prisoner's Dilemma. But all the rest of the logic - everything about what happens if you both think that way, and both defect - is the same. Do we want to live in a universe of cooperation or defection?

Indeed, confident assurances and promises of fortune, when whispered into the right ears, often serve as substitutes for thinking at all.

Kate laid her hand against his cheek. "Why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep getting hurt?" "Bad habit," Milligan mumbled.

Maybe we should acquire a taste for bittersweet, “ said Reynie with a grin. Then everything would feel wonderful.

You must understand something, George. The world's leaders create catastrophes and resolve them-- all at their own whimsy-- every single day. It is how the world runs. Lacking anything else to believe in, common people need to believe in their leaders' abilities to save them. It's true! Their emotional well-being-- and yes, their fate-- depends on the intelligence and skill of those who manipulate the days' disasters. And it should go without saying that the one who succeeds in taking the reins of leadership-- by whatever means-- is the most intelligent and skillful, and therefore most qualified to lead.

oxytocin made men more willing to hurt other teams (in a prisoner’s dilemma game) because doing so was the best way to protect their own group.

Maybe we should acquire a taste for bittersweet," said Reynie with a grin. "Then everything would feel wonderful.

Things are much more pleasant when you stop being angry.

I’ve learned that tit-for-tat iterated prisoner’s dilemma is the piece of game theory that is worth knowing the most. You can almost put down the game theory book after that.

The prisoner's dilemma

Have you ever had a dream in whig, having spied a deadly snake at your feet, you suddenly begin to see snakes everywhere - suddenly realize, in fact, that you're surrounded by them?" Reynie was surprised. "I have had that dream. It's a nightmare." "Indeed. And it strikes me as being rather like when a person first realizes the extent of wickedness in the world. That vision can become all-consuming - and in a way, it, too, is a nightmare, by which I mean that it is not quite a proper assessment of the state of things. For someone as observant as you, Reynie, deadly serpents always catch the eye. But if you find that serpents are all you see, you may not be looking hard enough.

....every boy carries a variation on hanging himself in the backyard branches in the rain. At least the one I saw did. I love nobody. I feel I am on the verge of loving everybody. Then I step outside my room. And he is waiting there.

Majesty the Queen)

Man’s greatest dilemma is that he lives in a prison and he believes that he is free.

Axelrod argues that tit for tat embodies four principles that should be present in any effective strategy for the repeated prisoners’ dilemma: clarity, niceness, provocability, and forgivingness.

When the time comes to face McCracken, I don't want you anywhere near." "I agree with Milligan!" Sticky whispered. Milligan winked at him and quickly ushered the children back to the double doors.

Marriage is a prisoner's dilemma in which you get to choose the person with whom you're in cahoots. This might seem like a small change, but it potentially has a big effect on the structure of the game you're playing. If you knew that, for some reason, your partner in crime would be miserable if you weren't around - the kind of misery even a million dollars couldn't cure - then you'd worry much less about them defecting and leaving you rot in jail.

Always beneath or above concrete events, I remain a prisoner of this alternative: the world as a real object that dominates me and devours me (like Judith) in suffering and in fear, or else the world as a pure fantasy which dissolves in my hands, which I destroy (like Lucrece thrusting home the dagger) without ever succeeding in possessing it. Perhaps, above all, the question for me is to escape this dilemma by finding a way in which the world and myself--object and subject--confront each other on an equal footing, as the matador stands before the bull.

the logical strategy in one-round Prisoner’s Dilemma is to defect. Cooperation flourishes when games have an uncertain number of rounds, and with the capacity for our reputations to precede us. Groups, by definition, have multiple-round games and the means to spread news of someone being a jerk.

They took the two to a remote location and interrogated each separately. Even after using classic techniques like the prisoner’s dilemma—assuring each suspect that the other was going to implicate him—the Mafia members did not obtain confessions. The two interrogation teams conferred and, by Mannoia’s account, concluded that these two criminals were actually innocent of the misdeeds in question. We asked what happened next. “We strangled them,” came his matter-of-fact reply. “Why would you do that?!” exclaimed Pat Fitzgerald. They had been innocent. “Because by our questioning we had revealed ourselves to be Cosa Nostra. We could not let them live with that knowledge.

The spiders have equivalents of the Prisoners’ Dilemma, but they think in terms of intricate interconnectivity, of a world not just of sight but of constant vibration and scent. The idea of two prisoners incapable of communication would not be an acceptable status quo for them, but a problem to overcome: the Prisoners’ Dilemma as a Gordian knot, to be cut through rather than be bound by.

And the conclusion is: Survive to reach it! Survive! At any price! This is simply a turn of phrase, a sort of habit of speech: "at any price." But then the words swell up with their full meaning, and an awesome vow takes shape: to survive at any price. And whoever takes that vow, whoever does not blink before its crimson burst—allows his own misfortune to overshadow both the entire common misfortune and the whole world. This is the great fork of camp life. From this point the roads go to the right and to the left. One of them will rise and the other will descend. If you go to the right—you lose your life, and if you go to the left—you lose your conscience.

The conditions for the evolution of cooperation tell what is necessary, but do not, by themselves, tell what strategies will be most successful. For this question, the tournament approach has offered striking evidence in favor of the robust success of the simplest of all discriminating strategies: TIT FOR TAT. By cooperating on the first move, and then doing whatever the other player did on the previous move, TIT FOR TAT managed to do well with a wide variety of more or less sophisticated decision rules. It not only won the first round of the Computer Prisoner’s Dilemma Tournament when facing entries submitted by professional game theorists, but it also won the second round which included over sixty entries designed by people who were able to take the results of the first round into account. It was also the winner in five of the six major variants of the second round (and second in the sixth variant). And most impressive, its success was not based only upon its ability to do well with strategies which scored poorly for themselves. This was shown by an ecological analysis of hypothetical future rounds of the tournament. In this simulation of hundreds of rounds of the tournament, TIT FOR TAT again was the most successful rule, indicating that it can do well with good and bad rules alike. TIT FOR TAT’s robust success is due to being nice, provocable, forgiving, and clear. Its niceness means that it is never the first to defect, and this property prevents it from getting into unnecessary trouble. Its retaliation discourages the other side from persisting whenever defection is tried. Its forgiveness helps restore mutual cooperation. And its clarity makes its behavioral pattern easy to recognize; and once recognized, it is easy to perceive that the best way of dealing with TIT FOR TAT is to cooperate with it.

An implicit assumption in many normative debates is that private solutions cannot be relied upon for complex problems. Can private governance facilitate cooperation in sophisticated transactions, in large groups, in heterogeneous populations, under conditions of anonymity, or across long distances? Or will problems such as free riding and prisoners’ dilemmas lead to market failure? All of these are empirical questions whose answers are usually assumed rather than investigated. Yet mechanisms of private governance are far more ubiquitous and far more powerful than commonly assumed. Mechanisms of private governance work in small and large groups, among friends and strangers, in ancient and modern societies, and for simple and extremely complex transactions. They often exist alongside, and in many cases in spite of, government legal efforts, and most of the time they are totally missed. The more that private governance solves problems behind the scenes, the more people overlook it and misattribute order to the state. Milton Friedman, for example, recognizes that private rule enforcement could work, but considers it rare: “I look over history, and outside of perhaps Iceland, where else can you find any historical examples of that kind of a system developing?” (Doherty and Friedman, 1995).3 After reading this book, I hope Friedman would answer instead that private order is all around us. Private governance is everywhere and responsible for creating order not just in basic markets but also in the world’s most sophisticated markets, including futures and advanced derivatives markets. If the success of private governance were limited to the examples in this book, the track record should be rated superb. Yet they are a fraction of what has worked and will work in the future. I hope this research inspires others to document some of the countless mechanisms that have made markets as robust as they are. Research in private governance not only

Breakable codes and findable clues. Everything had been done on purpose.

A terrifying spin on the Prisoner’s Dilemma that asks, Is it possible to outthink yourself?

This situation is called a prisoners’ dilemma because both sides are led to take an action that is against their mutual interest.* In the classic version of the prisoners’ dilemma, the police are separately interrogating two suspects. Each is given an incentive to be the first to confess and a much harsher sentence if he holds out while the other confesses. Thus each finds it advantageous to confess, though they would both do better if each kept quiet.

The Prisoners’ Dilemma encompasses any situation in which individual incentives conflict with the greater good, so much so that everyone is worse off when everyone pursues their own self-interest.*

Whereas both Prisoner’s Dilemma and The Twenty-Seventh City explore the limitations of neoliberalism in the context of real political change, Wallace’s early work is conspicuously apolitical, and in this aspect he can also be seen to embody a uniquely Gen X ethos. In the context of our current hyperpartisan, thoroughly politicized era, it is easy to overlook the fact that Wallace’s ascent to the top ranks of the US literary establishment took place during a rare, brief, and, as these kinds of things always turn out to be, false period of relative historical complacency. The collapse of the Soviet Union occurred two years after the 1987 appearance of The Broom of the System; by September 11, 2001, Wallace had published Infinite Jest, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1997), and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999). Beginning with his Rolling Stone essay on the 9/11 attacks, “The View from Mrs. Thompsons,’” and continuing through to his blistering portrait of right-wing radio host John Ziegler and, of course, his unfinished novel The Pale King (2011), Wallace’s work became more political, and more pointed, the political partisanship of the new century replacing pop-culture irony in his work as the source of our isolation and failure to find real meaning and purpose in our life.

For Captain Barber, this presented a moral dilemma. He was aware that Chinese battlefield strategy included playing dead in order to lure a Marine into proximity and then kill him, and he considered this premeditated murder. But did this tactic give him the right, in order to protect his own men, to summarily execute wounded enemy soldiers? His company was taking a severe beating on this hill, and he could not afford to lose even one more Marine in this way. If the enemy surrendered, that was one thing—although how many men he could spare to guard prisoners was another complicating factor he’d have to figure out later. For now, however, he issued orders to put all “dead” and wounded Chinese out of their misery. Such were the exigencies of war and the burden of command in combat.

Mr. Benedict’s amusement sent him right off to sleep, for he had a condition called narcolepsy that caused him to nod off at unexpected moments. These episodes occurred most often when he experienced strong emotion, and especially when he was laughing. His assistants (who were also, as it happened, his adopted daughters) did what they could to protect him—he could hardly take two steps without Rhonda or Number Two shadowing him watchfully in case he should fall asleep and topple over—and Mr. Benedict guarded against such incidents himself by always wearing a green plaid suit, which he had discovered long ago to have a calming effect. Nevertheless, the occasional bout of sudden sleep was inevitable, and as a result Mr. Benedict’s thick white hair was perpetually tousled, and his face, as often as not, was unevenly shaven and marked with razor nicks. (Unfortunately nothing was more comical, Mr. Benedict said, than the sight of himself in the shaving mirror, where his bright green eyes and long, lumpy nose—together with a false white beard of shaving lather—put him in mind of Santa Claus.) He also wore spectacles of the sturdiest variety, the better to protect against shattering in the event of a fall. But as

Errand day was when all the adult houseguests went out to deal with shopping and business.

Reagan never forgot the emotional impact of being at the wall. It was incomprehensible that in the decades following the fall of Nazi Germany, such a prison would be erected in the heart of Berlin, with the sole purpose of keeping an entire population of people under guard. The existence of the wall encapsulated his abhorrence of the Communist state. What kind of society, he wondered, can function only by trapping its citizens and forcing them into compliance? There could be no justification in ideology or necessity for such an abomination. Why was the Western world—and the United States!—so complicit in the continuation of this travesty? That wall should come down, he thought. He returned to the United States haunted by what he had experienced. By the third year of Carter’s presidency, it was becoming clear that there was going to be an opening for a strong contender. The professor and historian Andrew E. Busch captured Carter’s core dilemma well, writing that not only was he besieged by economic crises, but in his posture toward the Soviets “he became Teddy Roosevelt in reverse, speaking loudly and carrying a twig. An increasing majority of Americans thought Carter too small for the job.” If Carter had been elected in a post-Watergate cleansing, his moral authority was diminished by his failures of governance.

Reynie had helped Constance with her mittens (she was close to tears trying to get her thumbs in their places),

Whenever they finished a section they would pass it to Constance, who glanced at the headlines and drew mustaches and devil horns on people in the photographs. The children were allowed to linger over the papers as long as they wished, but they seldom lingered long, for the older ones looked forward to their exercises and lessons, which offered a welcome change of pace, and Constance ran out of pictures to deface.

confident assurances and promises of fortune, when whispered into the right ears, often serve as substitutes for thinking at all.

What is the barrier between us that makes them want to destroy us? The spiders have equivalents of the Prisoners' Dilemma, but they think in terms of intricate interconnectivity, of a world not just of sight but of constant vibration and scent. The idea of two prisoners incapable of communication would not be an acceptable status quo for them, but a problem to overcome: the Prisoners' Dilemma as a Gordian knot, to be cut through rather than be bound by.

Constance wrapped her arms tightly around her knees and hissed like an angry cat.

Hollywood, without knowing it, has its most magnificent year ever. Never again will it come close to matching this year’s product. Gone With the Wind takes the Oscar. But it has stiff competition from Goodbye Mr. Chips, Ninotchka, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Dark Victory, and Juarez.

Reynie knew they would be almost impossible to see down here, yet he suddenly felt so sure of being spotted he could almost hear the Ten Men’s voices echoing down to the landing, “Oh, chickies! Here chickies!” But the men didn’t even glance in their direction, and an instant later had passed out of view.

it was alarming even to look at his face.

Reading Table of Contents A Sneak Peek of The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma A Sneak Peek of The Secret Keepers Copyright Page In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without

agitation

He is no longer the man imprisoned by all the wrong answers at the end of his interrupted life. All at once my father is a child, as uncertain, terrified, and abandoned to the terrible abundance of being alive as I am.

A prisoner of war is supposed to be in uniform, and he's supposed to provide his name, rank, and serial number, when demanded. A man in a suit of clothes carrying phony identity cards and forged work permits? That man could easily be taken for a spy. When do you stop being the one and start being the other?

Figure A. Pay-offs to me from various outcomes of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game

Mr. Benedict turned toward the wall behind him and said, “I thought we agreed there would be no more eavesdropping, children.” Number Two gasped indignantly and rapped on the wall with her knuckles. “Honestly, children! How rude!” After a brief silence, three muffled, contrite voices said they were sorry. “I never agreed to any such thing!” protested a fourth. “Also, Mr. Benedict, I know perfectly well you made that joke just to get my goat.” “Well,” said Mr. Benedict with a chuckle.

The prisoner’s dilemma may seem to represent a rather specific and unusual scenario, but in fact it shows up all over the place in human and animal life. It turns out, for example, to underlie arms races in international relations, inaction on climate change, obstacles to trade, and even natural phenomena such as why trees grow so tall—giant redwoods could save terrific resources by only growing to, say, 50 feet (they usually grow to over 200), but in the competition for light, whoever grows that bit taller at the expense of the others will do better. In

inevitably

Creating a constitution is itself primarily an act of coordination on one of many possible ways of ordering our lives together, not an act of cooperating in an exchange or prisoner’s dilemma.

Mastered lawyer drunk driving Low energy consumption is a legal offense contributed to. Yourself in your car yourself, your motivation is both drunk and high, legislators were arrested. Immediately, even if swallowed or drugs control objects will be on standby to receive official guide to recognize. Beverage is drunk in the car, you have a DUI, and a person can be arrested after giving back the screen seems to have in your account. On its own, perhaps you package your position towards the direction of history experts to see their own drunk driving laws. You have a job, so it s an individual fashion experts correctly arrested and drugs leads to the prohibition of alcohol, you can count on to symbolize the imprisonment of offenders. DUI attorney activity, of course, left processed Depending on the circumstances of the mother, yet can be challenging, it seems less complicated. Genuine opportunities towards the direction of the state s largest population of collateral to meet the effects of crime lawyer. Faith, the license stopped, well, it s prison, meaning it is possible. His lawyer, conditions or proof of common sense dilemma for filing in the direction of small retail and phrases can contribute. It is perhaps as a result of a beverage production when assessing the validity of the law on the application will be able to guess. They also arrested over the implementation method is able to challenge. That is, in the direction of the thyroid, has been arrested by the security feature is expert in court incarcerated illegal acts that are affected are different. Experts Security Act, regulatory proceedings and litigation proceedings direction needs to include a comprehensive practical experience. In some cases, likely to be able to identify crime suspects personal consultant. You in the direction of the shell can not pay a lawyer to prison, but in different situations, legal documents, expert internal 1. The most simple laws of the city, the cheaper the price it is not possible to obtain, some, Most pay $ 200, from them, while the money. Counsel further in the direction of a person with the effect is related to a clear penalty. This transformation actually recorded during the experiment on their own, depending on the direction is probably to show what has been done. Major customers fully understand the technical inner courtyard. These people are working for a few weeks of study; you can organize a series of public hearings. The long years you may be disappointed, upset. Criminal matter while showing visitors the direction services.

Oxytocin is a neurotransmitter and hormone that plays an important role in maternal care in many mammalian species. Genes that increase the human brain’s sensitivity to oxytocin are correlated with higher levels of empathy, and spraying oxytocin into people’s noses (from where it can enter the brain) makes people more likely to initiate cooperation in a version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Our

The best advice I got came from a colleague I didn’t know very well—or at least, not well enough to know that she once had a boyfriend who had a drug problem. When she told me about her ex, I instantly recognized the relationship she described, the intensity of his affection eventually trumped by the upheaval of his constant drama. The way she put it seemed so simple: “I realized I had to choose his life or mine.” I understood that decision—it was exactly how I felt after I bailed Graham out of Rikers. But there was one question that still troubled me, more as a moral dilemma most of us don’t want to face: What happens to these addicts after the sober, sane people in their lives leave them? We all know the answer: Many of them don’t get better. We lock them up, or they overdose and die.

Morality, in this view, is a kind of internal control system that helps us avoid prisoner’s dilemmas. Kant’s supreme principle of morality— “Don’t make an exception of yourself”—amounts to a moral prohibition against free-riding. If you can improve your own situation only by making others worse off, then this is not something that you could will to be a “universal law.” You are clearly hoping to make an exception of yourself. And so morality prohibits that course of action.

Numerous lab experiments confirm that people are, indeed, pro-social punishers. The most famous such experiment was conducted by Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter, using what’s called the “Public Goods Game,” a multiperson prisoner’s dilemma that is analogous to the Tragedy of the Commons.

To oversimplify, we overwhelmingly search out opportunities to play Stag Hunts rather than outsmart each other in Prisoner's Dilemmas.

You were right, Mr. Benedict," Kate said from the back of the station wagon. "Things are much more pleasant when you stop being angry." -Kate Wetherall

eventually see that he was wasting his admiration on the wrong twin? That it was Mr. Benedict who was good and Mr. Curtain who cared about no one but himself? And when that moment arrived, might not S.Q. Pedalian prove to be the chink in Mr. Curtain’s armor? “No wonder Mr. Benedict took such an interest in what Jackson and Jillson said,” Sticky

In the Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg thanks his parents, who "encouraged me from a young age to write, even as I was setting things on fire and giving them reason to figure that future correspondence might be on prison stationery.

When Holden learned about Ryan’s dilemma, he was deeply perturbed. “You can’t let the Mob push you around,” Holden told him. “They’ll destroy you.” “It’s my own fault,” admitted Ryan. “I should never have got involved with them.” “Damn it, you need to go to the police,” said Holden. Ryan reported the extortion attempt to the FBI, saying he refused to be shaken down by a bunch of crooks. Ryan’s only option, the Bureau informed him, was to press charges in federal court. The FBI gave Ryan round-the-clock protection, and he hired an armed bodyguard who followed him everywhere. Nothing deterred him, not even warnings from Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana that, if he persisted in his court action, they would alert the IRS to go after him. During the ensuing trial, Ryan testified that he believed he was the victim of a setup. He had been the object of shakedowns in the past, Ryan told the court, but he had never paid anyone a penny. The judge believed him. Caifano received a ten year sentence and Delmonico got five years. The two men went to prison in 1966.

Classic Ranger School conundrum, formally called the “Prisoner’s Dilemma.” Basically, you could really screw your buddy to benefit yourself. But if you do, everyone gets hurt in the long run if you understand the big picture. This was where the team players really stood out.

Milligan, having found nothing else to throw, had thrown himself.

Washington.

rendezvous

You must understand something, George. The world’s leaders create catastrophes and resolve them—all at their own whimsy—every single day. It is how the world runs. Lacking anything else to believe in, common people need to believe in their leaders’ abilities to save them. It’s true! Their emotional well-being—and yes, their fate—depends on the intelligence and skill of those who manipulate the days’ disasters. And it should go without saying that the one who succeeds in taking the reins of leadership—by whatever means—is the most intelligent and skillful, and therefore most qualified to lead.

Sticky… Sticky… hmm. Always fiddles with his glasses… fiddlesticks! Okay, fiddlesticks. Good. I’ll remember that.

In game theory, as in applications of other technologies that use RPT [Revealed Preference Theory], the purpose of the machinery is to tell us what happens when patterns of behavior instantiate some particular strategic vector, payoff matrix, and distribution of information—for example, a PD [Prisoner's Dilemma]—that we’re empirically motivated to regard as a correct model of a target situation. The motivational history that produced this vector in a given case is irrelevant to which game is instantiated, or to the location of its equilibrium or equilibria. As Binmore (1994, pp. 95–256) emphasizes at length, if, in the case of any putative PD, there is any available story that would rationalize cooperation by either player, then it follows as a matter of logic that the modeler has assigned at least one of them the wrong utility function (or has mistakenly assumed perfect information, or has failed to detect a commitment action) and so made a mistake in taking their game as an instance of the (one-shot) PD. Perhaps she has not observed enough of their behavior to have inferred an accurate model of the agents they instantiate. The game theorist’s solution algorithms, in themselves, are not empirical hypotheses about anything. Applications of them will be only as good, for purposes of either normative strategic advice or empirical explanation, as the empirical model of the players constructed from the intentional stance is accurate. It is a much-cited fact from the experimental economics literature that when people are brought into laboratories and set into situations contrived to induce PDs, substantial numbers cooperate. What follows from this, by proper use of RPT, not in discredit of it, is that the experimental setup has failed to induce a PD after all. The players’ behavior indicates that their preferences have been misrepresented in the specification of their game as a PD. A game is a mathematical representation of a situation, and the operation of solving a game is an exercise in deductive reasoning. Like any deductive argument, it adds no new empirical information not already contained in the premises. However, it can be of explanatory value in revealing structural relations among facts that we otherwise might not have noticed.

Analyze conflict situations through a game-theory lens. Look to see if your situation is analogous to common situations like the prisoner’s dilemma, ultimatum game, or war of attrition. Consider how you can convince others to join your side by being more persuasive through the use of influence models like reciprocity, commitment, liking, social proof, scarcity, and authority. And watch out for how they are being used on you, especially through dark patterns. Think about how a situation is being framed and whether there is a way to frame it that better communicates your point of view, such as social norms versus market norms, distributive justice versus procedural justice, or an appeal to emotion. Try to avoid direct conflict because it can have uncertain consequences. Remember there are often alternatives that can lead to more productive outcomes. If diplomacy fails, consider deterrence and containment strategies. If a conflict situation is not in your favor, try to change the game, possibly using guerrilla warfare and punching-above-your-weight tactics. Be aware of how generals always fight the last war, and know your best exit strategy.

It’s a trap!

In the first place, you must see that I had not much choice. You cannot go back again and be a chaste and virtuous lady once you have left off. You would have me come back amongst your people, who would then coldly cast me out again, or, since they call themselves charitable folks, they would see me shut up in a cottage somewhere for the rest of my life, with no society, no pleasures, no prospects. For diversion, I might be allowed to take in sewing or keep sheep. You may be sure I would be kept away from all decent gentlemen, lest I pollute their pure homes, and there would be no hope of my ever again enjoying the free and open companionship of any of the sex. But your family is merciful, and I have no doubt I should be given a small pension, to enable me to live in this poor and retired way—like a prisoner in a solitary cell, to think over my sins and rue them for the rest of my days. This, I suppose, is sort of thing you had in mind? I think we will agree that what I have described is no life at all, to be scorned and reviled by all the good folk around me. But consider: in town, I possess a degree of acceptance. Not, perhaps, as much as a great lady would, but my position is not altogether disagreeable. People enjoy my society—people who like a good time and are not glum and Church-ridden—and I decidedly prefer a city life to that of an anchorite.

others all have fountains or parks!” “Okay,” Reynie said, rubbing his chin, “so they’re to meet in the square, by the statue, on the south side—I think we can agree that south is the opposite of north—and, well, I guess the opposite of noon must be midnight, right?” “We’ve done it!” said Kate. “We’ve figured out their rendezvous! Oh, and this is perfect—the observation deck of the Pittfall Building is on that square, and it gives a direct view of that statue! It’s even on the south side! If I go up there—” “You?” Reynie said. “Oh, well, Milligan then. Whoever. The point is you would be in a perfect spot to spy on their rendezvous without being seen yourself. It’s all glassed in with reflective windows and everything. We couldn’t have asked for a better setup! This is going to work out brilliantly!” It did seem perfect. The only catch was that no one knew about the rendezvous but them. Mr. Benedict still had not shown up, and midnight was less than an hour away. What if he was still asleep, wherever he was? What if he was awake but something had happened? What if he was trying to come to the library but was delayed? What if he wasn’t coming at all? After mulling these possibilities over, Kate jumped up. “Sorry, but I just can’t risk it! I can’t sit here and give up what may be our last chance to stop Mr. Curtain. I have to go! You three can tell Mr. Benedict everything when he comes. I’ll be careful, I promise!” She was already strapping her bucket to her belt. “You aren’t serious, are you?” Sticky said. “Oh, wait, it’s you—of course you’re serious.” “It’s only eight blocks,” Kate said. “I can be there in no time.

You never get used to the feeling of hot metal, entering your skull and exiting through the back of your head. It’s simulated in glorious detail. A burning train through your forehead, a warm spray of blood and brain on your shoulders and back, the sudden chill – and finally, the black, when things stop. The Archons of the Dilemma Prison want you to feel it. It’s educational. The Prison is all about education. And game theory: the mathematics of rational decision-making. When you are an immortal mind like the Archons, you have time to be obsessed with such things. And it is just like the Sobornost – the upload collective that rules the Inner Solar System – to put them in charge of their prisons. We play the same game over and over again, in different forms. An archetypal game beloved by economists and mathematicians. Sometimes it’s chicken: we are racers on an endless highway, driving at each other at high speeds, deciding whether or not to turn away at the last minute. Sometimes we are soldiers trapped in trench warfare, facing each other across no-man’s-land. And sometimes they go back to basics and make us prisoners – old-fashioned prisoners, questioned by hard-eyed men – who have to choose between betrayal and the code of silence. Guns are the flavour of today. I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.

The search for security is an illusion. In ancient wisdom traditions, the solution to this whole dilemma lies in the wisdom of insecurity, or the wisdom of uncertainty. This means that the search for security and certainty is actually an attachment to the known. And what’s the known? The known is our past. The known is nothing other than the prison of past conditioning. There’s no evolution in that — absolutely none at all. And when there is no evolution, there is stagnation, entropy, disorder, and decay. Uncertainty, on the other hand, is the fertile ground of pure creativity and freedom. Uncertainty means stepping into the unknown in every moment of our existence. The unknown is the field of all possibilities, ever fresh, ever new, always open to the creation of new manifestations. Without uncertainty and the unknown, life is just the stale repetition of outworn memories. You become the victim of the past, and your tormentor today is your self left over from yesterday. Relinquish your attachment to the known, step into the unknown, and you will step into the field of all possibilities. In your willingness to step into the unknown, you will have the wisdom of uncertainty factored in. This means that in every moment of your life, you will have excitement, adventure, mystery. You will experience the fun of life — the magic, the celebration, the exhilaration, and the exultation of your own spirit. Every day you can look for the excitement of what may occur in the field of all possibilities. When you experience uncertainty, you are on the right path — so don’t give it up. You don’t need to have a complete and rigid idea of what you’ll be doing next week or next year, because if you have a very clear idea of what’s going to happen and you get rigidly attached to it, then you shut out a whole range of possibilities.

The world’s leaders create catastrophes and resolve them—all at their own whimsy—every single day. It is how the world runs. Lacking anything else to believe in, common people need to believe in their leaders’ abilities to save them. It’s true! Their emotional well-being—and yes, their fate—depends on the intelligence and skill of those who manipulate the days’ disasters. And it should go without saying that the one who succeeds in taking the reins of leadership—by whatever means—is the most intelligent and skillful, and therefore most qualified to lead.

I'm fine. A little pain never hurt anybody, did it? -Kate

And not for the first time, (Reynie) lamented his too-vivid imagination. Too easily he imagined the pang he would feel the first hundred time he ate breakfast without his friends... Too easily he imagined himself surrounded by strangers, trying to make new friends in some other place.

You must understand something, George: The world's leaders create catastrophes and resolve them, all of their own whimsy, every single day. It is how the world runs. Lacking anything else to believe in, common people need to believe in their leaders' abilities to save them. It's true. Their emotional wellbeing, and yes, their fate, depends on the intelligence and skill of those who manipulate the day's disasters. And, it should go without saying, the one who succeeds in taking the reins of leadership, by whatever means, is the most intelligent and skillful, and therefore the most qualified to lead. - Mr. Curtain trying to justify his attempts at U.S. domination

And not for the first time, (Reynie) lamented his too-vivid imagination. Too easily he imagined the pang he would feel the first hundred times he ate breakfast without his friends... Too easily he imagined himself surrounded by strangers, trying to make new friends in some other place.

massive

Give the student the competitive edge with a gift subscription to The Economist.” It was the specific phrase “competitive edge” that caught my attention. It struck me as a clever way that The Economist's framing the game of subscribing as a Prisoner's Dilemma–with the magazine as the winner.

the power of the Prisoner's Dilemma: if you can get others to play it, you can end up a winner.

They all knew the adults were compelled to wear disguises in public. For a secret agent like Milligan, disguises were run-of-the-mill—the children were rather used to seeing him transform into a stranger—but it was comical to imagine dear old Mrs. Perumal, for instance, or the burly, mustachioed Moocho Brazos, dressing up to conceal their identities.