Prisoners Dilemma

If you still aren't clear on what the prisoners dilemma is (hereafter referred to as PD) watch this gameshow clip.

This was interesting for me (I just watched it for the first time myself) and I have a few comments. When the announcer first starts talking about the rules, and the male player shakes his head, at that moment my thought was 'she should steal'. He clearly signals that he is not going to steal, which could of course be a bluff but still that was my gut reaction as soon as I saw it.

After that (spoiler, she steals) I was surprised at the actual outcome, with the communication between them I thought that superrationality/morality and what I think of as 'the reputation effect' would prompt them both to cooperate.

At the very end in their exit interviews she reveals that he has defected on her before though (I haven't seen the full episode just that clip), which alleviated my confusion at the outcome, she is retaliating against him (tit for tat) so felt justified in the steal. Though you can see that she is hardly celebratory about it and I wouldn't be surprised if she feels guilt over the outcome.

here is another clip it's poor quality, the guy talks over it at points, and the PD part doesn't start until 3:45, but still very interesting.

I notice a similarity with both of them, the person that loses is being obviously sincere in stating that they won't betray, they are too convincing, which puts the other player in the position of knowing almost for certain they can betray and steal the money.

A long time ago, I played one of those text based strategy games that were popular on bbs's, I was in 3rd place in terms of power, the person in 2nd place sent me a private message suggesting that we team up against the most powerful player (he was far more powerful than the #2 guy). I agreed and we started our attacks, this was one of those limited turns per day games, so for the first couple days I sent my forces to attack, and got reports back of their failure over and over again.

After a few days though, his defenses were worn down, my attacks started getting through, I knew that the #2 player was stronger than me, so his attacks were definitely getting through and I knew that #1 was in dire straits.

At that point I switched my strategy, I started attacking #2, he sent me incredulous messages, one part I still specifically remember is that he said 'you've ruined the game, we could have ruled it together for a long time but now it's just going to end'.

That didn't matter to me a bit, with a betrayal played at a key moment of the game, I took the dominant position, an outcome that otherwise would not have been available. If I had not betrayed, the #2 player would have won because I knew that after #1 went down I would be no match for him.