Then I have no idea what you meant by “Cooperation always pays more overall, defection pays the defector better”—what is the “more overall” bit?
The total payoff—the combined benefits both players receive—is better. This -matters-, because it’s possible to -bribe- cooperation. So one hunter pays the other hunter meat -not- to kill him and take his wife, or whatever. Extortionate behavior is itself another level of PD that I don’t care to get into.
Yes, and I still don’t get the LW’s obsession with it. You are just providing supporting examples by claiming that everthing is PD and only the government’s hand saves us from an endless cycle of defections.
Okay. This conversation? This is a PD. You’re defecting while I’m cooperating. You’re changing the goalposts and changing the conversational topic in an attempt to try to be right about something, violating the implicit rules of a conversation, while I’ve been polite and not calling you out on it; since this is an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, I can react to your defection by defecting myself. The karma system? It’s the government. It changes the payoffs. So what’s the relevance? It helps us construct better rules and plan for behaviors.
Do you also show up to parties uninvited? Yell at managers until they give in to your demands? Make shit up about people so you have something to add to conversations? Refuse to tip waitstaff, or leave subpar tips? These are all defections in variations on the Prisoner’s Dilemma, usually asymmetric variations.
I will repeat my assertion that in real life, the great majority of choices people make are NOT in the PD context. This might or might not be different in the counterfactual anarchy case where there is no government, but in reality I claim that PD is rare and unusual.
And I will repeat my assertion that in this conversation, we aren’t having that discussion. It -might- matter in a counterfactual case where we were talking about whether or not PD payoff matrices are a good model for a society with a government, but your actual claim was that PD didn’t apply in the first place, not that it doesn’t apply now.
The total payoff—the combined benefits both players receive
Sigh. So you’re looking at combined benefits, aka “utility-analog of both parties”, aka utils, about which you just said “of course you can’t combine the utils”.
Okay. This conversation? This is a PD.
Bullshit.
Instead of handwaving at each other, let’s define PD and then see what qualifies. I can start.
I’ll generalize PD—since we’re talking about social issues—to multiple agents (and call it GPD).
So, a prisoner’s dilemma is a particular situation that is characterized by the following:
Multiple agents (2 or more) have to make a particular choice after which they receive the payoffs.
All agents know they are in the GPD. There are no marks, patsies, or innocent bystanders.
All agents have to make a choice between the two alternatives, conventionally called cooperate (C) or defect (D). They have to make a choice—not making a choice is not an option, and neither is picking E. In some situations it doesn’t matter (when D is defined as not-C), in some it does.
All agents make their choice without knowing what other agents chose and before anyone receives the payoff.
For each agent the payoff from choosing D is known and fixed: decisions of other agents do not change it. In other words, if any agent chooses D, he is guaranteed to receive the D payoff known to him.
For each agent the payoff from choosing C varies depending on the decisions of other agents. If many other agents also chose C, the C payoff is high, more than D. If only a few other agents chose C, the C payoff is low, less than D (this is the generalization to multiple agents).
Given this definition, on which basis, more or less, I am arguing in this subthread, this conversation (or any single comment) is nowhere near a PD. Nor are the great majority of real-life situations calling for a choice.
The total payoff—the combined benefits both players receive—is better. This -matters-, because it’s possible to -bribe- cooperation. So one hunter pays the other hunter meat -not- to kill him and take his wife, or whatever. Extortionate behavior is itself another level of PD that I don’t care to get into.
Okay. This conversation? This is a PD. You’re defecting while I’m cooperating. You’re changing the goalposts and changing the conversational topic in an attempt to try to be right about something, violating the implicit rules of a conversation, while I’ve been polite and not calling you out on it; since this is an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, I can react to your defection by defecting myself. The karma system? It’s the government. It changes the payoffs. So what’s the relevance? It helps us construct better rules and plan for behaviors.
Do you also show up to parties uninvited? Yell at managers until they give in to your demands? Make shit up about people so you have something to add to conversations? Refuse to tip waitstaff, or leave subpar tips? These are all defections in variations on the Prisoner’s Dilemma, usually asymmetric variations.
And I will repeat my assertion that in this conversation, we aren’t having that discussion. It -might- matter in a counterfactual case where we were talking about whether or not PD payoff matrices are a good model for a society with a government, but your actual claim was that PD didn’t apply in the first place, not that it doesn’t apply now.
Sigh. So you’re looking at combined benefits, aka “utility-analog of both parties”, aka utils, about which you just said “of course you can’t combine the utils”.
Bullshit.
Instead of handwaving at each other, let’s define PD and then see what qualifies. I can start.
I’ll generalize PD—since we’re talking about social issues—to multiple agents (and call it GPD).
So, a prisoner’s dilemma is a particular situation that is characterized by the following:
Multiple agents (2 or more) have to make a particular choice after which they receive the payoffs.
All agents know they are in the GPD. There are no marks, patsies, or innocent bystanders.
All agents have to make a choice between the two alternatives, conventionally called cooperate (C) or defect (D). They have to make a choice—not making a choice is not an option, and neither is picking E. In some situations it doesn’t matter (when D is defined as not-C), in some it does.
All agents make their choice without knowing what other agents chose and before anyone receives the payoff.
For each agent the payoff from choosing D is known and fixed: decisions of other agents do not change it. In other words, if any agent chooses D, he is guaranteed to receive the D payoff known to him.
For each agent the payoff from choosing C varies depending on the decisions of other agents. If many other agents also chose C, the C payoff is high, more than D. If only a few other agents chose C, the C payoff is low, less than D (this is the generalization to multiple agents).
Given this definition, on which basis, more or less, I am arguing in this subthread, this conversation (or any single comment) is nowhere near a PD. Nor are the great majority of real-life situations calling for a choice.