is it always rational to make others believe things that are true?
This depends on your values. If chief among them is “honesty”, and you caveat the “make others believe things that are true” with a “for the right reasons” clause, then probably, yeah. If honesty has to compete with things like keeping your property, maybe not.
If I am playing the Prisoner’s Dilemma with someone (just once, so no tit-for-tat or anything), and I have the choice of making my opponent either act rationally or irrationally, the rational thing for me to do is make him act irrationally.
I’m not sure what the content of “making your opponent behave (ir)rationally” is supposed to be. It’s certainly not an uncontroversial tidbit of received wisdom that the rational thing to do in the Prisoner’s Dilemma is to defect, which is what you seem to imply.
I’m not sure what the content of “making your opponent behave (ir)rationally” is >supposed to be. It’s certainly not an uncontroversial tidbit of received wisdom that the >rational thing to do in the Prisoner’s Dilemma is to defect, which is what you seem to >imply.
Exactly, if I was able to make him act irrationally, he would not defect, whereas I would. And if the definition of rationality is that it makes you win, then it can be perfectly rational to have others act irrationally (i.e. believe wrong things).
If you both cooperate, instead of you both defecting, you’d both be better off, which is a more rational (more winning) outcome. Thus, making “cooperation” a synonym for “irrational” will irk people around here. (Of course if you defect and the other player cooperates, you’d have the best possible payoff.)
This depends on your values. If chief among them is “honesty”, and you caveat the “make others believe things that are true” with a “for the right reasons” clause, then probably, yeah. If honesty has to compete with things like keeping your property, maybe not.
I’m not sure what the content of “making your opponent behave (ir)rationally” is supposed to be. It’s certainly not an uncontroversial tidbit of received wisdom that the rational thing to do in the Prisoner’s Dilemma is to defect, which is what you seem to imply.
Exactly, if I was able to make him act irrationally, he would not defect, whereas I would. And if the definition of rationality is that it makes you win, then it can be perfectly rational to have others act irrationally (i.e. believe wrong things).
If you both cooperate, instead of you both defecting, you’d both be better off, which is a more rational (more winning) outcome. Thus, making “cooperation” a synonym for “irrational” will irk people around here. (Of course if you defect and the other player cooperates, you’d have the best possible payoff.)