Two bank robbers have been caught by the police and now being questioned separated from each other. The situation is that if one of them turns crown witness he will get off scot-free while the other will face 10 years in prison. If they both confess, they will each face 8 years. If they both keep mum then the best the police can expect is that they each get two years. This is known as The Prisoner’s Dilemma.

In 1979 the political scientist Robert Axelrod decided to organise a tournament which a number of game theorists from different academic fields were asked to submit a game which plays The Prisoner’s Dilemma. Each game computed to each other for 200 rounds.

What would you have submitted? In other words, what kind of strategy you would have come up with. You are one of the prisoners and you have to make a choice of defecting or cooperating 200 times. After each decision you will be informed about the other prisoner’s choice.

To everybody’s surprise, the shortest program won. It had been submitted by the psychologist and philosopher Anatol Rapoport. His strategy was TITFORTAT; on the first move, cooperate, then do whatever the other player did last. Interestingly, TITFORTAT couldn’t have managed to win a single game during the tournament. But its overall score at the end of the tournament was far higher than other programs.

Axelrod has arranged another tournament. This second tournament was a somewhat bigger affair, with 62 entrants from six countries. TITFORTAT was once again submitted to the tournament. When the results came out, Axelrod was stunned because TITFORTAT had won again. Despite the fact that all the contestants had known the strategy of TITFORTAT and how well it might do, none of them could come up with something that was better.

The reason behind the success of TITFORTAT was hidden in three characteristics of it.

Niceness
Forgiveness
Retaliatory

Is the success of our life related to these characteristics?

Are we still keep failing despite the fact that all of us know the “recipe” of the TITFORTAT?

Or, are we so persistent in winning every game?

Posted by admin on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 6:20 am.