The Intricacies of Choice: My Look Into the Prisoner's Dilemma

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a very interesting philosophical thought experiment I came across that challenges the idea that you can always act rationally and achieve the best outcome.

Originally created by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher and adapted by Albert W. Tucker, it goes a little bit like this: Two prisoners are locked in separate rooms with the cops trying to get them to confess. The prisoners have two options here: to stay silent or to confess. If one prisoner confesses and the other one doesn’t, the prisoner who stayed silent serves 10 years in jail while the one who confessed gets to go free at that instant. If they both confess, both prisoners spend 6 years in jail.

However (this is the catch), if they both stay silent, they both only have to serve 2 years in jail. Of course, because there’s a chance that one individual prisoner could serve no time in jail by confessing, the rational action to take if you were in one of those prisoners’ shoes is to confess.

But the reason why this is a dilemma is because the prisoners have a lighter consequence if they go against the rational action to take. Because the prisoners are locked in separate rooms with no communication, they have to act in only their best sense. There’s also a whole nother branch of mathematics involved here, game theory, which delves deep into situations where a group of people will try to win individually through logic, knowing that the others in this “game” are also trying to win.

You might think that the Prisoner’s Dilemma is just a fancy thought experiment that doesn’t help us whatsoever. However, situations in the real world sometimes model the problem. For example, imagine the modern fishing industry, with its thousands of fishers. Every individual fisher wants to increase their own profits by catching more fish, but if they do, they risk catching all of the fish with their competitors. So even though catching as many fish as you can would be the rational choice, it is wiser for everyone to catch less fish now in order for the fishing industry as a whole to sustain into the future. Just like the Prisoner’s Dilemma, it is better to go against the rational choice leading to your individual benefit.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma teaches us the importance of balancing personal desires and achieving the greater good. In fact, the thought experiment manages to break down things that are happening in the real world into a concept that can be understood. After all, in this world, aren’t we all prisoners of our own dilemmas?

Comments

Exploring Mobile Automata with Non-Local Rules

This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to attend the Wolfram High School Summer Research Program. Interested in ruliology, I focused my project on mobile automata, a type of simple program similar to cellular automata. Mobile Automata with Non-Local Rules In cellular automata, all cells update in parallel according to a set of rules, whereas mobile automata feature a single active cell that updates at each iteration. The rules for mobile automata dictate the new state of the active cell and its movement. These rules consider the states of the active cell and its immediate neighbors, determining the new color of the active cell and whether it moves to the left or right. Traditionally, mobile automata involve the active cell interacting with its immediate left and right neighbors. However, in my project, I explored the effects of non-local interactions, where the dependent cells are farther away from the active cell. For instance, I examined scenarios where the dependent cells wer

Examining Vagueness in Logic and Science Using the Sorites Paradox

Imagine you have a heap of sand. If you remove a single grain of sand, you’d still call it a heap, right? But what if you keep removing grains, one by one? At some point, it seems like you’d be left with just a few grains—and surely, that’s no longer a heap. But where exactly does the heap stop being a heap? This puzzling question is at the heart of the Sorites Paradox, also known as the paradox of the heap. This paradox highlights the challenges of dealing with vague concepts, which can be tricky not just in everyday life but also in science. What Is the Sorites Paradox? The Sorites Paradox comes from the Greek word "soros," which means heap. The paradox arises when we try to apply precise logic to vague concepts. In its simplest form, it goes like this: A heap of sand is still a heap if you remove one grain. If you keep removing grains, eventually you’ll be left with just one grain. But according to the first point, even one grain less than a heap should still be a heap, wh

The Evolution of Information in Philosophy and AI

Claude Shannon, often called the "father of information theory," developed a groundbreaking way to understand communication. His theory, created in the 1940s, showed how information could be transmitted efficiently, whether through telegraphs, radios, or computers. Shannon introduced the idea of entropy , which measures uncertainty in a message. For example, a completely random message has high entropy, while a predictable one has low entropy. Shannon’s work also addressed how noise, or interference, can affect communication and how redundancy can help correct errors. The formula for Shannon's Entropy illustrates how the probability of each symbol contributes to the overall uncertainty or "information" in a system. This foundational equation in information theory has broad implications in both technology and philosophy, raising questions about the nature of knowledge and reality. (Najera, Jesus. “Intro To Information Theory.” Setzeus, 18 March 2020, https://www

Reason & Reflection

Search This Blog