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

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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?

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