1. Prisoner Dilemma

Prisoner Dilemma.

One fine day at MMU in 2003 (the exact year I cannot recall), Prof Norman Foo from New South Wales University gave us a talk. He briefly mentioned the topic “Prisoner Dilemma”. After learning about this term, I started googling and found more about it. I realized why all my past action is not successful; it is partly due to this factor. Today, I had fundamentally change the way I interact with others. I continued with the topic and found another topic called “Tragedy of Common”.

Later on in I think in 2015, I enrolled in a coursera course called “Game Theory “ from University of Tokyo. I am able to gain more about the topic mathematically such as formalize the prisoner dilemma in term of players' payoff.

OK. Enough about the technical term. Let talk about “Tragedy of Common”, let said in a public toilet, the municipal course put in some tissue paper. The first person who comes will maximize the usage of the tissue paper, leaving others to wash their ash with water as he would like to maximize his benefit. It happens everywhere, especially in ASIAN society. So don’t expect others to give way to you.

Another topic is “Prisoner Dilemma”, Suppose the police caught two persons (Ali and Baba) for an attempted burglary. The police do not have sufficient evidence to prosecute them. So the police keep Ali and Baba in a separate room. Here is the payoff table. Both Ali and Baba can choose to “Speak Up or Keep Quiet).

	Baba Keep Quiet	Baba Speak Up
Ali Keep Quiet	Ali and Baba 2 year jail	Ali 2 year jail, baba free
Ali Speak Up	Ali free, Baba 10 year jail	Ali 10 year jail, Baba 10 year jail (stable state)

Things will have been better if both of them keep quiet but since both of them wanted to maximize their payoff, thus will define choose to Speak Up. Thus, in the end both of them ended up with 10 years jail. This is the likely scenario especially dealing with someone who you don’t know. In life, it is the same thing, in a road, if you start to give way to one car, 10 cars will follow behind, you ended up wasted more time.

So how to solve this problem.

1^st : Deal with people who you trust or know.

2^nd : Play the same game multiple times so that you can punish unethical people .

3^rd: For a start with strangers, always start with a small bet (Lost 5 minutes time, lost RM10 etc). If you lose it, other people take advantage of you, never-mind, you can afford to absorb such losses. Just blacklist that person.

I have said enough, if you find it interesting, want to know more/read below. You can email me.

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From prisoner dilemma è Game theory, in life we are playing games with other. Human being is a tricky species to deal with. Sometimes, we win sometimes we lose, sometimes both player benefitted and sometimes both player loses. In life, upon reading this article, look for someone to play game with where both players can benefit.

From the payoff table (ali vs baba), in any game, one will end up with a stable state such as 10 years jail for Ali and Baba, once the game is in steady state, it is very difficult to go to other state. Example, in a society where people cheat each other, it’s already in a steady state where there is no trust in the society as such all deals may sound like this “Cash on delivery”.

As the game continues, you will find out that if you continue to take advantage of others, even unintelligent species such as “ANT” will be able to make a wise decision for their survival and the game will end up in a stable state.

Another example, is in a street 100 meter long where all the tourist are evenly distributed. There are 2 icecream seller who sells at equal price and taste. What is the optimal location to place their stall.

25 m seller 1

75 m seller 2

If they place their stall at 25m and 75m then all customers can be served equally. But both seller wanted to have more customer by moving to the center. In the end, it will be

50m                                                                           Both seller at the center                                                                                  (stable state)

And customer will be at disadvantage, having to walk at most 50 meters instead of 25 meters.

Another example, a paid toll “save you 10 minutes of your time in return for RM3”. You will find out that the average wages for 10 minutes is about RM3. I cannot recall the exact mathematic formulation but in game theory things will stabilized.

However, in life the game we play is unequal, Doctor vs Patient. “Real Estate Agent vs buyer/seller”. Doctor have more information than patient. He can manipulate the game to his advantage. However, doctor have the intention to make $$$ and patient want to get well. In the end, you see despite so many doctors today, people still get a lot of sickness. With so many lawyers, there is so many court cases.