In one of my political science classes today we played a little game where she divided up the class into partners and then sent 1 partner out of the room while she talked to the other partner and vice versa. We were playing the prisoners dilemma but we changed it up a bit to fit the situation of a classroom/cheating/failing. If you are not familiar with the scenario I am talking about then just read ahead and I will later on update this post with what I picked and what you should have picked, and trust me ladies and gentlemen there IS a right choice technically (although some may debate it).
There’s this dilemma that you might have heard about in Psychology/Sociology classes called the Prisoners Dilemma, it’s basically a scenario where you have committed a crime with an accomplice. You are caught but there is not enough evidence to put you away completely so the prosecutor gives you the choice to either confess or stay silent (he also gives this option to your accomplice but you have no way of contacting each other throughout)
If you confess, and your accomplice stays silent, you get a get out of jail free card and they get life imprisonment.
If you confess, and your accomplice confesses, you both get 20 years in jail.
If you stay silent, and your accomplice stays silent, you both get 5 years in jail.
Now, these are not debatable, you have no contact with your accomplice, and s/he is neither your friend nor your enemy. You just happened to commit a crime together. What would you pick and why? Would you confess or stay silent?
Update:
I chose to stay silent because I had hope in my bitch of a partner to stay silent and for both of us to get out in 5 years which is relatively better than all of the other choices, except for the one where I betray him/her which I would do but I kept thinking that if I thought like that, then they would think like that and we’d both end up confessing and going to jail for 20 years. I hoped that my good thoughts would penetrate the door and get to my partner. They didn’t. I ended up failing the class, or in this case life imprisonment.
Now, the right choice my comrades would have been to confess. It is what a “rational” individual would have done, as opposed to someone thinking of the collective good. What I (and Moniker) fell into was the Sucker Payoff, which basically means that we decided exactly the way our partners would have wanted us to decide because now they don’t have to go to jail at all. What all of you did (if we assume your partners confessed as well) falls under the dominant strategy. It is what most people do in order to maximize their profit. The optimal strategy though would have been for both of you to stay silent and get 5 years which is nothing, laken lil asaf, we have a bunch of backstabbing self-interested bloggers! You made the rational decision though, all of you except for Moniker (and me).
Simple…betray!!
Say, if I knew my accomplice would stay silent then my best move is to betray as I then walk free instead of receiving the minor sentence. However, if I knew that he would betray then my best move is still to betray, as I receive a lesser sentence than by silence. Betraying is a dominant strategy here. Similarly, if my accomplice thought the same thing, then by both of us defecting, we would get a lower payoff than if we chose to remain silent.
Change ur template mo 3ajibny :/
I second MiYaFuSHi..something about it is stressing my eyes!
You know what I don’t get? Is why the post is called SUSHI!! :P
Any who, with a simple calculations of oppurtunity cost, an effective decision can be made.
What you want is, the minimum number of years behind bars, if not Zero. Under the assumption that the legal system or the prosecutor IS, in fact credible. I would confess, because the probability is 50:50 that your accomplice confesses. And so, you may either get Zero number of years, of 20 years. In oppose to staying silent, where you may either get 5 years or a lifetime in Jail!! The spread in the second option is extreme, and riskier.
So, CONFESS!! “Because the truth will set you free” :P
I second shoosh why sushi lol ;p
regarding Prisoners Dilemma its sounds challenging and interesting man!
Angelo: it isn’t as simple as you would like to think but rationally you made the right choice.
Miya: Ghayarta 3ashanech bas! :*
Big Pearls: but she didn’t like my first one which is why I switched to this one, now you don’t like this one? What’s a confused girl to do? :-(
Shoosh: Maybe because I had sushi today! The truth WILL set you free, and again, it was the rational choice to make. This has nothing to do with the prosecutor so stop bombarding me with your law fetish. :-p
Fadidra: Sushi is yummy. I know, right? It says a lot about a person.
Hmmm..I’d go for the last choice..
And *hope* that they do the same :|
I’d rather do my time instead of having someone else unfairly do my time for me!
A quick look at the comments on this post reveals that confessing is a popular choice (knowing the reward in betraying and the possibility - or hope - that the partner would stay silent).
If I’m A, and I hope or wish that B would stay silent, I would confess right? then again, the same applies for B. He/she wants to confess and wishes that A stays silent.
So what do we do? Both will confess and get 20 years imprisonment, which is relatively better than life imprisonment.
Very small chance that both will remain silent, and thus I hereby declare that confessing is a better choice, for the reason above.
So what’s the right answer? and what did you choose? :D
and how are you :D~
Moderation? Mon Dieu! Big Brother called. He wants his censorship back.
Damn it! here I go committing thought-crime again :(
Moniker: Well technically they aren’t doing it unfairly because they also committed the aforementioned crime. On the other hand, I chose to stay silent as well.
Z: It really was, confessing was what MOST people in class and apparently here did. Your reason is a fairly good reason and it is a reason that a lot of people use, and yeah confessing is the rational choice here. I will now update the post with my choice and what the better choice would have been. I’m alright, I kind of miss you A LOT laken inta madri wainek :-( You always leave me!
and yah moderation, lazem a7afeth 3ala prestige il blog arjook, mo kilmen hab ooh dab can comment, wila shrayek? :-p Speaking of which, I have to write a book report on 1984 comparing it to Rodney Stark’s theories of sociology. I’m dreading it but il7een shawagtni :-p
I would quite simply play the world’s smallest violin in an act of defiance towards the ‘big man’.
This reminds me of the time when I was 11. Me and my friends got a steamroller on a construction site to start and were driving it around. I got caught by the cops. When I was in the back of the police cruiser they asked me if anyone else was driving it. I lied and said “no”. Then they asked my friends who were not arrested at all and one of them confessed. The cop called me a “lying little shit”. Then he took me home and told my parents and the three of them gave me a lecture.