Sunday, September 03, 2006
Haha pplz, let me present something to you all, something that is well-known in game theory. Never mind that you do not know about game theory, just know that its an area of mathmatics that lays the foundation of economics theory.
This problem is known as the Prisoner's Dilemma. Some of you may have heard of it before, some of you might have not, but here is the problem anyway:
Suppose you are a criminal warlord. You and your accomplice have just been recently caught by the police for a a major crime. The police puts both of you in separate interrogating rooms. They tell each of you separately that currently they have enough evidence to sentence both of you to 5 years of jail. They just require either of you of confess to solidfy the evidence. The police tells you that if either one of you confess, the police will let the confessor go free, and sentence the other to 10 years of jail. However, if both of you confess the police will charge both of you to 7 years of jail. If neither confesses, the police will sentence of you to 5 years of jail. The police gives both of you 24 hours to think about it. Both you and your accomplice are not allowed to communicate to each other, so both of you will have to make your decision independent of the other.
While in your cell, you wonder whether you should defect( i.e. to confess and rat on your accomplice) or you should coorperate( i.e. to keep mum and not give away anything). Rational thinking may go like this: "Hmm..I should be loyal and not give away anything. However if my partner rats of me, I will go the 10 years of jail..Maybe I should just defect and leave my partner to die. But my partner may be thinking of the very same thing! If both of us defects, we would both get 7 years of jail! If only both of us can cooperate..then we would only get 5 years...Perhaps I should just save my own skin first."
What would you do if you were faced with the same dilemma?
Jing Hao
