I think it’s odd that he would say that only Ashley understood the game, not because she may actually be the loser in the wider scheme of things, but because the relevance of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is that is actually supposed to be a dilemma. His saying only her action showed understanding suggests he doesn’t think it’s a real dilemma at all. He thinks it’s a question with an answer: defect.
It isn’t the prisoner’s dilemma and Hamerish did not describe it as such. It is similar to the Prisoner’s Dilemma in as much as, well it is to do with game theory and people could cooperate. The title of this post is a misuse of ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’.
It is a completely standard mistake to refer to just about anything game theoretic as ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’. In this instance, there are several elements that are neither newcomblike nor Prisoner’s Dilemmaish. When one adds all the necessary assumptions and limitations to this problem to make the decision one particular agent faces analogous to a Prisoner’s Dilemma one does not find that $0.05 is equivalent to ‘defect’. The judgement required to reach that decision requires far more insight than a defection. When Hamerish said Ashley understood the game he was not saying “Ashley chose to defect which is the correct response to the Prisoner’s not-dilemma”.
Mind you, Neil makes a good point. He just happens to be making false claims about what a Professor believes because he has been fed a false premise. I don’t like being misrepresented and I particularly don’t like it when this misrepresentation makes me look naive. If we go around saying things that are not true out of negligence then this is what we can expect to happen.
When one adds all the necessary assumptions and limitations to this problem to make the decision one particular agent faces analogous to a Prisoner’s Dilemma one does not find that $0.05 is equivalent to ‘defect’.
It doesn’t need to be. The mapping to the PD here is that defection is continuous rather than binary. It generalizes the concept of defection in the canonical PD so that you can choose a level of defection, and the most “defective” (!) person, if they aren’t equal, diverts utility to him/herself at the expense of the other players.
Just like how in the standard PD, a defection when the other player doesn’t will divert utility to yourself.
The mapping to the PD here is that defection is continuous rather than binary.
In the PD increasing defection level from 0 to 1 never lowers utility. In this game increasing what you call the continuous measure of defection always lowers utility except when your defection is the largest.
We cannot draw conclusions about whether Hamerish believes the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a dilemma just because one element of the game he described is the potential for collusion.
Since a bid’s winningness is contingent on other bids you can’t use winning as a proxy for understanding. If they all thought and acted like Ashley and broke the pact with 5 cent bids would they all have got a round of applause for their great insight in bidding 5 cents?
I think it’s odd that he would say that only Ashley understood the game, not because she may actually be the loser in the wider scheme of things, but because the relevance of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is that is actually supposed to be a dilemma. His saying only her action showed understanding suggests he doesn’t think it’s a real dilemma at all. He thinks it’s a question with an answer: defect.
It isn’t the prisoner’s dilemma and Hamerish did not describe it as such. It is similar to the Prisoner’s Dilemma in as much as, well it is to do with game theory and people could cooperate. The title of this post is a misuse of ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’.
It is completely standard to refer to a wide class of problems as PD. This example is much closer than most examples.
It is a completely standard mistake to refer to just about anything game theoretic as ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’. In this instance, there are several elements that are neither newcomblike nor Prisoner’s Dilemmaish. When one adds all the necessary assumptions and limitations to this problem to make the decision one particular agent faces analogous to a Prisoner’s Dilemma one does not find that $0.05 is equivalent to ‘defect’. The judgement required to reach that decision requires far more insight than a defection. When Hamerish said Ashley understood the game he was not saying “Ashley chose to defect which is the correct response to the Prisoner’s not-dilemma”.
Mind you, Neil makes a good point. He just happens to be making false claims about what a Professor believes because he has been fed a false premise. I don’t like being misrepresented and I particularly don’t like it when this misrepresentation makes me look naive. If we go around saying things that are not true out of negligence then this is what we can expect to happen.
It doesn’t need to be. The mapping to the PD here is that defection is continuous rather than binary. It generalizes the concept of defection in the canonical PD so that you can choose a level of defection, and the most “defective” (!) person, if they aren’t equal, diverts utility to him/herself at the expense of the other players.
Just like how in the standard PD, a defection when the other player doesn’t will divert utility to yourself.
In the PD increasing defection level from 0 to 1 never lowers utility. In this game increasing what you call the continuous measure of defection always lowers utility except when your defection is the largest.
There’s a deeper similarity to the PD and I explained it in the original post.
We cannot draw conclusions about whether Hamerish believes the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a dilemma just because one element of the game he described is the potential for collusion.
Since a bid’s winningness is contingent on other bids you can’t use winning as a proxy for understanding. If they all thought and acted like Ashley and broke the pact with 5 cent bids would they all have got a round of applause for their great insight in bidding 5 cents?
Win isn’t an answer. It’s like somebody asking “where’s the Central station?” getting the answer “just find it”.
No, it’s like saying “Alison found the Central Station! Well done!”