Maggie's Farm

Here's a succinct description of the Prisoner's Dilemma, from this site:

In this hypothetical situation, two accomplices to a crime are imprisoned, and they forge a pact to not betray one another and not confess to the crime. The severity of the punishment that each receives is determined not only by his or her behavior, but also by the behavior of his or her accomplice. The two prisoners are separated and cannot communicate with each other. Each is told that there are four possible outcomes:

- If one confesses to the crime and turns in the accomplice (defecting from a pact with the accomplice), his sentence will be reduced.

- If one confesses while the accomplice does not (i.e. the accomplice cooperates with the pact to not betray each other), the first can strike a deal with the police, and will be set free. But the information he provides will be used to incriminate his accomplice, who will receive the maximum sentence.

- If both prisoners confess to the crime (i.e. both defect from their pact), then each receives a reduced sentence, but neither is set free.

It's fun for two people to play this game repetitively, and see who wins over time.

My idea was to write up something about that Prisoner's Dilemma game, but then I got lured away by the topic of the Tragedy of the Commons. Game Theory ties these subjects together, and so those subjects may need to wait a bit.

My calculus is not what it used to be but, as an attorney, I still find that Game Theory has its appeal for me.

Appeal, if not too much practical utility, because Game Theory tends to assume some degree of rationality, and humans are only rational on occasion.  Indeed, one reason for hiring an attorney is to apply some degree of objective rationality to a situation. Still, I believe that formal Game Theory - as opposed to normal legal strategizing - can inform legal practice. Here's a nice summary of the book Game Theory and the Law, which has some good references at the bottom.

People are often gaming things, aren't they? There's a survival instinct to make the most of a situation to best achieve your own goals. Only conscience, character, tradition, care for others, and the desire for the respect and trust of others stand in the way of humanity's being a pure gaming, calculating, scheming, strategic machine. We consider people who operate that way all the time as sociopathic.

When I studied calculus in college, the teachers were all into game theory. Their heros were von Neumann, Morgenstern, and of course the great John Nash, who elaborated the Nash Equilibrium - and who can still be seen wandering around Princeton - about whom Sylvia Nasar wrote the fascinating book, and then Ron Howard produced the wonderful "Best Picture" Beautiful Mind.

The spiritual home of Game Theory is the RAND Corporation, where very smart people work on interesting economic, military, and policy problems. I was interested to find that they have a graduate program. That would be one cool place to hang out for a while, in Santa Monica.

OK, this is already long enough and, as usual with my occasional rambles, I arrived both nowhere and somewhere. I will do the Tragedy of the Commons - more accurately termed The Tragedy of the Unregulated Commons (since, historically, all commoners (those with the right of commons) were of necessity highly regulated either by tradition or by law) - sometime soon. And eventually work my way back into the Prisoner's Dilemma.