Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 19:06:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michal Klincewicz <michal-AT-priest.com>
Subject: prisoner's dilemma defined


here is an example of the famous problem often called 'the prisoner's
dilemma':

In the cells of the Ruritanian secret police are two politcal prisoners. The
police are trying to persuade them to confess to membership in the an
illegal opposition party.  The prisoners know that if neither of them
confesses, the police will not be able to make the charge stick, but they
will be interrogated in the cells for another three months before the police
give up and let them go.  If one of them confesses, implicating the other,
the one who confesses will be released immediately but the other will be
sentanced to eight years in jail. If both of them confess, their
helpfullness will be taken into account and they will get five years in
jail.  Since the prisoners are interrogated separately, neither can know if
the other has confessed or not.

The dilemma is, of course, whether to confess. The point of the story is
that circumstances have been so arranged that if either prisoner reasons
from the point of view od self-interestr, she will find it to her advantage
to confess; whereastaking the interests of the two prisoners togetehr, it is
obviously in their interests if neither confesses. Thus the first prisoner's
self-interested calculations go like this: "If the other prisoner confesses,
it will be better for me if i have also confessed, for then I will get five
years instead of eight; and if the other prisoner does not confess, it will
still be better for me if I confess, for then I will be released
immediately, instead of being interrogated for another three months. Since
we are interrogated seperately, whether the other prisoner confesses has
nothing to do with whether I confess--our choices are entirely independent
of each other. SO whatever happens, it will be better for me if I confess."
The second prisoner's self-intereseted reasoning will, of course, follow
exactly the same route as the first prisoner's, and will come to the same
conclusion. As a result, both prisoners. if self-interested, will confess,
and bothwill sped the next five years in prison. There was a way for them
both to be out in three moneths, but because they were locked into purely
seld-interested calculations, they could not take that route.

Now, my question is about a prisoner that is acting on Nietzschean ethical
principles (and what exacltly would they be). What would he/she do, and what
would be the rationale behind it?

----
Michal


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