SilasBarta comments on The continued misuse of the Prisoner's Dilemma - Less Wrong

29 Post author: SilasBarta 23 October 2009 03:48AM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 24 October 2009 05:53:57PM 1 point [-]

Ashley may have left class and spent $17.45 neutralizing those hits to her reputation (distribute the money after class, buy everyone a beer, etc.). She would have netted $0.01 more doing this than cooperating.

Did you miss the part about it being a 500-student class?

Comment author: bgrah449 24 October 2009 06:16:30PM 0 points [-]

I meant the 7 people she "beat" at the game. Besides, have some faith in Ashley's ability to find a really, really good price-to-performance ratio on reputational gains!

Comment author: SilasBarta 24 October 2009 08:47:53PM 2 points [-]

But if she redistributed enough to her friends to make up for what she took, that would have been the original agreement they had made in the first place!

Comment author: bgrah449 24 October 2009 11:30:23PM 2 points [-]

My entire point was that I think it's possible for Ashley to use her gains from defecting in the PD to more than offset her real-life reputational costs.

Do you disagree with my statement that it is possible to do that?

Comment author: SilasBarta 25 October 2009 03:01:18AM 5 points [-]

Yes, I do disagree, because any later redistribution to them will either be a) less than what they would have gotten in the original deal, or b) the same as what it would have been if she had just stuck to the disagreement.

Plus, undoing damage to your reputation is much harder than doing the damage.