WTF why did he (the precommiter) choose split after all?
The WHOLE point is to change it from a difficult decision with close outcomes to one where split is the only choice with positive utility (the chance that other person will keep their word).
WTF why did he (the precommiter) choose split after all?
If the other guy (Abraham) had chosen "steal", the supposed precommitter (Nick) would not have gotten anything either way, under any scenario.
If Abraham had chosen "split", it was a time-saver to have the gameshow hosts divide the money between them, than to gift half of it afterwards to him.
So Nick's whole ploy was to effectively scare Abraham into saying "split" -- by making him think that contrary to normal expectations it was saying "steal" that would ens...
I found this to be a very interesting method of dealing with a modified Prisoner's Dilemma. In this situation, if both players cooperate they split a cash prize, but if one defects he gets the entire prize. The difference from the normal prisoner's dilemma is that if both defect, neither gets anything, so a player gains nothing by defecting if he knows his opponent will defect; he merely has the option to hurt him out of spite. Watch and see how one player deals with this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qjK3TWZE8