Philip_W comments on The True Prisoner's Dilemma - Less Wrong
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I suspect that the True Prisoner's Dilemma played itself out in the Portugese and Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica. Some natives were said to ask, "Do they eat gold?" They couldn't comprehend why someone would want a shiny decorative material so badly, they'd kill for it. The Spanish were Shiny Decorative Material maximizers.
In a sense they did eat gold, like we eat stacks of printed paper, or perhaps nowadays little numbers on computer screens.