Defect or Rattle? That's the Problem

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

In tilimma a, two prisoners are each told they can either rat on the other one or stay silent. The pay off of this game is that the very best thing for anyone is to be the one who ratted. But you still prefer to both stay silent than to both rat. So basically, there's a payoff structure that incentivizes you to defect,. but creates the situation where, if you both defected, you would prefer that you had both co operated.

You can’t always get what you want, as a wise person once said. But we do try, even when someone else wants the same thing. Our lives as people, and the evolution of other animals over time, are shaped by competition for scarce resources of various kinds. Game theory provides a natural framework for understanding strategies and behaviors in these competitive settings, and thus provides a lens with which to analyze evolution and human behavior, up to and including why racial or gender groups are consistently discriminated against in society. Cailin O’Connor is the author or two recent books on these issues: Games in the Philosophy of Biology and The Origins of Unfairness: Social Categories and Cultural Evolution.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Cailin O’Connor received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine. She is currently Associate Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science at UCI. Her works involves questions in the philosophy of biology and behavioral science, game theory, agent-based modeling, social epistemology, decision theory, rational choice, and the spread of misinformation.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.