To the editors:
In his essay, William Press retells the story of how he, together with the late mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson, discovered that there are nefarious strategies within the prisoner’s dilemma game that allow a player to control the opponent’s winnings. As Press discusses, the game creates a scenario in which two agents are arrested on suspicion of committing a crime and are interrogated separately. They are each offered a deal: “Rat out your fellow conspirator and walk away with a light sentence, or rot in jail for a prolonged period.” The dilemma here is that cooperating with your fellow suspect is irrational because the temptation to defect, by giving up the accused counterpart, is too great. But if a cooperative act is not rewarded, how could cooperation evolve to be so ubiquitous in biology, then?
It turns out that the answer to this question is already contained in the description of the prisoner’s dilemma, where it is prescribed that the defendants are interrogated separately, to prevent them from communicating with each other. If they could, they surely would reach a pact where they pledge to each other that they will stay quiet; maybe they would seal the pact by swearing that if one should break the accord, the other would retaliate in the worst way once released. And indeed, when acts of cooperation between people and animals are analyzed in detail, it is clear that the parties are cooperating only when they can communicate. Robert Trivers described a tiny cleaner fish might rid the gills of a much larger fish from ectoparasites, which is a dangerous undertaking for the one doing the cleaning as the temptation for a quick meal always looms large for the bigger fish. But there clearly is an understanding between the two: the smaller one will not clean just anyone but only the type it is associated with. Furthermore, the cleaner fish signals to the host fish when the cleaning is finished, so the host can continue swallowing other small fish.1 There is no doubt that this act of cooperation, and likely all others, relies on two-way communication....
From Neuroanthropology:
Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Evolution of Inequality – Does Unfairness Triumph After All?
A new paper, Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma contains strategies that dominate any evolutionary opponent (pdf), has just been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Written by William Press and Freeman Dyson, it represents a substantial breakthrough in strategies that work in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game.....MUCH MORE
Thinking Big With Freeman Dyson: Project Orion
The writer is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Stevens Institute of Technology.....
