Contributed by: filbert Tuesday, March 14 2006 @ 11:55 AM CST
Christopher Chantrill at The American Thinker:
Back in 1984 Robert Axelrod[*1] from the University of Michigan announced a competition to devise an iterative strategy for winning the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Against all expectations the winner was a strategy called TIT FOR TAT. This strategy operated according to a simple rule. It started out by cooperating with the other prisoner, but thereafter always copied the other’s move. If he cooperated, TIT FOR TAT cooperated back. If the other prisoner defected, then TIT FOR TAT would defect right back. If you conduct this iterated strategy on the world, you will find that it creates islands of trust and cooperation that slowly grow and eventually take over the world.
You can beat TIT FOR TAT. In 2004 a team of students at Southampton University did it using a strategy of collusion between the prisoners, illuminating why we have laws against price fixing and insider trading.
TIT FOR TAT teaches that you should trust people who have demonstrated their trustworthiness.
But no, we’d rather trust hysterical Senators and Congressmen. When will we ever learn?