The Axelrod Tournament and the strategy used to win Prisoner’s Dilemma games
For the uninitiated – here is a summary of Prisoner’s dilemma –
Two prisoners are accused of a crime. If one confesses and the other does not, the one who confesses will be released immediately and the other will spend 20 years in prison. If neither confesses, each will be held only a few months. If both confess, they will each be jailed 15 years
If two players play the prisoner’s dilemma more than once in succession, remember previous actions of their opponent and are allowed to change their strategy accordingly, the game is called the iterated prisoner’s dilemma.
Life is like iterated prisoner’s dilemma games
Robert Axelrod ran an experiment to understand the model that will win in iterated Prisoner’s dilemma games
What is the strategy that won?
Not always betraying your opponent
Or always cooperating
It was Tit for Tat.
Anatol Rapoport won with the strategy of TIT FOR TAT.
TFT starts with cooperate and then does whatever the other person did on the previous move.
The success of the tit-for-tat strategy, which is largely cooperative despite that its name emphasises an adversarial nature, took many by surprise
Having said that, the game was bounded by specific number of rounds and isn’t a complete representation of the real world.
Nonetheless, it is an interesting take on payoffs and how you look at decisions.
Read more here : https://lawrules.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/the-axelrod-tournaments/
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