Reply to comment

I found that the best strategy for Prisoner's Dilemma was to cooperate and compete at random intervals. Choosing either option too much or too little lowered my score, but if I went in a pattern, Serendip would recognize it.

In class, we talked about the example of class participation. Putting it into the context of the game, students compete for the attention of the professor. If students cooperate (for example, a group project), they gain somewhat equal amounts of attention. If they compete, (perhaps in an open discussion) each student recieves the same amount of attention, but less than when they cooperated. If a student decides to compete (say, by leading the discussion) and another student decides to cooperate (by continuing with the same discussion or by staying silent), the first student would gain more attention than the second. In the game, there is the critical number that, if a player falls below, will doom the player to an ill fate. This critical number represents the finite potential of the game (thus, it being a "zero-sum game"). There may be no end to students competing for a professor's attention, but attention is a finite resource. If a student loses that attention, it would be like falling below the critical number. He/she loses the game.

The idea of cooperation as an ideal has been brought up. In the game, cooperation was not well rewarded. There were no severe consequences for both players competing. A cooperative player, however, is more likely to experience the most severe negative consequences for their behavior on a case-by-case basis.  No coins, no attention, or all of the jail time.  It is quite apparent, then, that any winning strategy (winning as defined by having the best outcome quantitatively) cannot only include one option. Are you behind in coins, so you choose to compete? Or are you rolling in the cash, ready to cooperate? The question is: how are the sanctions of the game nudging us to compete or cooperate? Relating to Anne's questions: how are the sanctions of the looming end-of-the-semester grades nudging our class towards or away from a win-win situation?