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zissou | 12 years ago

Despite this clip being a classic classroom example in a game theory course, it's technically not a prisoner's dilemma, for a couple reasons. First, in the PD the players cannot communicate. The ability to communicate makes it more of a signalling game since a player can say/do something to alter the other players' beliefs about their type.

Secondly, in the PD both players have an incentive to defect from their cooperative strategy (stay silent), which results in a Nash equilibrium where both players are worse off. This is, after all, why the prisoner's dilemma is so interesting -- by playing their dominant strategies, both players end up in a worse situation.

In this clip, stealing is a weakly dominant strategy. That is, if I know the other guy is going to steal, I can't be made any better or worse by changing my choice to split or steal. If I know the other guy is splitting, then I of course would want to steal (which is why splitting is an unstable strategy).

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diab0lic|12 years ago

Players cannot communicate in a prisoners dilemma, however the notion of a Precommitment Strategy[0] is very real in game theory and the player in the linked video is doing just that; committing to a strategy in advance of the actual decision making.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precommitment