re: #84 Old Liberal

I have been reading Robert Sapolsky’s book “Behave” and in it he addresses aspects of the Prisoners Dilemma from game theory. I know that many say it is important that we not be like the Republicans, that we must be “better than them”. But the Prisoners Dilemma illustrates that until the non-cooperating party is hammered back, they will continue to refuse to cooperate. …

I haven’t read Sapolsky but have read other articles about the Prisoners Dilemma. It’s a fun game but its relationship to situations outside of the original premise are limited:
1. It’s strictly mathematical — no reward for being honest or punishment for doing harm. Just 2 actions each party can take with the identical matrix of payoffs; i.e. if A does Y and B does Z the results for A are the same as would be true for B if A did Z and B did Y
2. The payoffs are structured in such a way to encourage certain behaviors if parties engage repeatedly with each other. Different structures would lead to different results.

The whole premise is divorced from honesty, ethics, kindness, or the law. It assumes that both participants are in the same situation and respond to the same incentives. That is clearly not true in our current political world.