Nice Guys Finish First Scientific Experiment based on Prisoners Dilemma Theory

gekkozorz · 2015-01-09T04:44:29+00:00

I remember learning about the Prisoner's Dilemma in Game Theory in college. Really explains a lot about the measure of a man based on how they respond to it, I think.

A classic example of this particular game as represented in pop culture is the boat scene at the end of The Dark Knight. There were two boats, each of them strapped with bombs. Each boat was given the detonator to the explosives on the other boat. Both were told that if they didn't press the button before a certain time, they'd both blow up.

The humanistic thing to do, of course, would be to not push the button. The Dark Triad thing to do is push it - fuck the other guys, I got mine, right?

A couple months ago, there was some big drama about that EMSK post from Reddit user Talshar about why no one should take the Red Pill. It was very popular, got thousands of votes, and enough guilding to last the user for like probably years.

Basically, what his logic boiled down to was this: sure, the Red Pill might work for you. If you start using sexual strategy and take a more dominant role in your relationship with women, you might have more success with dating and romance. And the same can be said of women, though of course female sexual strategy would be entirely different from ours - but that's a whole nother can of worms.

But sexual strategy will kill you inside. At least, this was Talshar's logic. If you're being a selfish bastard and savagely try to create value for yourself without accounting for the other person's feelings, you'll become, I dunno, an evil Red Pill zombie person or something. I forget exactly what his point was.

My counterpoint is this: suppose your relationship with women was like that scene in TDK. Suppose the Joker gave both you and the woman you're seeing a magical button which would create utility for yourself, while subtracting utility from the other person. Like, say, the woman pushes the button, you become her beta slave and have to pay her bux for the rest of the month, and if you push the button, she becomes your sex princess and has to do all the stuff you want for the rest of the month. Whoever pushes the button first is the ONLY person who gets the perks, both detonators evaporate after one button is pushed.

The "nice guy" thing to do in this situation is to not push the button. But here's the thing: she WILL push it. I guarantee it. Women are never happy with what they have, and if they can get a little more out of life, they will always, ALWAYS go for it. It's just how hypergamy works. The instant she finds a guy with bigger muscles, more game, more money, etc, she's going to leave you and be with him in an instant. She always needs more, more more.

The only way to win the Prisoner's Dilemma, guaranteed, every time, is to push the button.

And that's exactly what the Nash equilibrium is for this game will ALWAYS be to push the button. That is a mathematical fact. Because people are selfish bastards.

It's not nice, it's just how human nature works. That's all there is to it.

Radibomsadoodmanoid · 2015-01-09T03:46:36+00:00

Their "nice guys" aren't the same as the "nice guys" we talk about. The prisoner dilemma is between two individuals of equal power in isolation, it's a pretty specific setup. It has some real world use, but not really useful when it comes to sex and relationships.

get_real_quick · 2015-01-09T07:37:56+00:00

There's so many faulty assumptions with this, but I'll focus on four principal ones:

First the tit for tat simulation that the video discusses is an iterated game. There's a round 1, and then the initial player adjusts his or her strategy based on player 2's strategy. That's problematic because that's not how sexual strategy works at all. Rather, sexual games are one-off games. There's no iteration. That's important because it means that one or both players do not have the opportunity to learn the strategy of the other player. You play your hand simultaneously, and she figures out based on that whether you're an alpha or an orbiter, and you figure out based on that whether she's sex-worthy or not. That's it. If either party doesn't want it, it's not happening. Only if both parties want it does it happen. Now, you could make an argument that as a long-term strategy then (i.e. you've fucked her, and now you're trying to keep her) being the "nice guy" is going to be more sustainable/successful. But that is NOT the claim the video makes (nice guys finish first) AND as I discuss in the three points below, that's a crock of shit.

Second the video assumes that a "nice guy" strategy is in fact a "cooperate" strategy. Except nice guys can just be as selfish or even moreso than RP-mentality. And RP guys can still cooperate without fucking over their women. It's not clear at all what the parameters for "nice guy" are here other than "guy who is not an asshole neanderthal douchebag blah blah blah"--basically, the bogeyman that betas complain about, but who any woman who has spent time with an RP name knows is just a fucking caricature.

Third the video conveniently cites a ton of biological shit where a cooperate strategy rather than a defect strategy is systemically advantaged, except the one CRITICAL situation that matters the most when we're talking about sexual strategy: MATING. How the fuck could they exclude that?! Animals ROUTINELY adopt sexual strategies that are more akin to the alpha-beta dynamic that we discuss in RP.

Fourth the players are not similarly situated in sexual strategy games. We can't just pretend that players 1 and 2 hold equal amounts of power, or that their strategies net the same utils whether they are played by player 1 or 2. So the congruence with the model completely falls apart, because it could be that differences in the payout are totally incongruous with the Prisoner's Dilemma model in which "cooperation" means more value for both of them. For instance, if women get a larger payout from cooperating with a defecting mate (i.e. fucking an alpha), then she's going to do that. The entire model BEGS THE FUCKING QUESTION because it applies a payout structure to the sexual transaction and arrives at an answer that supports the normative position, without first stopping to question whether that model is even the appropriate payout structure for the particular transaction in the first place.

A better use of the Prisoner's Dilemma is to figure out whether it is in fact sexually advantageous for RP men to fuck BP men's girlfriends and wives. There is a PD argument to be made that doing so basically makes you the party 2 defector in the tit for tat game, which is sexually disadvantageous. But it's silly to think that because I fuck Bob's girlfriend, Jim is going to find out about that in the long run, or that Jim's girlfriend will also find out about that in the long run, so I don't think even that far more trenchant application of PD theory is a correct one.

At bottom, this is a silly, shitty application of game theory that actively encourages people to apply the WRONG strategy to maximize happiness for individual players in the game.

yummyluckycharms · 2015-01-09T06:16:30+00:00

Consultant chiming in here.....

Game theory is only to be used as a way of thinking - not something to be used in practice. Best used when the options are 50/50.

Perhaps the biggest problem with game theory is that the results differ greatly based on the game is constructed. Of course the biggest problem, is that to be effective, it requires perfect knowledge (as in if I do a, other person will do x), and secondly, it usually requires the ability to assign probabilities to any given event - which is extremely hard in the business world as companies tend to have many options available to them

So using the example in the video above, notice how they had the game so that both players get 300 for cooperating? In real life, there will always be a person who gets more than the other - whether that is because they are able to leverage social, economic, or political assets to maximize their reward.

Another thing is that game theory doesn't include the benefit of negative actions. Playing poker, sometimes you want to lose a few hands, so that you can win more later on. Police negotiators used to be trained in game theory in dealing with hostage takers, until they realized that in some scenarios, hostage takers wanted to lose so as to create the most damage, which again, game theory failed to account for.

TheLife_ · 2015-01-09T06:42:58+00:00

This is where they fucked up. Nice guys take a gamble between making $300 and losing $100, but the evil twit (Read: genius) who plays defect is gambling between making $500 and losing only $10. This means you would have play the card 50 times before equalizing one win. As a nice guy? You'd only have to lose 3.

The choice is obvious, and, tbh, I'd probably only play the cooperate card a couple of times to try and fool the other guy. This is simply all about fear of loss, which is what they're playing on to "prove" their hypothesis.

I very much disagree with what they found. Their "nice" strategies sound to me like better disguised asshole strategies - copying your opponent's previous move. This game makes more sense when you replace money with prison time (classic prison dilemma.)

You and your buddy are arrested for a some crime, and the DA says "let me cut you a deal. We have enough evidence to convict both of you for X crime with a prison sentence of 1 year. If you testify against your friend, we'll let you off and your buddy goes for crime Y for ten years. If you both testify against each other, you'll get 5 years each for obstructing an investigation."

When this is only a one-off situation, no time and five years sounds a whole lot better than 1 year or ten years. Don't ever do something illegal with me (I actually tell my closest mates this.) The "nice" strategy doesn't work when there is only a single instance of this.

nusttothat · 2015-01-09T18:57:51+00:00

"Nice guy" is different than tit-for-tat.

Nice guy is more like doormat, where no matter what crazy sh*t happens the guy takes it.

Tit-for-tat is treating other people well because they will treat you well, and getting back at people that break that rule.

wantonton · 2015-01-09T03:45:15+00:00

I don't see where that's necessarily anti trp. TRP is simply an analysis of predictable behaviors in men and women pursuing sex (at least that's what it was originally). what you do with that knowledge is up to you.

You'll see a lot of contradicting information here. An example is the 48 laws of power that says protect your reputation at all costs. You'll then see a post advising to sleep with married women. Those two precepts can arguably be said to contradict. People will argue that the concepts refer to two different spheres of analysis. It goes on.

Nothing in the TRP concept suggests anyone should be mean or aggressive. I can train to box everyday and be a skilled fighter, doesn't mean I'm mean or aggressive. Does mean I likely know how to fight.

TRP helps you understand yourself and others. Use it to be the kind of person you think you need to be.

RBuddDwyer · 2015-01-09T12:28:49+00:00

Here is how you ace prisoner's dilemma.

Golden Balls is a British game show that is pretty much pure game theory played for money. Usually the contestants will just lie to each other about what their intentions are, and the better liar wins. This guy went in a completely unexpected direction that had never been seen before on the show. Even though this clip is only six minutes long, the whole scene actually played out over an hour or two while everyone tried to figure out what was going on. The show had to consult their lawyers even before going forward. In the end, it would up being a truly amazing spin on how to handle this situation.

Absolutely brilliant.

Wolf_A · 2015-01-09T03:56:12+00:00

To that I'll say, where is the published paper? And I don't see citations of any previous studies either.

Reading just how they conducted (actually more of a simulation) the "experiment" I don't see if they thought of and controlled for any of the crucial variables that can have an affect on the outcome.

tyzon05 · 2015-01-09T04:45:08+00:00

This isn't a nice guy as much as it is a trusting person.

It's something you'll run into in any introductory game theory course.

Keep in mind if he chooses to trust and the other person doesn't, he gets burned twice as hard. The whole thing hinges on guessing that the other guy isn't going to screw you over.

exit_sandman · 2015-01-09T10:34:00+00:00

What do you guys think about this / What is your opinion on its validity as a relevant example?

It assumes that you always play with the same person. It also omits that there are some DT people who can con people into thinking they will cooperate and not defect on a fairly regular basis.

Also, the example doesn't account for someone aggressively playing a tease-and-denial-game with a conflict-averse person where you can abstain from cooperating overall and still have a net positive outcome: In the example in the link, you get 500$ for winning, 300$ for cooperating, -10$ for fighting and -100$ for losing. Now if you cooperate all the time, you get 1200$ each over four games. If you fight all the time, you get -40$ each over four games.

But imagine we have a dark triad guy and a doormat gambling, and DT guy only cooperates 25% of the time, he gets 1800$ over four games, but the doormat gets 0$. So the doormat thinks he's still better off than he would be if they were fighting 100% of the time (which would lead to his gaming partner also fighting 100% of the time, which would lead to the -40$ net loss), yet he still lets himself be taken advantage of by the aggressive partner.

However, what he doesn't account for is that taking a more confronting stance might actually force his adversary into a more compliant gaming style. Because if he was refusing cooperation 50% of the time, his opponent would still win bigger than him, but lose more than he would if they were cooperating all the time. And even if he was just refusing cooperation 25% of the time, he would be better off yet still keep the other player around (because he was still profiting from the way the game was played).

Of course how this actually plays out is highly stake-dependent (there was one particularly harsh version that hat "winning: freedom + 10.000$, cooperating: freedom, fighting: 5 years prison, losing: death penalty as its stakes), but under more normal circumstances like in the example on the site are more common. And true doormats may actually prefer the 0$-solution at the faint hope that the other will start "playing fair" at some point.

maxmangel · 2015-01-09T11:43:19+00:00

The test is invalid to draw any meaningful life analogous conclusion from. Half the point of the prisoners dilemma is that it is meant to be a singular important one-off event - like being in jail the rest of your life, or not. The idea of 'seeing what happens' over hundreds of iterations is absurdest and destroys the whole point of the test. Of course, if you screw over some guy who will have hundreds of further opportunities in this artificial environment for revenge on you then that is a bad idea...it is trivially obvious. Nothing useful here...

RedPillSafe · 2015-01-09T13:28:16+00:00

I know how I would play.

My first act would be to plainly tell the other guy that if he doesn't cooperate that there will be punishment equal to the cost of the offense.

Then I'd follow through and if the guy didn't cooperate I'd punish him with 50 rounds of losing $10.

After that it's pretty likely that it becomes a "win win" where each guy makes $300.

Dread Game. You can't "be nice".

FortunateBum · 2015-01-09T23:55:54+00:00

This is really nice guys finish first if nice guys are the only thing that exists.

Put one selfish asshole into the mix and the selfish asshole comes out on top because he takes what he wants from all the nice guys. The nice guys either become selfish assholes too or they exile the asshole.

iBrokeRSA · 2015-01-10T23:03:39+00:00

The thing is that the "tit-for-tat" strategy only applies to a series of games, which is analogous to LTR game.

The short term strategy is to always defect like gekkozors mentions.

Also, it's clear that asapscience is politically motivated -- any of their other videos hamster just as much.

Title	Nice Guys Finish First Scientific Experiment based on Prisoners Dilemma Theory
Author	bazwalt
Upvotes	7
Comments	36
Date	January 9, 2015 3:32 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/2rtiqe/nice_guys_finish_first_scientific_experiment/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/nice-guys-finish-first-scientific-experiment-based.27756 https://theredarchive.com/post/27756

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