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Book Review, © Copyright 1997, Jim Loy
This book is essentially an introduction to game theory. It tells the history of game theory, and of its inventor, John von Neumann (the best brain in the world), and of the other people who worked on game theory.
Here's my version of the prisoner's dilemma:
We have two prisoners who together committed a crime. We don't have much of a case. If one or the other will rat on his partner, we can go to trial. We offer them a deal:We will give full immunity to the rat, if only one of them rats. We will give no immunity if they both rat, but we will reduce the sentence that we are asking for. If neither of them rats, then we will convict them of a lesser offense, with a much lesser sentence.The lesser sentence, for the lesser offense, will be much less than the reduced sentence for the main crime, by the way. If you were one of the prisoners, would you rat on your partner? Think about it.
There are other versions of the prisoner's dilemma. They can occur in real life. The prisoner's dilemma is one of the puzzles that is analyzed with game theory.
This book deals with this and other dilemmas of game theory. One of these other dilemmas was whether the USA should have made an unprovoked nuclear attack against the USSR, the "preventive war" which some people advocated.
To order this book, click Amazon.com (goes directly to this book).
Question: Why is this called a dilemma? Pretend that I am one of the prisoners. Is my decision difficult? Let's look at it, in a little more detail:
| My choice: Rat | My choice: Don't rat | |
| If other prisoner rats | Reduced sentence | Full sentence |
| If other prisoner does not rat | Go free! | Lesser offense, much lesser sentence |
It looks simple. I should rat on my partner. No matter what he does, I do better if I rat. But, he will reason the same way, and rat on me. We both will get a reduced sentence. That is better than getting a full sentence. But, there is a better deal, for both of us, on that chart. If neither one of us rats, we both get convicted of a lesser offense, with the much lesser sentence.
So, neither one of us will rat. Maybe we discussed this situation before the crime. Well, then I should rat on him, and go completely free. But, of course, he will figure that out, too.