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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Mutual confession is the solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma game, the outcome on which play must converge when players are economically rational.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Economic rationality, as Gauthier argues in 'Morals by Agreement,' includes the capacity to make and honor constrained maximization commitments.
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    • 2.A player who is transparent as a constrained maximizer can signal credible cooperation, making mutual refusal a rational equilibrium for such agents.
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    • 3.Therefore, the claim that economic rationality necessitates mutual confession presupposes a narrow Humean conception of rationality that is itself philosophically contested.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.In iterated or indefinitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemma settings, Axelrod's tournaments demonstrate that tit-for-tat strategies yield higher long-run payoffs than mutual defection.
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    • 2.The folk theorem in game theory establishes that cooperation is a Nash equilibrium in infinitely repeated games when players discount the future sufficiently little.
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    • 3.The claim that mutual confession is the uniquely rational solution smuggles in a one-shot assumption that is empirically and theoretically unwarranted as a general account of rationality.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Player I's payoffs in every cell of the top row (confess) are higher than the corresponding payoffs in the bottom row (refuse to confess), regardless of what Player II does.
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    • 2.Because refusing to confess is strictly dominated for Player I, Player I will never choose that strategy.
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    • 3.After eliminating Player I's bottom row, Player II's payoff from confessing is higher than from refusing in each remaining cell.
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