Tit for Tat & Prisoner's Dilemma

For this weeks blog, I was intrigued to listen to the podcast named “Tit for Tat” and write about it. First, I like the freedom to write anything I’m thinking about it, how I feel about it, etc. second, I think podcasts are a great way to explain something deeper and allow me to just listen to what is being said. This podcast was all about the prisoner’s dilemma and how it isn’t just a game, but it happened it history and happens everyday in society. In the 60s, a computer scientist began this theory or idea about tit for tat and made it a game. He had over 200 different computerized games made by different programs to play this game. When I thought about how many different choices and ways this could go, it blew my mind. There were more than 200 different programs to even begin which made me think about how many different choices there are in the real world that deal with cooperation or retaliation like this game did. Hen they brought up history and how the prisoners dilemma pertains to that as well, it really made me think and understand the concept itself even better. In war, when the British were fighting the Germans, it was Christmas Eve night. No one wanted to fight and kill others. They started singing and the other side joined in. They were cooperating and trading items and making food and telling stories. This shows the cooperation side of life and what happens when one side does good, so does the other. On the other end, when this celebration and cooperation ended, all hell broke loose. One side started fighting again, and what happened to the other side? They started fighting back..retaliation. We see this everyday in life. For the most part, if someone is cooperating with you and “being nice”, the other side will most likely reciprocate that back. It’s interesting to think that humans have all of this power of how to act towards another. It seems like a preprogrammed thing, like the computer program game. But humans can do so much more than going by the rules of the game. Be nice if someone is mean. Be nice and the others be nice. A quote from the podcast stood out to me: “suppose you have a world of Lucifer’s and a few tit for tat players. Can they thrive, can cooperation emerge in this horribly hostile world?”. If there are enough good in the world, we can turn the bad over and become good as well. It can be simple just like that, but it requires work and time to do. I think of it this way. If I am nice to even just one person in my day, how much more likely are they to be nice back and then nice to the next person they encounter? It would be a chain of events. Of course like mentioned, there are going to be Lucifer’s in the world that don’t care to be nice, but if you focus on being nice to every person (or try to), they might reciprocate those feelings back in a tit for tat game.