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i have been binging SMBC lately and it's affected my sense of humor, so here, have a prisoner's dilemma comic

@typhlosion And this is why it's important to always know the payoffs. The extra funny bit to me is how she thinks it's a Prisoner's Dilemma despite knowing her own payoffs rank betraying her friend worse than serving 10 years.

@alice generously, you could describe it as a variant on the prisoner's dilemma, but given the punchline is that one of the prisoners snitches on himself i think pedantry of this kind is largely irrelevant

(i'm pretty sure i filled in the graph properly, didn't i??)

@typhlosion Yeah I love that the other prisoner's payoff was to take credit above ratting out his friend. The payoff matrix looks correct for J's initial impression of the situation. If she knew Tony's payoffs, it may look more like a cooperation game since neither wanted to rat. True, Tony gets 10 years and J gets 0, but neither indicated that was their primary source of utils :D that's what makes this extra funny to me. What they thought was a Prisoner's Dilemma was a cooperation game.

@alice you'll have to forgive me, for i am a measly computer scientist and have little experience with game theory beyond a popular-science understanding of common problems like the prisoner's dilemma

@typhlosion I've studied so if you ever want advice just ask ^_^

@alice alternatively you could say the scenario is the same but the actors' motivations and behaviors are different than the "fully rational self-interested actor" you so often see in game theory thought experiments

but, again, it's a joke

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