Professional Documents
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• Game Theory
Ray Powell Definition: It is a mathematical approach to the study of
conflict and decision-making which treats conflict as games with
tactics and strategies and rational players.
The scenario can be explained using two prisoners accused of the same crime. In
it the two prisoners are put in separate cells unable to communicate. Assuming
that there isn’t concrete evidence to imprison them, the prosecutors will try to
persuade them to implicate one another.
-If neither goes along with the guards they will get a sentence of a year.
-If one accepts the deal with the prosecutor and the second prisoner keeps
quiet, the turncoat (snitch) goes free and the patsy gets ten years.
• Given the situation each prisoner has the incentive to denounce the
other. Although one of the prisoners might decide to keep quiet, a
rational self-interested person would always betray his fellow prisoner.
• This leaves them moldering in jail for five years when they could cut their
sentence to one year each if they both kept quiet. Hence their Dominant
strategy was to denounce one another.
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