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 I tried playing Prisoner’s Dilemma a couple of times and I always ended with around 30 points. I just randomly choose between compete and cooperate without knowing the strategy to win. I did not choose based on patterns or whatsoever. My pick was totally random. There was nothing that nudge me to choose a particular option over the other one.

Personally, I don’t think that Prisoner’s Dilemma can be used to best describe how we choose in our life. Prisoner’s Dilemma is limited to only 2 options, compete or cooperate. Besides that, there are more external and internal factors that do play part in nudging us to make a decision. In Prisoner’s Dilemma, our goal is just to get as many coins as possible, but there is not any particular circumstances that nudge us to choose either cooperate or compete. In real life, it is more complex than just randomly choose to compete or cooperate. Prisoner’s Dilemma may involve choosing an option and such, but in my opinion, it cannot be associated with choices in real life.

Win-win solution is an agreement between two parties where it is the option that may benefit both parties, or at least both gain the same amount of loss/benefit (fair trade). In a win-win solution, both parties have to sacrifice something in order to reach a mutual agreement.  One party has to give up something to gain something else from the other party and vice versa. In this case, our life always revolves around choice. Win-win solution seems to be the best answer for every choice that we want to make because we do not only gain benefit for ourselves, but also for people around us. Whenever I am faced with two difficult options and other people, I always try to find the win-win solution for me as well as the other people who are involved.

I agree with Maiya about our paper not being graded. It is actually a win-win solution where both the students and the professor may gain benefit. The students can improve their writing through the instructor’s feedback without having to worry about their grades while the professor can help the students with their writing without having to grade them (just commenting on them). Isn’t it the real purpose of having the seminar? To help the students develop critical thinking and get used to college writing? And I believe that developing critical thinking and getting used to college writing is all about how much effort you put in, not about grades.