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ellenv's picture

Dilemma

I was not very serious while playing the game. At first, I attempted pressing only cooperate for an entire game, and then the next time I tried to do the opposite and simply push compete for the majority of the game. It seemed rather random to me and so the next time I tried to do a combination of compete and cooperate, with more compete than cooperate to be honest. I thought it seemed odd that I had read several things on the Prisoner's Dilemma before playing the game and yet I found that it was still hard for me to cooperate because all I was concentrating on was the number of points I had as compared to serendip. Had this been something that had more consequence in my day-to-day life, I think I would have taken it a lot more seriously and I probably would have tried to cooperate to a greater extent. 

 

In my life, an example of a zero-sum game/prisoner's dilemma comes with traffic and driving. When people on the road cooperate (for example, when there are two lanes going down to one) there can be a smooth and quick movement of traffic around the obstacle. On the other hand, if one person chooses to be aggressive and cut someone else off, then they may get around the obstacle a lot faster than the other person. What can happen though is that there can be two very aggressive drivers who decide to compete and the result is a crash and a bad day for both of the drivers. This type of situation appeared a great deal in my school parking lot after school because there was only one exit/entrance and no organization while at the same time there were a great deal of people eager to leave for the day. 

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