Game theory illustrated by an animated cartoon game

>If you tolerate bad faith, you ask for more bad faith behavior.

Yet some bad faith behavior comes from misunderstanding, so to be completely intolerant of perceived bad faith behavior would be the same as entering into the endless "tit-for-tat" cheating loop mentioned on the site

"I'm intolerant of your (perceived) bad faith (because you're intolerant of my (perceived) bad faith)"

Works when perceptions aren't muddied, but that is rarely the case

>The lesson is clear, that if you want a world you want to be a part of, then you must become powerful and choose to use that power for good.

I agree broadly, but that logic is also the cause of a lot of cheating

"I cheat because they cheat"

"I need nuclear weapons because they have nuclear weapons"

Tit-for-tat is a great strategy, but it's not a _dominant_ strategy

I think that's the most important point the website makes

I feel like your comment sums up many life lessons. It's also the reason I stopped believing in extreme leftism as I matured. I think as young idealists we think "Surely if we just gave the government a lot more tax money, they'd solve the problems we all say we care about" and "Surely if you just give freely to whomever says they're in need, they won't cheat the system!"

Later I started to see the patterns where government spends most of the money lining the pockets of the well-connected, and then on the micro level how many people take advantage of any method of unjust enrichment, given the chance, and you start to desire much more accountability from all parties. And yes, things like, say, exhaustive income verification to qualify for benefits definitely hurts those who are playing by the rules the whole time. It's the cost of having trashy individuals in society who exploit everyone relentlessly.

> The lesson is clear, that if you want a world you want to be a part of, then you must become powerful and choose to use that power for good.

This particular lesson we've seen play out time and time again at a state level. Europe, USA, Singapore and even China.

The best thing that happened was corruption was either kept out or effectively eliminated.

When leaders are bad actors, it's pretty obvious, but an explicit example is the Philippines in the 50's-60's and how its economic powerhouse was squandered away.

Today, Vietnam is in the process of cleaning house and showing dividends while Indonesia really could really do amazing stuff if it go its act together.

> This is one of my favorite things on the internet, but it focuses on the positive side of the story which is that groups of people cooperating can defeat a bunch of people who cheat each other. That's a pleasant message.

This is also a reasonable definition of a functional democratic society.

> If you believe in personal agency and personal responsibility and don't believe in magical thinking ...

  No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece 
  of the continent.[0]

Or perhaps a different lesson is that if you want a better world to exist, choose to live it. Sometimes there will be those which do not share this vision and actively work against your choice.

The question then becomes:

  Do you allow bad actors to determine who you are
  or is who you are orthogonal to what bad actors do?

0 - https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/john_donne_101197

Becoming powerful might be the easy part

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs (The Rules for Rulers / CGP Grey)

> getting cheated or cooperating with people who act in bad faith is what creates the cheating

That reminds me of some game-theory stuff, a relatively simple "tit-for-tat with forgiveness" approach does pretty well. It matches a lot of our intuition too: Be nice, punish betrayal, but not too disproportionately.

Not the thing I was thinking of, but found this fun little interactive presentation that goes into some other factors/approaches: https://ncase.me/trust/

You have perfectly described the downfall of western democracies, who are oh so tolerable.

Even Plato described this already in The Republic.

The board game "Diplomacy" teaches lessons like this, also how fairness works even between unequal powers.

Tit-for-Tat with occasional Forgiveness and occasional Defection (abuse of trust) often performs better than pure Tit-For-Tat, especially in the presence of random error. Tit-For-Tat falls into "permanent mutual Defection" tar-pit when playing against a Tit-for-Tat-like opponent that Defects once (perhaps in error) and is non-Forgiving.

Humans are pretty good at repeated-game theory, intuitively.

The success of tit-for-tat is a common misunderstanding; it is only the most successful within the makeup of Axelrod's tournament. The OP explains that the strategy is entirely dependent on the environment, and tit-for-tat may not always be the optimal strategy.

I must say this is amazing. The psychology and manipulation makes me realize how poor I am regarding trust even when the other side is pushing for some unconfirmed equilibrium.

In the game I acknowledge that I was aligned to the "Simpleton" strategy (before it was outlined). Looks like simpleton might actually be applicable in a more general sense too which is a little disheartening.

Another great book on the subject is The Joy of Game Theory by Presh Talwalkar.

Once weakness in those tournaments is that every interaction has the same stakes, so it doesn't model the possibility of "con artists" who behave generally at low stakes, but cheat at high stakes.

I remember that as well, but only because it's mentioned in book 8 of The Expanse.

Similar - this is where I found out about Komiku's music; I must've heard to thousands of hours of this while writing code

Are you talking about "one-off games" vs "repeated games", or something else?

Repeated games are part of "game theory"

Radiolab's overdramatic style has the ability to ruin even my favorite topics.