www.secfive.org

These are somethings i've came across while i was reading one of francis fukuyama's book and various internet and wikipedia articles. I dont really remember it very well but these must have been some of the most interesting things that i have come across in reading.

Disclaimer: These are just my own interpretations and definitions of the experiment, based on what i have read and my ability to recall most of them. I have included their appropriate links in wikipedia so that readers who are more interested can futher fully explore the topics at hand. Man i fucking feel like a lecturer.

Prisoners Dilemma

The theory basically starts with the analogy of two men , both prisoners, who are trying to bargain their way out of jail term. They can choose to either cooperate or defect. If both prisoner defects, both of them go to jail for a shared sentence of 5 years each. If both prisoner cooperates, both of them go to jail for 6 months. If a person cooperates while the other defects (backstabbing of sorts), he gets what is termed the 'sucker's payout' and he alone carries the full penalty of the sentence which is 10 years while the other prisoner runs off scott free. Both of these prisoners are not allowed to talk to each other and makes his choice individually and it is assumed that both prisoners are trying to avoid or lessen jail sentence.

To summarize a person (the prisoner) can choose to either play nice (cooperate) or defect (be an ass);

If he cooperates, there are two possible outcomes.
1. His opponent cooperates, and he gets 6 months in jail
2. His opponent defects, and he gets 10 years in jail

If he defects, there are also two possible outcomes.
1. His opponent cooperates, and he gets off scot free
2. His opponent defects, and he gets 5 years in jail

By comparing the two possible choices a prisoner can make and its subsequent 4 outcomes. The most rational choice for any person to make is to defect. And this is interesting because it models life alot - it always is a logically sound decision to make selfish choices and to backstab people you come across in life. But if everyone was truly a logical person, they would all choose to defect and everyone would go to jail for 5 years, instead of the obviously better alternatives (getting scot free, or 6 months in jail). Therein lies the crux of the prisoners dilemma, of thinking what the other prisoner would choose.

Iterated Prisoners Dilemma

In the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, the game is replayed an X number of times with a large number of computer programs, where X is known only to the game master and unknown to the participating programs. X is a huge number, so that each program gets to play another program much more than once. Instead of penalties, the computer programs get points if they win. And the method to win the most amount of points - as proven experimentally - is to follow this set rule:

1. Be nice
2. Retaliate
3. Be forgiving
4. Non-envious

Which is completely antithesis to the methods and mindset required to win a single prisoners dilemma game. This also mirrors life much more accurately, as when you backstab people, there are obvious repercussions. Ultimately since humanity is effectively a collective whole and are interdependant on one another, the obvious choice is to cooperate with one another.

The game of Reason and Logic

This is a game played between two participants and one experimenter. The two participants do not meet face to face and the experimenter gives the first participant a fixed sum of dollar notes to which he is free to divide in two sets of any amount. This participant we will call the splitter. The splitter presents the other portion of the dollar notes to the other participant. And this other participant whom we will call the decider gets to decide whether or not to accept or reject the offer. If he chooses to accept the offer, then both the splitter and the decider pocket their respective portions of the money. If he chooses to reject the offer, both the splitter and decider get nothing.

Those are the technicalties of the game.

In a hypothetical solution, the amounts given are usually 10 pieces of 10 dollar notes and the splitter splits 90 dollars for himself and offers the decider 10 dollars to which he would either reject or accept.

Now for the decider, he has two outcomes:
1. He rejects the offer and gets nothing
2. He accepts the offer and earns himself 10 bucks

If he was playing against a machine, or a monkey perhaps, he would readily choose option 2. Against humans however, an overwhelming amount of people in experiments conducted worldwide choose option 1 - prefering to get nothing rather than let the splitter get away with 80 dollars more than him. Reason and logic predates that 10 dollars is better than nothing. but morality and ethics tells us that everyone rather get nothing than let another person get an unfair share of the money. It is as though we are preprogrammed to 'educate' other people to be fair, if not to everyone, then atleast to us.

Another interesting fact is that if the decider was offered 90 dollars while the splitter reserves 10 for himself, overwhelmingly, deciders choose that it was alright for themselves to pocket an extra 80 dollars more than the splitter. It can be interpretted that since the splitter offers 90 dollars for the decider, he agrees to the fact that he will pocket only 10 for himself, and this forms the rational basis for the decider to accept the deal. Or the decider can just be a selfish person who practices double standards and use that as a convenient excuse to pocket much more money. Readily, people would choose to accept the deal almost instantly.

The bottom line is that humans are intrinsically selfish creatures yet are dependent on one another to survive and flourish. However if they feel that there would be no significant repercussion, they will readily betray people to gain profits for either themselves or their affliations at the collective cost of other people. This forms the basis for corruption and graft in society.

Milgram Experiment

In this experiment, 3 people are involved namely the actor, the participant and the experimenter. The participant is drafted by the experimenter and introduced to the actor as another participant. The experimenter then tells the participant that they will be conducting an experiment to gauge the learning ability of people under physical punishment.

The the participant and actor then seats in between an opaque screen that seperates them visually. After that 45 volt shocks are administered to the participant for him to appreciate the severity of the punishment that will later on be applied and used in the experiment against the actor - which the participant believes is another participant.

The game starts by the experimenter having the participant ask the actor a set list of complicated questions to which there are 5 answers. Everytime a wrong answer is given, the participant is required by the experimenter to provide a punishment in the form of increasing electric shocks (from 45 to 400 volts). As the electric shocks are applied, the actor plays prerecorded audio sessions shouting and pleading for the participant to stop. At voltages beyond 120, the actor bangs on the wall and cries for help. At voltages beyond 300, the actor stays silent and stops yelling.

From wikipedia, If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:
1. Please continue.
2. The experiment requires you to continue, please go on.
3. It is essential that you continue.
4. You have no choice, you must continue.

If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.

Those are the technicalities of the experiment.

Before the experiment was conducted, it was reviewed by other peer psychologists who unanimously agreed that only true sadists would give shocks above 300 volts and these made up about 5% to 10% of the sample population.

However after the experiment was conducted, Milgram observed that 65% of the participants administered the strongest and final 450 volts shock to the actor. Similiar experiments carried worldwide also gave a similar outcome and the number of people administered the final 450 volts shock fell in between 61% and 66%.

This translates to that ~63% of us would readily harm or injure another human being under the suggestion of an external body. A subtler interpretation would be that ~63% of us and possibly much more, will simply just take the suggestion of an external body. This means that we as humans pretty much just absorb whatever ideas, ideals and philosophy that we learn in the 12 years of compulsory schooling, society or peers and mindlessly accept them in our lifes, regardless of our own belief systems and reasoning. We are a generation that readily conforms to thoughts and ideals taught to us and we readily accept them and model our lives on them.

Science has seen a revolution in that thought is done methodically, empirically and logically. However social science and civics is still stuck in the communist 1940s where ideas and thoughts are simply ingrained into us. Children are born and led through a path of suggestion and design, they are not taught to have independant thinking. Rather they are taught not to question the authority. To accept things as they come. Being different in a community where there is a preset norm, is to be an outcast and treated differentially and this acts as a leverage to force people back to accept preset norms. Its a very Orwellian picture. It is no surprise how german military workers read shakesphere and listened to mozart while they gassed their Jewish counterparts and buried their rotting bodies with ease, perhaps even grace. Scientifically, they were sound, but civically, they were nuts. This sets up the argument for the double standardness of human morality and ethics. Verily, it is just used as a convenience. There is no such thing as morality and ethics, these are just preset social norms.