Steroids: The Prisoner’s Dilemma
The prisoner’s dilemma occurs all the time in the real world. One example is in sports and doping. There have been many incidents of steroid use including Major League Baseball, Lance Armstrong and cyclists, and college sports. These people who cheat use steroids because it happens to be their optimal strategy, given that the risk of punishment is not great. Many who used steroids reported doing so because they thought others were also doing so.
In this prisoner’s dilemma scenario, we have four cases. Case 1: Nobody uses steroids. This is what we want to happen because it allows sports to be played the way they were meant to be. Case 2 and 3: One group uses steroids, but the other doesn’t. This way, the steroid group has a significantly higher payoff than the other. Thus, to level to playing field, the other group that did not cheat is incentivized to cheat, giving us case 4: everyone uses steroids. It is a dominant strategy to use steroids because when others don’t use them you gain an advantage and when they do you simply level out the playing field. Note that in case 4, everyone ends up worse than in case 1. The average level of competition rises so no one is in a better spot, yet they must deal with the negative health effects of steroids along with the risk of getting punished by sports organizations. Unfortunately the Nash equilibrium points to case 4 due to everyone’s dominant strategy to use steroids. While it is morally wrong to use steroids it is easy to see why athletes feel pressured to use them.
To disrupt the Nash equilibrium society must find a way to make steroid use not a dominant strategy. One way would be to increase the risk of punishment until it is not favorable to use steroids. If this fails, society will need to find another way to dissuade people from steroid use.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney/2011/06/26/cheating-in-college-athletics-and-the-prisoners-dilemma/
sandoz pen os 1000