Climate Change and the Prisoner’s Dilemma
The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a theory that was first introduced in the 1950s that can predict how two people will act if they act out of their own self-interests. The concept can be best described with an example. Take two people who are suspected of committing a robbery together. They’re taken into two separate interrogation rooms and have to speak with a detective. The detective suspects that they have committed worse crimes, but he doesn’t have enough evidence, so he convicts them for robbing the bank, a rather minor crime. The detective plays a little game to get a confession out of both of them.
He tells them that if they confess to their crimes, they will be released. However, this is where the Prisoner’s Dilemma kicks in. The criminals knew they might be caught, so they spoke to each other beforehand and setup a plan to not confess. But both of the suspects are self-interested and are more likely to confess than to not confess. Each criminal is thinking that if they confess, they can potentially spend 0 years in jail, under the condition that their partner still believes that they’re both not confessing. But since they both think that they won’t confess, both criminals will decide to confess under the assumption that they will be set free. Prisoner’s Dilemma shows how easily people can betray each other out of self-interest. So in the end, both of the suspects spend 4 years in jail, even though they both planned to not confess.
Interestingly, the concept of the Prisoner’s Dilemma fits well with our behaviors in relation to climate change. We could create a chart like this:
Where the magnitude of the numbers indicates the effort and resources one must use in order to perform an action. For example, the best response when Person A chooses to live sustainably is for Person B to do nothing. The number -10 indicates the effort Person A puts into living a sustainable lifestyle while 0 indicates the effort Person B puts into doing nothing. According to the Prisoner’s Dilemma, both people are more likely to do nothing because it takes less effort to do so. What we see is that people understand the consequences of wasting energy, food, and water, but they don’t want to do anything to help slow climate change because it takes too much time and energy. In the end, we’re left in a spot where everyone has to suffer the consequences.
Although the outcome of the climate change example is not ideal, economists have been trying to find ways to beat the Prisoner’s Dilemma. In fact, there has been a TED-Ed video on “How to outsmart the Prisoner’s Dilemma” that addresses a unique theory about people’s perception of the future if they were to replay a Prisoner’s Dilemma scenario in an infinite loop. Additionally, the math shows that the prisoners are more likely to cooperate with one another if they were in an infinite prisoner’s dilemma. With this theory in mind, I think we should start delving into the science of decision making and determine how we can encourage people to start living more sustainably.
Sources:
https://www.ft.com/content/5312691c-3d3c-11ea-b232-000f4477fbca
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/networks-book-ch06.pdf