Golden Balls Prisoner’s Dilemma
(236) golden balls. the weirdest split or steal ever! – YouTube
In this British game show two contestants are sat down face to face with two golden balls in front of them. There is a pool of money and the contestants have two choice. They can either play the split or steal ball. If one contestant plays the steal ball and the other one plays the split ball, the contestant that played the steal ball gets the whole pot of money. If both contestants play the steal ball both of them walk way with nothing. If both of them play the split ball, they both split the pot. Both of the players get a couple minutes to deliberate with each other what strategy they are going to take. One of the contestant decides a very interesting strategy, he tells his opponent/teammate that he is going to play the steal ball and give the other contestant half of the money off-air after the show. He is extremely adamite that regardless of what the other player says he is going to do, he is going to play the steal ball and he guarantees that he is a honorable man that can be trusted to keep his word. The other player takes his word and it ended up being that both players play the split ball and leave the gameshow wealthier men that are better off then when they arrived.
There are three possible outcomes in this gameshow. Either both of them leave with nothing, one of them leaves with everything, or they split it. This is a perfect example of a prisoner’s dilemma. I found that contestants strategy to demand that he is going to play steal, regardless of what the other contestant plays to be an extremely smart and cooperative way to guarantee that both of them don’t leave empty handed. He didn’t end up playing the steal ball, but he was clearly very ok with splitting the prize money and he did a good job of avoiding the worst possible outcome of both of them receiving nothing by being apparently very blatant with what ball he was going to pick. The only thing that makes this prisoners’ dilemma somewhat unique is their ability to talk and reason with each other before they choose whether or not they are going to steal or split. If they weren’t allowed to discuss what plan there are going to take I do think there is a way higher chance that both of the contestants end up leaving empty handed. This game is a measure of greed, you can either risk it and end up with nothing, or just agree to split. It all comes down to how believable you are to the other contestant and in any prisoners’ dilemma it comes down to how much you can trust your counterpart. In this game, both trusted each other and both of them left with a decide amount of cash.