Oh dear. I just uploaded my extremely basic game but you can’t post Flash on WordPress, so never mind. I can email it if anyone is interested but perhaps let me get it going a bit first.

David

This is a two-player game to replicate decision making in euthanasia, based on the Prisoners’ Dilemma. Players initially compete until a random event changes the rules; they must then cooperate so that both win.

The Prisoners’ Dilemma

The Prisoners’ Dilemma (PD) constitutes a problem in game theory, a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences to examine human behaviour. The basic premise is this:

Two collaborating criminals are arrested by the police and are kept apart, unable to communicate. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction and neither criminal will admit to the crime. Both of the prisoners have the option of testifying against the other or saying nothing, with varying resultant jail terms.

For example, if the first prisoner testifies against the second and the second keeps quiet the first will be set free and the second will receive 10 years in jail. If both testify against the other they both receive 5 years in jail. If both keep quiet they both receive 6 months in jail.

The choices can be shown in a table (number of years for Player 1, number of year for Player 2):

In the generalised form this is:

Where:

R – Reward for mutual cooperation

P– Punishment for mutual defection

T – Temptation to defect

S – Sucker’s payoff

…and holding the following inequalities:

T > R > P > S

One experiment on human behaviour showed 40% opt to cooperate.

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The Interated Prisoners’ Dilemma, the version for which there has been the most analysis and has greatest relevance to economics, allows both players to view the other’s decision after both have been made in order to educate the next iteration of the same game. Game theory strategies have been devised for one player to win more points (or whatever) over the other, such as always cooperate, always defect, tit-for-tat, retaliating, unforgiving and so on.

[NB: for the iterated version the following condition must be met to ensure that the smartest strategy is not simply for each to alternate defection and cooperation: 2R > T + S.]

In the Prisoners’ Dilemma, the idea of superrationality states that, though a game-theoretic strategy might be to defect, if a player knows or merely assumes they are playing against another superrational player the best strategy is to to have the same strategy, with the best payoff on the diagonal being to both cooperate. This has moral undertones in a game that is frequently used as a tool for examining the mechanics of decision based ethics.

MODIFICATION IN THE EUTHANASIA DILEMMA

The Iterated Prisoner Dilemma is played with both players beginning with 50 points and initially the object is to beat the opponent; players are free to choose and compete in a normal fashion as they would in a natural setting. Minus scores for P and S encourage defection and allow for one player to be below par and the other above par.

After a set number of iterations a ‘random event’ can take place leading to one player being disadvantaged and causing the rules of the game to change; this would be a terminal illness in the natural setting. The new point settings make it impossible for either player to win unless they choose to cooperate consistently enough to give the disadvantaged player zero points, hinting at the superrational decision to allow and commit euthanasia. However, it is still possible for a recovery to take place, leading to the game returning to its initial stages.