This entry is crazy, a combination of a GIP and an allconsuming post. This book is the sequel to Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson. In the first book, there was some discussion of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, a game theory problem that looks at strategies chosen by two prisoners asked to rat each other out. The game becomes interesting when computers are used to run through this game repeatedly.

If you cooperate, you both get a small punishment. If you both chose to defect (against your cellmate), you get a moderate punishment. If you choose to defect and your partner chooses to cooperate, you get no punishment and your partner gets a huge punishment. This hypothetical choice is given repeatedly, and you have a memory.

The “rational” choice would be always-cooperate, but this guarantees a small punishment in the best case. If your partner defects, you get screwed. If play always-defect, you will never get screwed and never get the worst punishment, but this will piss off your partner, causing them to never cooperate. Simulations have been made into the best way to play, and it is to always copy your partner’s previous move, with some random extra cooperates thrown in. (Tit-for-Tat with forgiveness)

This game has shown similarities to real-world behavior like arms races and sports. (See the Wikipedia link, it’s really interesting)

In Fifty Degrees Below a character looks at a huge gas guzzling SUV and notes how driving one is like playing environmental always-defect. This struck me as so true, I decided to make an icon.

While I’d like to consider myself an environmentalist, I’m really just a hypocrite. I don’t really make any effort to conserve anything. When I was a teenager, I got a huge gas-guzzling truck. At the time, gas was 90 cents and I didn’t really think about these things. I could have traded it in sometime the last ten years, especially after college when I was no longer transporting a bass drum section (drums and players included). But I like the comfort of sitting in a large vehicle (I’m 6’4”), I move to new apartments a lot, I’m emotionally attached to it, and I can afford the gas. Although I don’t openly say “I’m a hypocrite who loves my big vehicle,” I’ll acknowledge this to anyone who asks. Sadly, I’ve been playing a defect game for years; I just didn’t know the terminology.