Ebonmuse

It is my understanding that Objectivism, Ayn Rand's theory of morality, is fundamentally built upon rational self-interest, and as such denies that it is moral to do anything that helps someone else but is detrimental to your own interests (i.e., altruism).

However, based on an e-mail conversation I've been having with a visitor to my website, I've been wondering how this philosophy would respond to a Prisoner's Dilemma situation, where each individual participant is better off cheating than cooperating, but if everyone cheats, the overall outcome is worse than if everyone had cooperated. In such a situation, the principle of dominance holds - no matter what everyone else does, you are always better off cheating. Would it not therefore be the case that a rationally self-interested Objectivist would always cheat in such a situation? Or is there more to this philosophy that could allow for a different behavior?

Witty

I hear that someone once used that exact reasoning to try and convince the US to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on the USSR. Luckily, smarter heads prevailed.

The problem with your reasoning is that in real life, you never know when you'll meet someone again. If you cheat someone and then get in the same situation again, you can be sure that he won't cooperate with you. So, if you consider this "iterated prisoner's dilemma" then it actually can be in your best interests to cooperate, depending on the type of person you're dealing with, and how likely it is that you will deal with him in the future.

BillyTheKat

[1] Yes; [2] No.

Anyone fancy a pint?

The Terrible sweal

I'm no fan of objectivism, but I think you are misstating it somewhat. Objectivism doesn't tell you to cheat even if you can get a better deal playing straight. Objectivists either posit a world where prisoners dilemma situations are simply ignored, or they say that at least one of your counterparts will cheat anyway. Objectivists might favor strategies in which they participate in prisoners dilemma situations wherein the actor holds special advantages (foresight, directive authority, reduced costs).

john proctor

Objectivists approach the prisoner's dilemma like everyone else, I imagine. Single-play, you cheat. Repeat-play, you cheat only strategically. There is no intrinsic honor or dishonor inherent in Objectivism, just the expectation (fact) that everyone will behave in their own enlightened self-interest.

The villians in Rand's novels are those who don't realize that selfishness and enlightened self-interest are one and the same.

fishbulb

The prisoner's dilemma is a bit contrived in that respect. If you think of the objective of the game as winning by scoring more points than your opponent then, in a single iteration, you should always defect because you will at worst tie and at best win, whereas if you cooperate, you at best tie and at worst lose. In real life, you aren't looking to beat your opponent but rather to achieve the highest possible score. For example, given the option between a nuclear war that kills 90% of you and 100% of them and you giving up something of marginal value to them in order to prevent war altogether, you should prefer the second outcome even though, in game terms, it means that they "win" and you "lose" (i.e. they come out net ahead and you come out net behind).

Prisoner's dilemma only has bearing on real-life behaviour when it is played iteratively and with more than two players. In such a cases, always defecting is one of the worst strategies, though the optimal strategy would depend on what strategies the other players employ.

y_feldblum

The Prisoners' dilemmma bears no resemblance to the problems one faces in the normal course of life, and hence any answer that can be given to it is absolutely useless in identifying proper moral principles and identifying how to apply them in the normal course of life.

Ebonmuse

I disagree categorically with that claim. I can think of a wide variety of real-life situations that are identical to the Prisoner's Dilemma in all morally relevant aspects - most of these are tragedy-of-the-commons type problems.

Imagine, for example, that there are two or more fishermen each fishing the same area of ocean. The more fish a fisherman catches, the more money they can make; the selfish option is therefore to catch the maximum their boat can hold every day. But if they all do this, the fishery will collapse and they will all lose their livelihood. The unselfish option is therefore to cooperate and set voluntary limits on the maximum amount any one of them can catch each day, within what the fishery can provide sustainably, but then the incentive reemerges to catch more and increase one's own profit. I claim that that is a Prisoner's Dilemma situation. What say you?

JamesBannon

I disagree. In the case of the fishermen there is clear advantage to be gained by co-operating with no potential loss.

john proctor

Not nearly as there is to be gained if you don't cooperate while everyone else does.