The Prisoner's Dilemma

In a single combat, if the enemy is less skillful than ourselves, if his rhythm is disorganized, or if he has fallen into evasive or retreating attitudes, we must crush him straightaway, with no concern of his presence and without allowing him space for breath. It is essential to crush him all at once. The primary thing is not to let him recover his position, not even a little.”
(Miyamoto Musashi)

Humans are the champions of cooperation: from hunter-gatherer societies to nation-states, cooperation is the decisive organizing principle of human society. No other life form on Earth is engaged in the same complex games of cooperation and defection.”
(Martin Nowak)


In the hierarchical power-based societies of the chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas, the weak can form coalitions to restrain support, or even drive out over-dominating superior
(Kaplan & Kaplan, 2009)
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In the days of the Shogun there was no greater samurai than Miyamoto Musashi. He won all of his major sixty battles, and none was more spectacular and finely executed than against the aristocratic Sasaki Kojiro.
Musashi’s first winning strategy was to make Kojiro wait thereby tactically getting him angry. Second, when he arrived by boat in the early morning dawn, he had his back to the rising sun which shone into Kojiro’s eyes.

Musashi exemplifies the essence of the zero-sum games that are germane to certain conflicts and competitions. But what separates him—a cultured, honorable warrior—and the common variety beastlike creatures, is not throwing sand into the opponent’s eyes—that is, he always played fair to the standards of a true samurai of his days. An honorable warrior doesn’t threaten to or closes radio stations (supposedly beneficiaries of his policies) just because he doesn’t want the hapless villagers to hear the other side of the truths of his rule. An honorable warrior doesn’t change the rule of the game midway so that he can always win. In The Last King of Scotland, Idi Amin Dada restrains an underling who was beating him in a staged swimming competition. Is that any different from bribing the legislatures to change the constitution for you? Only a gangster warrior concocts crimes against opponents in his perverted attempts to derail them.

While there are zero-sum games, there are also many occasions for non zero-sum games that call for cooperation. Thus we have coined phrases like: win-win, you scratch my back and I scratch yours, or one good turn deserves another or the Acoli’s “mon nywal ki wadgi” (literally: women can bear children with one another—improbable, but in impossibilities there lie discoveries, and that you could help one another when caught up in the same dire straights). Even zero-sum games may call for elements of cooperation, called, “taking whole.” Thus you do not beat your opponent to a pulp since, once he has learnt his lesson, you can turn him into an ally to achieve more.

A non zero-sum game can be illustrated by the Prisoner’s Dilemma. In its simplest form, if two prisoners cooperate with one another and don’t rat on each another, they have the best chance of getting the least time in jail. If both rat on one another they will both have longer time. If only one rats, he walks free, but the other gets the stiffest sentence. The dilemma is that since the two are isolated and do not know what the other would do, the best rational option—each man for himself— would be to rat. This last option is the behavior you would expect of the common variety goat thief. More sophisticated players would cooperate and follow the first option.

It is not an overstatement to say that the opposition is in a prison of some sort. The various political parties can choose to be capricious and behave lower than bonobos, or choose the path of collective survival against a formidable force.

Bidandi Ssali is not a cause for worry since he will get no more votes than his family and workers at his amusement park can provide. Even then, one would have expected this good man to lend his support to a collective cause. Instead he is just a whimsical prosaic old man buying a sports car and taking on a new bride—a futile middle-age crisis.

Nothing need be said about Mao anymore but watch him in amusement as he prances around with silly hyperboles that he is the most popular of the opposition candidates. We know better.