What do you do when the other guy doesn't play by the rules? - UPDATED with revised links


The defining question of 21st Century America
As a nation and as individuals, America has been sending mixed signals for most of the last half of the 20th Century. I have my own ideas about that. And since this entry will be quoting me and others, I get the Pagan green.

We felt guilty about being powerful. And along with that guilt, we prostrate ourselves hoping to be loved.

Mercy may be the gift of the strong, but this behavior invites irresponsibility. Like any serial victim, the actions of our government appeal to the worst side of human nature. Abase ourselves and expect to be rewarded for our sacrifice? Hardly.

That brings us to today and people like me.

It's a reoccurring problem. If the other guy doesn't play by the rules, what then?

...Abiding by the rules only works as long as all sides are willing to play by the rules. The moment that one side takes an advantage by ignoring the rules, it is a different game.

Before 9-11, I argued passionately that we should not initiate force. It was as close to Holy Writ as I was willing to acknowledge. Following the rules is a rational response, but we were not dealing with rational people. The old rules didn't work in the new situation.

And again.

...But it also seems that many in Australia were tired of being "good neighbors" when certain visitors didn't want to play by the rules.

Still again.

I think it is a version of the "guilt" mentality that Shelby Steele's book helped me to notice. Arguably it has shaped American and Western diplomacy since at least the early 1970s. And European diplomats have been using it to keep the US "in it's place" since then.

Again.

If Steyn is right, some of our "civilized" behavior may have already doomed us. Back in the 1970s when The Population Bomb was all the rage, I doubt if anyone saw the implications in warfare. It's one of our critical weaknesses, we expect the other side to play by the rules while we hobble ourselves to give them every advantage.

This is THE question of the American 21st Century. How can we uphold our honor if the other guy doesn't play by the rules?

Now I am not going to get into a long discussion on the things that America has done wrong. I will say that the current mess in the Middle East and in Central America and South America were brought on in part because we propped up tyrants to "be nice" until they wouldn't do what we said anymore. It happened, we can't change it, we can only go forward.

But by being "nice" all the time (at least to our "friends), we invited the abuse.

The answer may surprise you. I wish it were mine. It's a long one, and you really should read it for yourself. I am going to excerpt it. Emphasis in original.

(revised link for Part 1 of YOU ARE NOT ALONE, revised link for Part 2 of YOU ARE NOT ALONE which I don't talk about here but is still pretty good)

The Prisoner’s Dilemma, therefore, is an analogy we use to test the results of how people treat each other. 

Now, if this game is played one time, the winning strategy invariably is to Screw the Other Guy. If he doesn’t screw you, you get off free. If he does, you serve two years. But if you didn’t, and he decided to screw you – ten years. No one wants to risk that. Screw the Other Guy is the only smart position, and when the game is run thousands of times on computers it comes out the very clear winner.  

But! What happens if the game is played again and again, against the same person? Does Screw the Other Guy continue to be the best strategy?  

It does not! 

The best strategy for a repeating game (called the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma) is not Screw The Other Guy, and -- surprisingly at first glance -- it’s not Always Cooperate With The Other Guy, either.  

The winning strategy is Tit-for-Tat. That is, you do to the guy what he did to you last turn. If he cooperated, you cooperate. If he screwed you, you screw him back. Over thousands and millions of computer runs, using every strategy from complete aggression to complete forgiveness, Tit-for-Tat “wins” every time – that is, it results in the least jail time for you. 

<snip>

Now things get really interesting. In The Prisoner’s Dilemma, these behaviors are expressed as choices made by individuals. But now substitute entire cultures, where the cultural norm is made up of these choices, and what do you see?

You find the easy, knee-jerk reaction is to form a society where everyone tries to screw everyone else. It’s the short-term approach, and it makes sense in the short term. Presumably all robbers and cheats want to maintain short-term relationships with their victims. If they had to meet them again (if the game was iterated) this strategy would be, shall we say, somewhat less successful and the victims would begin to Hit Back.  

When I look out into the Third World, this is what I see: short-term strategies for immediate gain at the cost of long-term success. A swarm of trinket vendors on a beach in Mexico all need to make an immediate sale in order to eat that day, even if the cost is being so annoying and frustrating to the tourists that it prevents them from ever returning. Short term gain, long term loss. 

I make no value judgment on that behavior, because it works on some level or it would not be so prevalent. In societies where short term values trump long-term ones, it is easy, safe and stable to Screw the Other Guy. But in the long-term, nothing of consequence grows, because nice, forgiving and non-envious are advanced strategies that require a topsoil of general goodwill, trust, and respect for the rule of law.  

Societies that embrace these qualities will always out-compete those that don’t. 

<snip>

I want to point out here that over the last half of the 20th Century, American diplomacy has always moved to insulate our "friends" and those we deem "critical" from the long term consequences of their own actions. Under this analysis, that strategy will force those parties to the short term "Screw The Other Guy" precisely because there is no long term cost. As the article points out a little later.

But as we see from The Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, there is an unnatural island of stability that is far more successful, and it is not simply trusting everyone and being all-cooperating all the time. That strategy is the worst, because it rewards being screwed by competing strategies that eat if for breakfast everytime. It is de-selected. It vanishes from the gene pool, so to speak. You see no society like that in the real world, and now you know why. Are you listening, Marxists? It doesn’t work. 

But Tit-for-Tat combines generosity and toughness. And look at the terms used to describe the most successful strategic version of Tit-for-Tat: Nice. Retaliating. Forgiving. Non-envious. 

Now, this is where my own analysis kicks in, because frankly, nice, retaliating, forgiving and non-envious pretty much sums up how I feel about the West in general and the United States in particular. The web of trust and commerce in Western societies is unthinkable in the Third World because the prosperity they produce are fat juicy targets for people raised on Screw the Other Guy. Crime and corruption are stealing, and stealing is Screwing the Other Guy. It’s short-term win, long-term loss.  

Alright, now here come the brass tacks: 

If you think about it, all of our laws – and indeed, the very idea of respect for and equality under the law – are written to protect Tit-for-Tat, because Tit-for-Tat produces the best results. You may sell your product at a profit, but if you lie about what it does we will call that fraud and you will go to jail because successful societies start nice but retaliate against those that decide to Screw the Other Guy. The punishment of fraud is what gives us confidence in the claims made by other products. Retaliating against Screw the Other Guy is not mean-spiritedness or a lust for revenge. It is essential to protect the confidence needed to stay focused on long-term wins. And that’s how, in theory, you build a cooperative society.  

You retaliate against those that take advantage of the common trust. In other words, you punish the cheaters. 

If you do not punish the cheaters, you have an “always cooperate” society that produces, consistently and rapidly, the worst possible outcome because it encourages – it selects – competing nasty strategies, by providing them with what I can only describe as a food source. Without retaliation against cheaters, cheaters thrive because that becomes the smartest strategy. There’s nothing “kind” about non-retaliation, nothing noble or good. Non-retaliation is suicide. Plain and simple.  

Go read the whole thing, the reasoning is sound. And it even fits in with the idea of enlightened self interest. You don't screw the other guy because in the long term you don't want to be screwed. It's better for everyone if the rules are enforced. Better still if there are as few rules as possible, but that is another topic.

The whole thing is common sense and can be summed up by a movie quote from Roadhouse. "Be nice until it's time to not be nice anymore."

Hat tip Dyre Portents, who earned a couple of spots in my blogroll today.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - May 28, 2007 at 02:51 PM  Tag


 ◊  ◊   ◊  ◊ 

Random selections from NeoWayland's library


Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"
© 2005 - 2009 All Rights Reserved