Psychoddities. Can Golden Balls save the world?

Transcription

1 1 Can Golden Balls save the world? Golden Balls is a game show on British TV (shown on ITV, an independent channel; the BBC would probably consider it a little tasteless). American and Australian readers might be familiar with the similar shows Friend or Foe and Shafted. After a couple of preliminary rounds, in which players build up a jackpot and eliminate rival contestants, the show culminates in a head-to-head between two finalists. Each finalist is a given a pair golden balls. The balls are hollow and contain a label: split for one ball in each pair, steal for the other. Each contestant must choose either the split or steal ball and place it in the middle of the table. Although the contestants can see, and talk to, each other, they cannot see inside each others balls (stop sniggering at the back) and therefore have no way of knowing for certain which the other will select. Contestants can and are encouraged to make verbal agreements with one another but, crucially, these agreements are not enforceable. If both contestants choose the split ball, the jackpot is split evenly between them. If both choose the steal ball, both win nothing. But and here is the crucial bit if one contestant chooses the steal ball and the other the split ball, the contestant who chooses the steal ball, steals the money, taking home the entire jackpot, whilst the other contestant leaves with nothing. So let s play now. I will be the other contestant. I promise you that I will choose split. If you also choose split, turn to Page 2 If you choose steal, turn to Page 3

2 2 Can Golden Balls save the world?: You chose split I kept my word and chose split, so the money is split evenly between us. How lovely. Now turn to Page 4 to find out what this is all about.

3 3 Can Golden Balls save the world?: You chose steal I kept my word and chose split, so you have successfully stolen the entire jackpot (or, at least, you would have done, had we been playing for real). Now turn to Page 4 to find out what this is all about.

4 4 Can Golden Balls save the world?: Answer The Golden Balls finalist faces a tricky dilemma. Most people s thinking probably runs something like this: I m a fair person, so I m going to choose split. But if I choose split and the other person chooses steal, I ll leave with nothing. So I m going to choose steal. But then if we both choose steal I ll still leave with nothing. So I m going to choose split and try to convince the other person to do the same. And so on, ad infinitum. Notice that even people who decide from the outset that they are going to steal face exactly the same problem of trying to convince the other person to choose split. The paradox is that whilst, taking a bird s eye view of the game, the only rational decision is for both players to split, from the perspective of either individual player, the only rational decision is to steal. Of course, this problem could be bypassed if there were some way to enforce an agreement to share. And, boy, do people try: They shake hands, the make solemn promises, they swear on their lives. But it s all just hot air. The show pays out according purely to the rules of the game as described above, ignoring any agreements made by the contestants. Unusually for a TV game show, Golden Balls is based on a famous thought experiment from Psychology: The Prisoner s Dilemma, formulated by Albert Tucker in the 1950s. Two prisoners are held in

5 5 separate cells and cannot communicate with one another. The police offer a deal: If both confess (like choosing split ), they get 1 year in prison each. If both testify against the other (like choosing steal ), they get 2 years each. But if one testifies against the other (= steals ) whilst the other confesses (= shares ), the confessor gets 3 years whilst the testifier walks free. The dilemma is exactly the same as the one in the Golden Balls final. From a bird s eye view, the best thing is for both prisoners to confess, and so get only 1 year each. But from the point of view of each individual prisoner, the best strategy is to testify against the other in order to be guaranteed a maximum of 2 years instead of 3, as well as an outside chance of walking free. Which strategy should you choose? It is impossible to say. The whole point of the paradox is that there is no way for the individual player to make a choice that is rationale in the context of the game as a whole. What, then, is the point of the thought experiment? Are Psychologists in the habit of dreaming up hypothetically possible though hardly likely dilemmas for the sheer hell of it? Actually, the paradox is very useful tool not only for understanding human behaviour, but for helping us to come up with ideas for how we might change it for the better. Consider the tragedy of the commons, an idea dating back to Aristotle and Hobbes (though this particular term was coined in 1968 by Garret Hardin). In this context, the commons can be understood to mean any resource that is shared by (i.e., common to) all. That said, the idea is most commonly illustrated with reference to the original meaning of the term. In medieval England, all land was owned by noblemen and worked on by serfs (effectively slaves). Many noblemen designated a certain proportion of their land as commons ; shared ground that the serfs could use for their own purposes such as gathering food or grazing their sheep. If every

6 6 serf were to allow his sheep to graze on the commons, the land would rapidly become over-grazed and useless for further grazing (this parallels the situation where both Golden Balls players choose steal and so end up with nothing). The best situation would be for every serf to limit his own sheep s grazing to a reasonable level (like when both Golden Balls players choose split ). But as long as everybody else is grazing his sheep on the commons, it makes no sense for any one serf to allow his sheep to go hungry (he would be like the Golden Balls player who chooses split only to lose everything when his opponent chooses steal ). So the tragedy of the commons is that, because the only rationale choice of action for each individual is to let his sheep graze there, the commons becomes over-grazed and useless in a matter of days. You might still feel that this scenario is of little relevance to the modern age. But consider the case of global warming. As long as every other country continues to release greenhouse gasses, it makes no sense for any individual country to limit its own emissions: It will lose out economically by doing so, and the cuts will have virtually no impact on the global scale. Again, the interests of the individual are at odds with those of the players as a whole. Perhaps you don t believe in global warming. Consider, then, the case of population growth. From the point of view of any one individual, the only rationale course of action is to have as many children as you like (or, at least, can afford). At the national or global level, the only rational course of action is to limit the population to the number of people that can be comfortably supported. But this is of no relevance to the couple planning another child, which, on its own, is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. How can the prisoner s dilemma (or Golden Balls) help us here? If the prisoners are able to enter into a legally-binding contract that is enforced

7 7 by the police, then the game changes dramatically. Now, the only rational course of action is for both to confess. Similarly with Golden Balls, if the players are able to make an agreement to split one that is strictly enforced by the show s producers picking this ball becomes a nobrainer. The lesson is that tragedies of the commons, such as global warming, can be averted only by binding agreements that are enforced by an allpowerful outside entity (such as Hobbes Leviathan). Golden Balls also teaches us two powerful lessons about what will almost certainly not work. First, if one country sacrifices its own economic performance by cutting emissions, there is no reason to expect others to follow suit. It is virtually certain that at least some will, like the predatory Golden Balls finalist, just grab a bigger piece of the economic pie for themselves, particularly given that global warming seems inevitable anyway. Second, there is no point in a country making unenforceable pledges, because there is no reason for the other countries to believe that they will stick to them. Emissions targets are worth nothing more than the hand on my heart pleadings heard in every episode of the game show. Could the United Nations be our Leviathan; the solution proposed by Garrett Harding back in 1968? Perhaps, but only if it were given the power to impose punishments so drastic that no country doubted its ability to force others to toe the line on emissions. On recent form, the world s most powerful countries do not exactly look poised for a wholesale transfer of powers to the UN. So is mankind doomed? Or can Golden Balls save the world?

8 8 In a particularly memorable episode, one contestant followed a rather unorthodox strategy. Rather than promising to split, a contestant known only as Nick promptly announced his intention to choose the steal ball, saying that he would share the money with the other contestant after the show. His opponent, who of course had no reason to believe this pledge, tried to talk Nick into agreeing to both choose split. But Nick had already gained the upper hand. Whenever his opponent talked of choosing split Nick simply replied, I m not going to pick split, I m going to steal. His opponent was livid: We re walking away with no money because you re an idiot. But in the dying seconds of the game, he relented, You know what? I m going to go with you. He did. Nick s opponent chose split. So did Nick keep his word and share the money after the show? He didn t need to. He chose split too. It was a piece of brinkmanship worthy of a cold war general. And how about that piece of showboating at the end? Nick knew he had won. He could have chosen steal and then split the money at his leisure (or even decided not to). Instead, he went for the risky option of choosing split, for no other reason than to demonstrate his confidence in the scheme. Could this strategy work for global warming? What if a large and powerful country, instead of making promises of minor reductions, vowed to rapidly increase its emissions to such an extent that the world would fry within a decade unless other countries reduced theirs? My bet

9 9 is that this would get countries reducing their emissions faster than you can say Koyoto Protocol. If so, an early-evening game show will have saved the world.