The prisoners dilemma describes a scenario where individual decision-makers always have an incentive to choose an action that creates a less than optimal outcome for the individuals as a group.

When applied to int'l affairs, it explains why countries fail to cooperate even when it is in their best interest to do so. When it comes applying the bitcoin standard to nations, we can see the theoretical future of bitcoin. Countries will not opt to ban bitcoin, others will adopt the bitcoin standard. Nations, one by one enter the bitcoin standard as that is where the incentive is.

First time post on this sub (I originally made this as a comment on the discussion thread) but I got really excited about the dynamics of tonight's vote that went unsaid on the show, which is that it's the Prisoner's Dilemma, played out in real strategic gameplay and not an arbitrary shipwheel on an island.

Danny and Deshawn suspect the majority alliance will split their votes 2-2 in case Danny has an idol. The best case scenario for the both of them would be placing their votes on someone (say, Xander or Erika) and trying to get another player to flip, sticking together to the final five.

But if they did that, one of Danny or Deshawn could change their vote, making it a 3-2-1 against the other that guarantees their safety in a vote split. The only way to guard against that is to vote for the other, resulting in the 3-3 tied vote we saw.

That's how you do the Prisoner's Dilemma on Survivor.

If you never heard about prisoners dilemma, you can find info about it here.

You are in Myrkgaard, solo. Around you are 20 other solo players, you all run as a pack. You soon reach a bunch of mobs. There are 4 scenarios

1. You attack the mobs, so does everyone else. Mobs die quick. Everyone is better off
2. You attack the mobs, nobody else does. You die
3. You ignore the mobs, everyone else attacks. You can chill and loot boxes in safety.
4. You ignore the mobs, so does everyone else. Everyone is worse off.

Without information of what the other 20 players will do, you are better off ignoring the mobs as this is not likely to lead to your death. However, since everyone thinks like this, everyone is worse off.

If you're unaware, if the Jags somehow beat the Colts, then the winner of Raiders vs. Chargers on Sunday night will go to the playoffs. Here's the twist: If they tie, they both go to the playoffs.

The best thing for both teams to do would be to cooperate and kneel the ball on every play. This would have both teams going to the playoffs. They would risk zero injuries and essentially have an off week leading into the playoffs.

If one team decides to defect and score, then that team makes the playoffs with a small risk of injury.

If neither team decides to cooperate and they both try to win the game, then the odds of making the playoffs are roughly 50/50, with a relatively high risk of injury.

I know it's not going to happen, but would be very interesting (not interesting to watch on TV, though...)

I just rewatched it after many years, and even though I've sort of outgrown my sort of fawning reverence for this show after seeing more prestige dramas on HBO etc. over the years, this episode really had everything. The plot was fiendishly clever, the episode moved at a breakneck pace and conveyed a lot of information very economically, there was some genuinely great comedy (Finch with a gun!), the acting was outstanding (especially the interrogation between Reese and Carter) and most of all, the script felt incredibly grounded and naturalistic.

The plot of the show got a lot more exciting and high-stakes after the Samaritan story was introduced, but I'll admit the script/dialogue started feeling incredibly overwritten, excessively intellectualized, and rather cheesy and shlocky despite the clear ambition and attention to detail the story maintained on a macro level. (This issue has continued to haunt Nolan in Westworld, which is now also failing on a basic story level.) The script in this episode by contrast had more genuine wit and texture to it compared to the slew of ham-fisted monologues that plagued the writing of seasons 4-5. The first 2-3 seasons of this show maintained a sort of gritty realism that was accented by the sci-fi premise, and that really came through brilliantly in this episode, which is both a game-changing chapter in the show's overall canon as well as a superbly self-contained hour of excellent suspense. Definitely a classic.

Title. The winner of the game will go to the playoff along with the Pittsburgh Steelers. However, if the two teams tie, they will both be in the playoff. Is this almost a Prisoner’s Dilemma?

For those that don't know, the Prisoners Dilemma can be described as such "The prisoner's dilemma elegantly shows when each individual pursues their own self-interest, the outcome is worse than if they had both cooperated."

The way it's always been is that employees roll over to the whims of employers usually out of fear for their job. For example, people being forced back into offices after WFH because their employer demands it. People don't want to resist this request because they don't want to lose their job. But what would happen if everyone stayed home? Obviously work would continue if the company was successful with WFH over the past year or so.

I'm glad this sub exists because individually we won't ever move forward or achieve a goal that benefits us all.

Chicken and the prisoner's dilemma are not the same thing. It is a sign of immense self discipline that Xander did not "Well, Ackshually" another contestant. I do not possess this level of self discipline.

In Chicken, if you know your opponent is going to be risky, then you should play safe. If you know your opponent is going to play safe, then you should play risky. Knowing what the other player will do helps you make the right choice.

Contrast this with the prisoner's dilemma. In a prisoner's dilemma, the "betray" option is dominant, which means picking betray gives a larger reward regardless of what the other player chooses. But if both players go for "betray", the end result is worse than if they had both gone with the "trust" option.

An example of payoffs that would make it a prisoner's dilemma:

• Both players pick "Trust": Both players get flint and a bag of rice.
• One player picks "Betray" and the other picks "Trust": The player that picks betray gets a bag of rice, flint, and a jar of peanut butter. The person that picks trust gets nothing.
• Both players pick "betray": both players get flint.

In this situation, there is reason to pick betray regardless of what opponent does. If you think the other player will pick trust, free peanut butter. If you think they will pick betray, you need to protect your flint.

January holder here. One of my biggest concerns in the early days of this whole saga was centered around the Prisoner's Dilemma. If you aren't familiar with the Prisoner's Dilemma, imagine two people involved in a crime separated in different cells. They both know if they keep their mouths shut they will both go free. The wrinkle is the DA has offered a deal - the first person to rat out the other goes free. This changes the whole dynamic. The only way to guarantee you go free is to snitch on your partner. The outcome which will help everyone get what they want is now the riskier path to take. A version of this was depicted in The Dark Knight with the two ferries armed with bombs and each detonator was given to the other boat.

The first time I learned about GME, I understood it. This is not my first rodeo in the stock market and you didn't have to explain what a short squeeze was to me, I just needed to see the numbers. The numbers on GME showed what was possible - a short squeeze like the world had never seen before. However, because of the unique distributed nature of this short squeeze by retail investors an enormous Prisoner's Dilemma formed and I was unsure how this would play out. GME is a very unique situation and I don't know of any historical examples like it.

Holding GME stock was like being a prisoner with 1,000,000 other prisoners anxious to get out and make a quick buck. If a third of them decided to sell, the whole thing could fall apart and we'd all leave empty handed, or worse, broke.

But you know what? I'm still here. And you're still here. Despite two days that had insane price drops and immense pressure on apes to sell (especially those who got in at high prices), we're still holding strong. In fact, many of us doubled down and bought more. It actually gives me hope in humanity that millions can trust others enough to put their own hard earned cash at risk. It's kind of...inspiring.

My sister bought GME at $320 in January. She hasn't sold a single share. Do you know why she hasn't sold? It's because she trusts you. I no longer think about the GME Prisoner's Dilemma because I trust you too. We've been thrown under a giant mountain of weight and told to sell our shares and protect our money.

But the mountain didn't crush us.

It just turned us into diamonds.

Let's imagine for a second Ua loses immunity next episode. Shan & Ricard will likely both want to vote Genie, meaning "logically" it appears Genie should give up her vote to use her shot in the Dark.

Let's say they Ally Together and both cast their vote for Genie, there is now a 1/6 chance Genie becomes safe, and since Shan & Ricard can only vote each other in a revote, there's a 1/6 chance Shan & Ricard will have to face off in a Fire Making Challenge.

Now let's imagine that what if Shan does not like her odds in a FMC, and to avoid the 1/6 chance she'd be forced into one, she Betrays Ricard, casting her vote against him, and now even if Genie gets her 1/6 chance, Ricard will be voted out 1-0, and Shan will be safe regardless. Not considering repercussions to her social game, this is Shan's best outcome.

Vice Versa Ricard might also want to avoid a FMC, and under the same thought process as Shan, he Betrays Shan, meaning if Genie rolls immunity, Shan will instead be voted out 1-0 with no way to save herself. That would be the worst outcome for Shan.

So what happens if Shan & Ricard, both realizing that to achieve their best outcome and to avoid their worst outcome, both decide to Betray Each Other. Now no matter what Genie rolls, Shan & Ricard will have to face off in the FMC. A scenario with an only 1/6 chance on happening if they both ally, but by both betraying each other they guarantee at least a chance to put their fate into their own hands.

A lot of moving parts huh? In some ways the Ua tribe managed to manufacture their own Prisoner's Dilemma (and an actually true one this time). And considering how these best/worst outcomes are all based off a 1/6 die, it adds a whole nother school of thought on what the correct way to vote is.

It doesn't end here though, there's still a third player in this being Genie. Now while I said it appears Genie should give up her vote to risk the shot, Genie has her own dilemma to worry about before she can use it. If Genie risks her vote there's a 5/6 chance she leaves, 1/6 chance she's safe in 3/4 scenarios. If she keeps her vote, she would guarantee her safety in 3/4 scenarios, but would also have no chance of survival if they both ally.

Let me elaborate. Let's say instead of playing her shot, she votes for Ricard. Now if Shan decides to betray Ricard, Genie is now completely safe in a scenario where she'd originally have a 5/6 chance of going home. If Shan decides to ally wi

What dilemma?

The best stock holders in the world hold and register their stock. Matt Furlong has let us know that we are the best because we buy, hold, and DRS or we buy through ComputerShare directly.

“As always we appreciate all the enthusiasm from customers, employees and stock holders, who we believe are the best in the world” - Matt Furlong

GameStop is the best. You are the best.

Thanks for coming to my DRS talk.

Buddy of mine didn't want to buy into GME because while they believe what I said about MOASS, they said "It's a prisoner's dilemma. If enough of you paper hand, it screws up the whole squeeze."

This may sound like an extraneous detail, but one of the major principles of the prisoner's dilemma, and indeed the second sentence of the paragraph describing it in the wikipedia article, is that the prisoners have no way to communicate with each other. They're locked in solitary with no messaging ability whatsoever.

For that reason above all else, MOASS is not a prisoner's dilemma situation. Sure, there are plenty of lurkers not posting and commenting, but we speak all day every day. That freedom of information enabled us to take part in this thing to begin with!

Not only does this just go "Oh you have a small tribe so you can do nothing but protect your vote? Someone gets an advantage everytime!!!" but it clearly opens the door for production interference. Only kinda like a player? They get an extra vote. The player has a huge emotional moment with the main 'villain' Shan? Give them an advantage that can steal other players advantage. This is Ben idols in S 35 but even more overt.

Season 41 has improved with the last 3 episodes honestly but this is completely terrible and not excited to see the merge honestly. Oh well, can't wait for Shan to get the ebst advantage of the season casue she's the production favourite.

Is there a name for a Prisoner's Dilemma in which the game is bound by a time deadline, and the game ends when either time expires (both players default to cooperation) or one player defects (ending the game with defect/cooperate or cooperate/defect)? This makes the defect/defect essentially impossible, ignoring the rare case of simultaneous defection.

The real world example is would be an offer where a prosecutor offered each prisoner a deal, but added time pressure by saying you have until a) your buddy defects or b) tomorrow morning to decide.

It seems that it is not a "classic" prisoner's dilemma, but it is also not an iterative prisoner's dilemma. I've done some Googling, and I can't find any reference to this subtype - but I'm assuming it is a very common variant.

>The prisoner's dilemma ... shows why two completely rational individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

I just watched all the episodes in 1 week so apologies if this has already been discussed, but this is something that I noticed.

A) If the family works together, then everybody wins. The company is stronger, one of them will be CEO, they all become even more impossibly rich.

B) If one of them is scheming but others aren't, then that person benefits greatly. That person will acquire wealth and power that exceeds the others.

C) If one of them is not scheming but others are, then that person is disadvantaged. That person will acquire less wealth and power than the others.

D) If everybody schemes, everybody loses. They all beat each other down to raise themselves up, but in the end everything crumbles.

Which is basically how I think the show will end -- with their empire in ruins.

For those of you unfamiliar, the prisoner’s dilemma is a thought experiment where two participants are coerced into making a choice. They can each choose to ‘betray’ the other prisoner or ‘cooperate’ with the other prisoner. They do not see what the other will choose. If both prisoners choose betray, they get five years of jail time. If both cooperate they get 2 years of jail time. But if one betrays and the other cooperates the betrayer gets released and the cooperater gets 10 years.

The best overall outcome here is for both players to cooperate. This gives the least total jail time. However, common sense tells us that the smartest option is to choose betray, because it has the best outcomes when you don’t trust your partner. When there are any prisoners out there ever choosing betray, then you must also. The only time you can choose cooperate is when everyone else is always cooperating.

This is the situation we have as teachers, where the interrogator is the admin and the jail time is poor evaluations, non renewal, and other similar consequences.

We have more asked of us than we have resources to provide. There are two possible responses. One is to provide as much as your resources allow and therefore not do everything that is asked of us. The other is to use our own personal resources to make up the difference. These options are cooperate and betray, respectively, and we all know how the game plays out. If one teacher cooperates and enforces boundaries and the other teacher betrays and uses their own resources, then one teacher will complete all duties and one will not. This means that the first teacher will face professional consequences or their students will go without full support, and the other teacher will suffer no consequences and their students will be in the better environment. Maximum punishment for one, no punishment for the other.

If both spend their own resources and betray, then both get to spend hundreds of dollars a year, work weekends, and stay late every year but do not get in trouble and their classrooms are equipped. This is the medium punishment because you are paying a lot of your time and life for the rest of your career just to work at your job.

If neither spends resources, some tasks remain undone and the classrooms remain partially unequipped. Since both cooperated, there is no one for administrators to target. This means that the admin must either prioritize tasks and remove some duties or increase available resources.

Disclaimer: this post is not really about Nano, nor is it supposed to be an advertisement for Nano. It's just a trend I noticed from being an active member in r/nanotrade

Game Theory Primer

The most accessible game in game theory is the Prisoner's Dilemma. It is also, arguably, the most important game to know about for the financial markets.

It goes as such: there are two prisoners. They are offered the choice of confessing or staying quiet.

The table of outcomes looks like this:

Prisoner's Dilemma Payoff Matrix

The matrix above shows both Prisoner 1 and Prisoner 2's payoffs. For example, if Prisoner 1 confesses (betrays) but Prisoner 2 stays silent, he gets 5 units of utility, while Prisoner 2 gets 0. It is evident that the top solution is for both to stay silent, as both get 4 units.

However, the game has an equilibrium of both players betraying. If you start in the top left square, with both silent, each player reasons that he is better off from betraying. If Player 1 were to stay silent and Player 2 betrays, then Player 2 gets 5 units instead of 4. Additionally, if Player 1 were to betray, Player 2 still gains from betraying as well, getting 1 unit instead of 0. Thus, both players realise that they should confess/betray and they will benefit.

Nano's Low Conviction Pumps

Now, with this primer, we turn to Nano's recent history of low conviction pumps. Nano often has brief moments of pumping beyond resistance, before quickly retracing back to its previous level.

Most recent evidence of this phenomenon (occurred on 15th October 2021):

Nano's Most Recent Pump and Retrace

As you can see, this pump quickly retraced (and there was no coincidental market dump).

This seems odd. Nano's community is often described as passionate, dedicated, and high conviction (if a little bit over exuberant).

I believe that this comes down to Nano's own form of Prisoner's Dilemma.

Nano's Prisoner's Dilemma

Nano during a pump has a payoff matrix of:

Nano's Payoff Matrix

The Nano community understands that if the majority were to hold through a pu

I've been working on a party game for years. It was delayed for a long time because of COVID, but I'm happy to announce that it is now live on Kickstarter. I hope you'll check it out, and if you like what you see, join me there. Thanks!

Kickstarter link

--

You’re a slimy, chompy, furry, fangy, freaky, howling, scary, bug-eyed monster.

As a monster, you’ve got a couple things going for you—you’re darn tough and you’re super scary. But are you the greatest monster? There’s only one way to find out, and that’s to pit yourself against other monsters in a game of Monster Mayhem! Compete against your fellow monsters in rooms containing bubbling acid, exploding rockets, tentacled terrors, rickety bridges, and much, much more for the thrill—nay, the honor—of being crowned the greatest monster ever.

Monster Mayhem is a bluffing, push your luck social party game for 4-12 players. Players choose a monster and matching vote token, and then take turns reading from a large variety of location cards. After reading a location scenario, all players vote simultaneously. Depending on the vote, players gain or lose points and adjust their score. After 8 locations, the player with the highest score wins.

For 4-12 Players. 30 minutes. Ages 10+.

is because we probably won't get a swap this season. The show wants the players to establish cross-tribal dynamics before merge.

Possible Evvie and Deshawn alliance, Tiffany/Sydney mini-spat (hilarious btw), and the three boys in the first ep. We'll have more the upcoming weeks before the merge.

It was fine in the first episode but we've seen the same (or almost the same), not very interesting thing happen three times now, and let's face it all it's doing is eating up air time. It's often talked about here how seasons with an 'extra island' twist, ghost island, edge of extinction, island of the idols, etc, tend to be edited more unevenly than seasons without an island twist (look at DvG's very even edit). This is literally one of those in everything except for season title. Throw on top the fact we have three tribes, which are already hard enough to balance in an hour long episode, and we're ending up with an extremely sloppy edit. We're three episodes into a seasons with only 18 people and somehow have left two whole contestants in Heather and Erika on the cutting room floor, (or on the sit out bench if you will.)

The most disheartening thing for me is, since they were filmed back to back, it's likely this trend will continue into seasons 42 ._.

I've seen a few opinions around the reddit that punching in TGTTOS is "toxic". And that players simply shouldn't do it or else they're bad sports. Personally, I don't have much of an opinion on the topic, but I wanted to point out that it isn't as simple as mean and nice, right or wrong, toxic and sportsmanlike

The prisoner's dilemma, in game theory, is a situation that shows how rational individuals might not cooperate, even if it's in their best interest to do so. Two prisoners are given a choice; they can either betray their accomplice, or they can stay silent:

https://preview.redd.it/czbnlwxojqk71.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=f25b8a620b298d1e0ce95975891f2c34dd81e94a

Imagine two equally-skilled players are neck to neck in TGTTOSAWAF, with no one else even close to catching up with them, and the finish line in their sights. There are three choices they can make:

Option 1: If player A punches player B into the void, then player A can go on to win the game. However, this causes player B to have to start over from the very beginning, with absolutely no chance of getting first

Option 2: If both players punch each other into the void, then they both have to start over. This is slightly better for player B than option one, as there is now a chance that they can beat player A individually. At the same time, this outcome is equally bad for both of them. There is now no way either of them can finish in first

Option 3: If they decide to trust each other and neither of them are knocked into the void, then they both have an equal chance of winning. This outcome is equally good for both of them, but neither of them are guaranteed a win

As you can see, it is in their best interest to punch the other player and hope they don't get punched back. Whether you punch other players in TGTTOS doesn't make you toxic, it's just a calculated decision that the players must make in order to win!

So, what's the strat here? In the rounds where pvp is enabled, this game is about more than just movement

So if you're not familiar with game theory, The Prisoner's Dilemma is THE classic mathematical game, where the basic idea behind it is:

You and your partner in crime have been arrested by the police. They have suspicions the two of you are responsible for a bank robbery, but no actual evidence to support it. Two officers take each of you into separate rooms, and they grill the two of you to try to get you to flip. If both of you stay quiet, they can only hold you for a week and then have to let you go. If one if you rats out the other one, you the rat gets to go free immediately, and the other person gets 10 years in prison. If both of you rat each other out, they'll have what they need to convict both of you, and you'll both go to prison for 5 years.

The outcomes vary and occasionally there are slightly different rules, but this is the basic set up.. Its used as a model to analyze far more things than just interrogating prisoners, and has been used to investigate many sorts of situations where each person has a choice to either cooperate with or betray the other. turn on each other for a reward. An example could be a politician deciding whether or not to go negative during a campaign, where going negative could potentially give a boost to the campaign, but would hurt both candidates if they both decide to go negative. Often they try to determine real-world numbers for the outcomes, which they then use those numbers to figure out the best expected outcome.

The question itself, "what's the best outcome? " is interesting, because people's answer to that question can be itself be used as a study in sociology. In the original model, There are two common responses: The first one is: "The best outcome is if you rat out your partner and your partner doesn't talk, that what you get to go free right away". The second one, and the one that seems most obvious to me is : "The best outcome would be if neither of you talk, but then you'll only do a total of two weeks. Any other option, and you'll wind up doing 10 years total, either all by one or split up evenly by the two of you." If you're playing a game of Prisoner's Dilemma among a group of people who think the second way, both of you will try play your strategy to get the best outcome. You'll both decide to cooperate, and wind up getting your preferred outcome, you'll both only be held for a week and let go. If a group of the first type of person tries to play it though, you'll be wanting the outcome where you

So, many of you know about the prisoner's dilemma, a famous example of when people making the choice that seems right for them actually turns out worse for them in the end (if not, I recommend searching it up on YouTube!).

This is a cool idea that I want to turn into a deck. Here's what I got so far:

1. Rhystic Study
2. Expropriate
3. The Tempt Cycle
4. Smothering Tithe
5. Wandering Archaic
6. Mind's Dilation

What else fits? :)

Hello fellow apes. Im here today to talk about GME and the prisoners Dilemma. Now you might remember me from my previous due diligences

https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/mbiodn/cleaning_house_cco_resigns_and_what_that_means/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/mlscva/gme_and_the_art_of_floors_why_1_million_is_not_as/

I havent written any articles for a while now and for good reason. You apes have been in top form the last few months and to be quite frank the DD being done here is of a high caliber. I felt that I had nothing I really needed to say in the face of seriously good DD. But as we begin to close in on what appears to be "the endgame" I wanted to address something I have seen and provide newer apes some context to make the MOASS potentially smoother overall.

So as the MOASS has begun to close in I decided to make a last minute bid to try and convince some friends and family who I have who were on the fence to invest in GME. Eventually I succeeded and was able to convince them to buy some shares. Yesterday however after the market closed I began talking to them and realized that the argument for buying had nothing to do with the massive naked shorting or anything like that. They were under the impression that this was purely a momentum play generated by the "redditors". I tried explaining to them the facts and DD that I have seen during my own research and through the DD on this subreddit. After I finished my explanation I said that the only thing needed to be done was to buy and hold the stock and that the short hedge funds wouldn't have any other recourse but to settle for large sums. Now my friends while not being very educated on GME aren't dumb and upon hearing the situation immediately began to explain to me the prisoners dilemma and how relying on others for my stock position would end poorly. They started saying how the apes would paper hand in greater and greater quantities as the stock increased in value and how any price target larger than 10k was more a fantasy than a possibility. Now obviously this isn't the case. I have seen this subreddit and the character of the apes within for months now and I know that some of you will hold just to spite the hedgies without taking any profit at all. But someone

Think you know your classic logic puzzles and paradoxes? Well, think again, and then a third time, because this one is made for only the biggest brains around, /r/mathmemes subscribers.

Ten prisoners are trapped on an island, each are perfectly logical and have blue eyes. They are told they may leave at night if they have blue eyes, two cabbages, and a goat, by asking the head guard, but if they don't they will be killed. Each prisoner will attempt to leave the island at the first opportunity, and knows the other prisoners will do the same.

The guards are on the other side of a river, with two brothers, one of which only tells lies while the other only tells the truth, standing at a fork in the road, in the way of the head guard's hut. Additionally, there is a single riverboat, which can carry two prisoners across the river with any two non-prisoner cargo once each day, but only one prisoner who knows how to operate it. There are two wolves on the prisoners' side of the river, just enough cabbages and goats for each prisoner, an unattended goat will eat any unattended cabbage, and an unattended wolf will eat any unattended goat.

You tell the prisoners that at least one of them has blue eyes, but that you have hidden two of their goats behind different random doors, making it impossible for everyone to leave the island, and have placed a useless sports car behind a third door. If any of them agree to testify against one of their fellow prisoners, that prisoner will be executed and the prisoner that testified will be escorted off the island, leaving the goats behind the door no longer needed.

A prisoner testified against will be told the day of the execution will be a surprise, but will happen within one week's time. If no prisoner is executed, the prisoners must pick a door. Once they do, you reveal one of the goats behind another door, and the prisoners are given the choice to switch doors. Whichever door they finally decide upon will be revealed, and the contents will be thrown into the island's volcano, the prisoners keeping whatever was behind the other two doors.

Should any of the prisoners testify against one another, and on what day is the execution if it happens? In either case, what are the chances for all the remaining prisoners to leave the island, and if it is possible, how do they reach the head guard and how many days will does this take?

I'm about 2/3rds of the way through Tiamat's Wrath, and this continual reference to tit-for-tat as the logically optimal solution to an iterated prisoner's dilemma game is starting to grate on me. Tit-for-tat is a valid equilibrium strategy to an iterated prisoner's dilemma game, but it's not the uniquely optimal strategy in any rigorous sense.

In a formal sense, the only thing that game theory really tells us about the repeated prisoner's dilemma is that anything can happen and a range of equilibrium strategies exist, including "always cooperate" and "always defect" or a wide range of trigger strategies. Experimentally, human beings will most frequently settle into a tit-for-tat strategy and commitment to this strategy by one player tends to produce the highest payoffs, but there's nothing rigorously unique about it from a pure logic standpoint.

The idea that you would test whether something is intelligent by expecting it to respond in kind to a tit-for-tat strategy is kind of silly. I know this is part of the theme, but the implication seems to be that the unknown aggressors, like Elsa Singh, aren't "logical," and that the mistake is assuming they were. However the book presupposes that there is something rigorously logical about tit-for-tat in the first place and there isn't. The idea that anyone would want to test some unknown intelligence with a test-response strategy that doesn't actually follow from formal logic seems dumb in a way that is perhaps dumber than the authors intended it to be.

My sister has two kids who always want to be first to do something so I suggested these rules to incentivize against this behavior:

For any desirable activity in which one must go first, each child is given the option to be the first. If both want to be first, one is chosen randomly and a 10-minute delay is placed on when they can start. If only one wants to go first, they may go first but the next two times around, that child must go second, no questions asked. If neither wants to go first, one is chosen randomly but no delay is placed.

If they cooperate, they minimize any utility loss but if they get greedy, they incur a tradeoff. According to the standard economic model and assuming they're both perfectly rational actors, they will eventually settle into a Nash equilibrium in which neither one ever again wants to be first.

Problem Solved.