The Prisoner's Dilemma

Yesterday in class, we talked about the prisoner's dilemma and how it affects the group/team dynamic, and we did an exercise that imitated it, where Beth told us that only one person in the class was going to get an A for this semester and we as a class had to determine which person it would be.  The method we chose was interesting to say the least.

We started out by brainstorming ideas to select and they ran the gambit: from Rock, Paper, Scissors, to drawing names from a hat, to an obstacle course (the one we finally chose), to a battle royale similar to Highlander. (There can be only one!  This was the one I was hoping for.)

Then someone, I believe it was Sean said that he didn't mind if he didn't get an A, so Cabana (who became our unofficial spokesperson for this exercise) asked the class if anyone else wanted to back out from the exercise.  I volunteered myself because I know that because I don't have a scholarship and I'm not in Academic Probation, it wouldn't affect me terribly badly if I didn't get an A in the class.  There were about three or four others who also volunteered to take the fall.

After that, the ideas we brainstormed were written on the board and we voted on them, everyone was allowed to vote as many times as they wanted the first time through and the Highlander method and obstacle course method tied.  When we did the tie-breaker, we were only allowed to vote for one of them and obstacle course edged out the Highlander method, much to my disappointment. (Watching massive sword fights would have been a great way to start off the week.)

We all worked out how the obstacle course would be set up and we discussed the different win conditions.  Then the people who wanted to compete for it ran it, it turned out Cabana was the winner.  I think the exercise worked out quite well, demonstrating the different kind of people that would appear in the Prisoner's Dilemma: the people who wouldn't tell the authorities anything aka the people who volunteered to take the fall at the beginning, and the people who wanted to get the best outcome no matter what aka the competitive people who ran the course.

However I think it was somewhat flawed because we all knew it was just an exercise.  If we hadn't, I think things might have turned slightly more competitive and possible more violent. (The exercise reminded me of the movies Battle Royale and Exam, both of which end rather terribly if you haven't seen them.  I'll probably talk about them in class on Thursday when we cover competition so look forward to that.)  But overall, I think it was a fun little exercise.

Although I do think it's a terrible idea for a professor to leave their students, their New Media students, alone in a room together.  That just smells like disaster to me...  But it was entertaining nonetheless.