Why Prisoner's dilemma is mischievous shite- part 1

Law Enforcement can offer two sorts of incentives to get evidence against criminals. One sort is a monetary or reputational reward. The other is to use Criminal Informants who essentially buy the right to run their illegal operations in return for offering up a certain number of villains for legal punishment.

Clearly, the former course is to be preferred. The latter can be gamed by Organized Crime.
This is not to say that there is no grounds for clemency for criminals who confess to all their dealings, provide testimony against their associates, and genuinely turn over a new leaf. Indeed, as happened with Vidocq, there may be case for appointing a reformed criminal head of the Detective Force. However, what matters is whether the criminal has had a genuine change of heart and is seeking atonement.

Using 'immunity' to buy evidence is self defeating. It turns crime into a currency whose supply will be regulated by a Godfather so as to maximize 'seignorage'.  The Courts and Prisons, funded by the tax payer, become the Federal Reserve Bank and Fort Knox of Organized Crime.

All this was well known from countless detective novels and noir B Movies by the time the always hilariously stupid RAND corporation interested in this issue,

What folllows is Albert W. Tucker's canonical account of Prisoner's dilemma. Could anything be more utterly silly and radically mischievous? Judge for yourself-

Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned.

If they are members of a gang- as opposed to just opportunistic allies- then there is at least one additional party who has an interest in both of them preserving omerta. Even if it is just a two member gang, the 'fence' or 'Godfather', has an interest in their keeping shtum. Suppose no third party is involved- perhaps this pair are rapists or serial killers- still, if there is a 'gang' element to their behaviour then they have different 'threat points' and 'Shapley values'. Gangs have hierarchies which is why they can feature entry and exit. If both criminal are equal in all respects then there may be a partnership, but there is no 'gang'.

Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge, but they have enough to convict both on a lesser charge.

The prosecutor should convict both on the lesser charge and then see which of them will crack first once in prison. Letting one go free is silly. Clearly, the more ruthless of the two will offer up the weaker one- who may have been coerced into the crime- as a sacrifice.

Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent.

This is crazy shit. Why not just give one of them a blow job for confessing he helped the Judge kill the D.A?  What Jury is going to believe testimony given purely for the purpose of escaping a jail sentence? An innocent man, who can't afford a lawyer, should take the deal and let some stranger take the fall.

The offer is:
If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves two years in prison 

If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve three years in prison (and vice versa) 

If A and B both remain silent, both of them will serve only one year in prison (on the lesser charge).

Why not jail A & B on the lesser charge and then tell them both that the other has implicated them in the more serious crime?  If that doesn't work, tell them their wife is being romanced by a rival or that their elderly Mum wants to see them before she dies or something of that sort?

However, all this is academic. If these guys belong to a criminal gang then they both understand that the bigger 'earner' for the Godfather must come out while the low man on the totem pole must take the long stretch so as to make his bones and show himself worthy of promotion within the gang.

Let us now turn to what a rational person would do if caught in this dilemma. The answer is to confess but do so in a manner which suggests one has a mental illness. This is because judicial games have a coordination and a discoordination aspect. The safer course is to cooperate in the coordination game- i.e. do what is expected- while hedging on a discoordination game- i.e. find a different game to transfer to.

In practice, it is regret-minimizing to keep the option of entry and exit with respect to the games available to one. Among criminals, there is a 'loyalty' game, a 'betrayal' game, and 'I'm a crazy lunatic' game. Marek Kaminiski- who spent some time in a Polish prison- has described this in his book 'Games Prisoners Play'.  Of course, if he'd been really smart he'd have never got sent to prison in the first place. He should have assumed a 'Good soldier Schweik' type imbecility- i.e. talked Zizek like crap so as to survive both Communism and Neo-Liberalism and thus flourish in the world of Trump and Kaczynski.

Game theory is irrational; its dilemmas wholly absurd and its paradoxes mere stupidity.