Two crooks are arrested and put in separate rooms. Each gets the same offer. Dob in your mate and you walk. He gets 10 years. If you both stay quiet, you each get 1 year. If you dob each other in, you each get 5. It’s called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Whatever the other bloke does, you’re better off dobbing him in. He works out the same thing. So you both get 5 years when you could have had 1. That’s if you only play once. Around 1980 a professor called Robert Axelrod ran a contest. Computer programs played this game against each other, 200 rounds at a time. Game theory experts sent in their cleverest code. The winner was one of the simplest. It was called Tit for Tat. It cooperated on the first move, then copied whatever the other program did last. That’s all. They ran the contest again, and it won again. An email list is a game you play over and over. Hype and fake deadlines are dobbing in your mate. It pays once. Regards, P.S. Tit for Tat always cooperated first. That’s why Prompt Builder is pay what you want. It’s a PDF that walks you through building a Claude tool that writes prompts for your business. You go second. |
