Indispensable Framework or Just another Ideology?

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Abstract
Is Prisoner's Dilemma a natural framework for understanding human interaction? The author's view is that the rationality of the prisoner's dilemma, like rationality in general, is context dependent; without a supportive cultural context, no strategy makes sense. Different strategies will be rational for prisoners within different cultural contexts. The solution favored by most game players, namely, silence, for instance, would be anathema in a hierarchical culture that seeks to inculcate respect for authority. But silence would make sense for egalitarians who wish to undermine authority as inegalitarian on its face. “Distrust everybody” is a strategy that is supported only by people who adhere to fatalistic cultures. Thus the cultural context through which preferences are formed and reformed is central to who will place which values on diverse strategies. It is not rationality per se, as if one form of rationality was reason itself, but diverse rationalities that vary with the objectives of their adherents that should be the mainstay of game theory.

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