You and your friend have committed a murder. A few days later, the cops pick the two of you up and put you in two separate interrogation rooms such that you have no communication with each other. You think your life is over, but the police offer up a deal:

您和您的朋友谋杀了。 几天后，警察将你们两个人抓起来，并把您放在两个单独的审讯室中，以便您彼此之间没有任何沟通。 您以为自己的生活已经结束，但是警察提出了一项协议：

Rat your friend out, and your sentence will be lighter.

把你的朋友赶出去，你的句子就会轻些。

The catch is that your friend is offered this deal, too.

问题是您的朋友也被提供了这笔交易。

More specifically, if you rat your friend out but your friend says nothing, they get a heavy sentence and you get a light one. If you rat each other out, there’s a heavy penalty for both. If both of you stay silent, the sentences are light for you and your friend.

更具体地说，如果您淘汰了您的朋友，但您的朋友什么也没说，他们的句子就会很重，您的句子就会很轻。 如果您互相淘汰，则两者都将受到重罚。 如果你们两个都保持沉默，那么对您和您的朋友来说句子很轻。

The decisions must be made without communicating with each other, and both you and your friend only have two choices: “defect” and rat them out, or “withhold” information from the cops and stay silent.

这些决定必须在不相互沟通的情况下进行，您和您的朋友只有两种选择：“瑕疵”并将其淘汰，或者“隐瞒”警察的信息并保持沉默。

Take a look at the following diagram that describes your choices and sentences:

看下面的图表，它描述了您的选择和句子：

The matrix describes the number of years the two of you get depending on what you and your friend independently choose to do. The first number represents your prison time and the second represents your friend’s.

该矩阵描述了你们两个人的年限，具体取决于您和您的朋友独立选择做什么。 第一个数字代表您的入狱时间，第二个数字代表您朋友的入狱时间。

For example, if you withhold information from the cops, but your friend chooses to rat you out, you get five years in a maximum-security prison but your friend only gets one.

例如，如果您从警察那里隐瞒信息，但您的朋友选择将您杀了出去，您将在最高安全牢狱中服刑五年，而您的朋友只会被服刑一年。

What would you do in this situation?

在这种情况下您会怎么做？

What should you do in this situation?

你应该在这种情况下怎么办？

There’s no easy solution to this problem and there are a lot of interpretations to this. A utilitarian might say withholding is the better option because it minimizes the total number of years either person spends in prison (5 + 1 or 3 + 3 as opposed to 10 + 10). What does probability say?

这个问题没有简单的解决方案，对此有很多解释。 功利主义者可能会说，扣缴税是更好的选择，因为它使每个人在监狱中度过的总年限最小化(5 + 1或3 + 3，而不是10 + 10)。 概率说什么？

解决困境 (Solving the Dilemma)

I created a population of 1000 prisoners, each with a 50–50 chance of being a defector or withholder. I then simulated an interaction for 500 pairs of prisoners and took note of the outcomes. I repeated this experiment 200 times.

我创建了1000名囚犯，每名囚犯都有50–50个叛逃者或保留者的机会。 然后，我模拟了500对囚犯的互动，并记录了结果。 我重复了这个实验200次。

As you can see, if the number of defectors and withholders is roughly the same, it’s far better to attempt to withhold information. Most of the time, the payoff will be in your favor. The average number of years a defector spent in prison was 5.75 years vs. a withholders 4.01.

如您所见，如果叛逃者和撤回者的数量大致相同，那么最好隐瞒信息。 大多数时候，回报将对您有利。 叛逃者在监狱中的平均年限为5.75年，而扣留者的平均年限为4.01年。

We can make this a bit more interesting by varying the proportion of defectors and withholders. Say you’re in a country where everyone is untrusting of one another and that 75% of the population is a defector vs. 25% withholder.

我们可以通过改变叛逃者和持股者的比例使这一点变得更加有趣。 假设您所在的国家/地区每个人都不互相信任，并且75％的人口属于叛逃者，而25％的人是叛逃者。

Your best bet is to withhold information from the police. This makes sense, since if you were to defect as well there’s a much higher probability that you’ll end up with the worst option in the game — 10 years a piece.

最好的选择是不向警方提供信息。 这是有道理的，因为如果您也要叛逃，那么您最终有可能在游戏中遇到最糟糕的选择，那就是每10年一次。

Let’s try one more. Say everyone is overly trusting (despite the fact that they’ve just committed a murder).

让我们再试一次。 假设每个人都过分信任(尽管他们刚刚犯了谋杀罪)。

This one is more interesting. It seems that you’d be slightly better off withholding information, but the payoff is wildly inconsistent (and in some cases ends up being worse than defecting!). This is because the possible sentences for withholding while the other defects can be either three or five years while the possible sentences for defecting while the other withholds can be either one or ten years. The difference between 3 and 5 is a lot less than the difference between 1 and 10 — so there’s a lot more variance in the latter scenario.

这个更有趣。 似乎您最好不隐瞒信息，但是收益却是完全不一致的(在某些情况下最终要比背叛更糟！)。 这是因为其他缺陷的可能扣留可能是三年或五年，而其他缺陷的可能扣留可能是一年或十年。 3与5之间的差异远小于1与10之间的差异-因此在后一种情况下存在更多差异。

What would you do in this particular situation?

在这种特殊情况下，您会怎么做？

If you enjoyed this article, you can follow me on Medium for more content like this. Thanks for reading!

如果您喜欢这篇文章，可以在Medium上关注我，以获得更多类似的内容。 谢谢阅读！