I was watching a Veritasium video the other day on the Prisoner’s Dilemma and cooperation. Firstly, I highly recommend the channel as all its content is amazing. Secondly, the video finally gave me a succinct way to express what I’ve always seen as the best strategy in life.
I’ve written many articles before (in Dutch) about education, upbringing, cooperation, etcetera. In doing so, I usually found myself repeating the same ideas and principles, noticing that they hold true in any area of life.
Well, this video gave me the one-liner to use from now on.
“Be nice, be forgiving, don’t be a pushover, and be clear.”
What does it mean?
For those who don’t want to watch the video, here’s a short summary.
They basically ran countless simulations where different “strategies” play the Prisoner’s Dilemma against each other, over and over.
- The only choice in each game is whether to cooperate or to defect.
- If you both cooperate, you both get a high reward.
- If you both defect, you both get a tiny reward.
- If one cooperates, and the other defects … then the cooperative person gets nothing and the defector gets everything.
This is a very simple (but effective) model of how nearly every choice in life plays out. You can either decide to prioritize yourself or not. You can decide to share food or not. You can decide to spend the evening playing games or spend it with your girlfriend. You can decide to spend money on something you want or on something that the family needs.
Such a “strategy” could be a simple as …
- “Always defect.”
- “Always cooperate.”
- “Cooperate 50% of the time, at random.”
What happened when all those strategies were pitted against each other? The strategies that consistently came out on top had the four properties mentioned above.
- Be Nice: start by cooperating; never be the first to defect.
- Be Forgiving: only look at the previous game played; don’t hold grudges any longer than that.
- Be Retaliatory: quickly and decisively respond if the other player defects; don’t be a pushover.
- Be Clear: be consistent and obvious with your strategy; anything else is too random to work with and causes random results.
Of course, this isn’t perfect. In real life the rewards can be asymmetric (defecting is way more lucrative for one than the other), or unclear, or there are third or fourth options. This is based on the assumption of repeated choices made with the same people, which isn’t true when it’s just you and a stranger you’ll never meet again.
But even those situations have been modeled and simulated for the most part the past few years. And the winning strategies still, always, have those four properties.
And that isn’t strange. They are basically one cohesive principle: do nothing and allow complete freedom (nice), but be clear about the boundaries to that freedom (clear), react to people pushing those boundaries (retaliatory), but forget about it once reacted (forgiving).
So, what does it mean? Let’s apply it.
Upbringing / Parenting
The family situation is obviously one of the biggest, recurring Prisoner’s Dilemmas. The whole idea of family is that you spent countless days sharing resources, food, time, energy, etcetera. When it comes to family, you have a million choices each day between yourself or the group.
What goes wrong?
Which is why I’m frustrated that most parents butcher almost all the principles with their upbringing.
- Be Nice? Parents are often resentful by default of their children. They assume they are going to lie, or make a mess, or be stubborn. As such, they preemptively set rules and yell at their kids. There is no benefit of the doubt; there is no innocent until proven guilty.
- Be Forgiving? Similarly, most children will know that parents love to bring up a tiny mistake you made 10 years ago as their “argument” for why they are allowed to treat you a certain way. My mother, for example, still mentions the fact that I sometimes told lies when I was seven years old as a reason to never trust me on anything. Grudges are held forever; there is no forgiving.
- Be Retaliatory? At the same time, most parents give in to their children’s demands. The one who whines and complains the most gets what they want. The one who was too lazy to do this schoolwork on time, gets permission to skip his chores. Most parents do the opposite of retaliation; they reward bad behavior and ignore good behavior.
- Be Clear? But the most egregious offense, as most people will know, comes from parents who randomly hop around between seventeen different styles of parenting. If you don’t know what the rules or boundaries are, if you have no idea what your mother allows or forbids at a given moment, the only response is to assume all is wrong and you can’t depend on anything. In other words, defect at all times.
This simple quote—these four simple properties—would make the lives of billions of people so much better. If parents would follow these obvious guidelines, we wouldn’t have countless children growing up in hostile environments which haunt and cripple them the rest of their lives. (Who, then, go on to apply the same nonsense parenting to their own children, for they don’t know any better.)
Research clearly shows that most of your physical and mental health, most of your good and bad habits or traits, are formed when you’re growing up. Lay a strong foundation, and it’s smooth sailing the rest of your life. Lay a weak foundation and it’s torture the rest of your life, no matter how hard you fight it.
How to fix it?
So, what do you do? What should parents do? Well …
- Be Nice: Never be the first to be hostile or uncooperative. Do not assume anything about your kids. Let them do, then respond to what they’ve done if needed.
- Be Forgiving: All that counts are the current problems. If your kid just made a huge mistake, let them take responsibility for it, force them to solve it. Once that is done … forget about it. It’s not relevant anymore.
- Be Retaliatory: Do not let terrible situations slide nor wait too long to respond. Don’t give in to kids who manipulate or play you—it only encourages them to do it more and more.
- Be Clear: Set a few clear boundaries, and nothing more. If the boundaries are crossed, always retaliate. If not, do nothing. Do not change your mind every single day and act almost at random.
Examples
Let’s see some concrete examples. I’ll be talking from my own experience, as that’s obviously the only thing I can be sure about.
Example 1
All my childhood, the rules about kitchen usage shifted. At any given time, it could be …
- Terribly wrong to grab a specific item (angry speech time!)
- Allowed or even encouraged to grab that same item
- Terrible wrong to grab food from a specific drawer or location (angry speech time!)
- Allowed or even encouraged to grab from that same location (“why are you pretending we have no food? Jeez, don’t be lazy, just look around!”)
- Terrible to hide food (or label it as your own) (“we’re a family, we share everything!”)
- Allowed or even encouraged to hide food and label it as your own (“otherwise don’t come to me when the others have eaten all your pancakes by morning!”)
This obviously violates the rule about clarity. The consequence? I simply … stopped looking for food or trying to eat the food I liked. There were many days when I didn’t eat anything until my parents were home so I could ask what the rules were at that specific instance in time. Not good.
(In fact, all my childhood we were encouraged to make up lies and to hide stuff. It’s insane! Instead of saying “sorry, I don’t feel like going to your party tonight”, they’d come up with these elaborate lies about being ill or whatever. But that has no clear connection to this article.)
Example 2
All my childhood, anything even remotely out of the ordinary was forbidden. Want to go to a friend’s house (for whatever reason)? Not allowed! Want to take up a new hobby, and you’ll organize and pay for it all yourself? Not allowed!
Why was this the case? Because my mother assumed the worst. I’d come home too late once, so she held that grudge forever and kept repeating it any time I wanted to go anywhere. She assumed I’d drink, or do drugs, or be kissing loads of girls (somehow, that was both an assumption and a crime), despite never having done any of that. Despite me being the most principled and do-goody person you’ll ever meet.
This obviously violates be nice and be forgiving. The consequence? I simply … stopped trying to do anything. Because everything was forbidden, and bad, and resulted in being yelled at for even considering it.
I would like to say this was just my unfortunate situation. But because of this, I’ve spoken with a lot of people about parenting, all my life, and many report similar experiences.
This is what happens when you butcher the four principles during the 18+ years (a looong time) when a human is most susceptible to it.
Example 3
The last one, which will illustrate a violation of the retaliation principle. (Though “don’t be a pushover” is perhaps more clear.)
Tell me if you recognize the following sequence of events.
- You ask if you may do or have something. Your parents say “no, because of reason X”
- Your sibling asks the same thing. Your parents say “yes”.
- Or, they say “no” at first, but your sibling keeps whining, threatening, being a dick until they say “yes”.
Repeating this cycle for many years, as you grow up, deepens these habits into something even more sinister. You get these divisions between children. One is allowed to do whatever, the other isn’t. One is never punished for anything, the other is punished for merely breathing.
This is the reason it happens. If you do not retaliate when someone breaks rules or crosses boundaries, the hole only grows, until it’s so large it becomes impossible—or so it feels—to retaliate ever again.
The reason “retaliation” isn’t my favorite term, is because it immediately gives people the idea that this must be extremely hostile. That we’re talking about punishments here. We’re not.
Remember the original Prisoner’s Dilemma. There is only “cooperate” or “don’t cooperate”. Retaliation, most of the time, merely means that you don’t cooperate right after somebody else has shown they won’t cooperate.
For example, let’s say your household has a shared computer in the living room. A computer that has been bought by the parent’s money, running on their electricity, mind you.
“Cooperation” means everyone is allowed to use it. And when multiple want to use it, you work out time slots.
“No cooperation” means one of your siblings just hogs the computer. And if you ask them to leave, or when you’re allowed to use it, they just yell at you and ignore you.
What do you do, as a parent, when you see such behavior? You retaliate by not cooperating with the sibling that already chose not to cooperate. You say “fine, you’re not allowed to use the computer anymore, or only during time slots that we assign.”
If they whine or threaten, you never give in or hold back. Just ignore it. Double down if you really want, but ignoring is better.
It’s that simple. Actual punishment is rarely needed or desired. As a parent, all your child has exists through your cooperation. If they don’t cooperate, you retaliate by not cooperating.
Conclusion
Hopefully these examples illustrate a very simple but harsh truth.
I’ve hated my childhood. It taught me to never try anything, never go out, even suppress hunger, simply because parents actively choose to attack those four simple principles that are proven to work. I have a chronic physical illness that will never go away—pain every second for the rest of my life—merely because my mother put energy and effort into actively stressing me out at a time when my physical development was at its peak.
This is an experience shared across almost all children, though the specifics might vary wildly. The world could be so much better if all of that went away.
And to do so, just remember that one single line with the four principles.
Education
My piece about parenting became longer than anticipated, so I’ll make this one far shorter. (I don’t want to repeat myself too much anyway.)
My hatred for the educational system is no secret. There are a thousand arguments, millions of papers and convincing statistics, that clearly indicate why our educational systems around the world are actually terrible for anyone participating and should be abolished.
This time, however, it’s not about that. It’s about the four principles. As expected, they are butchered!
- Be Nice? The educational system is filled with rules and punishments, applied equally to all participants. It doesn’t matter if you have a track record of cheating or not. It doesn’t matter if you’ve always been an upstanding kid. You’re still bogged down by all the rules, because they assume that you will be a cheater and a troublemaker, and that you need to be controlled.
- Be Forgiving? Grades are obviously permanent. The educational system asks you to make life-defining choices from age 4 until age 18. It’s set up in a way that doesn’t allow you to change course, or better yourself, or jump into other subjects at any point. Get a bad grade at the start of semester, and it doesn’t matter how skilled and knowledgeable you became by the end, your final grade will not reflect it.
- Be Retaliatory? Some teachers do this right. Most don’t. They’ll let things slide that are just ruining the entire classroom experience. Good luck paying attention when others are shouting through the teacher’s explanation and they’re just letting it happen. (Or they’ll respond in subtle and delayed ways, like consistently giving that annoying kid a lower grade than they deserve. Which will never do any good.)
- Be Clear? Does anyone actually know the rules and their rights as a student? Does any school actually consistently apply those? In all schools I’ve known—and that number is unfortunately way too high—teachers could do anything they please and students protecting their rights were punished. That’s what happens when you create a system mostly focused on control and obedience, and you ask each teacher to carry it out. The rules vary greatly between teachers, as their application of the rules depends on their personality.
What’s the consequence?
- Once you have a bad grade or reputation, there’s no reason to actually better yourself. It won’t really matter or show up.
- In fact, if you’ve made a bad decision anywhere (out of ignorance, stress, whatever), you’re too inhibited to change it.
- You spend more time bogged down and fighting the endless rules, than actually learning anything. It’s so hard, in fact, that most just give up.
- You spend more time figuring out the personality of each teacher and how to make them like you, than actually learning anything. It’s so exhausting, in fact, that most just give up.
Cooperation is highly discouraged. So most students spent their entire life fighting school—and school fighting back—which is just a complete waste of time and effort.
You
So let’s finish it off by looking at it more broadly, and applying it to a person instead of a more general system.
That person is you!
How can you apply these principles in everything you do? What would that look like?
- Be Nice: don’t assume anything about people. Give them freedom or the benefit of the doubt. This is much harder than it sounds. Once you look for it, you’ll notice just how assumptions, preconceptions, deep-seated trauma, etcetera color us constantly. You’ll notice how weird it is that parents assume their kids are evil, or how schools assume all students are cheaters waiting to reveal themselves, or how even friends constantly talk shit about each other based on nothing. Don’t participate with that trend.
- Be Forgiving: anything that’s not directly relevant to today and today’s problems, should be forgotten and forgiven. This is important. I’ve spent so many years being angry about those examples from my childhood. My mental health really improved once I realized I could just … not think about it. Forgive. Forget. Ignore. It’s not worth it, it’s not practical, it’s not relevant anymore.
- We have this weird feeling in our gut that we should “take revenge” for any wrongdoing. That we should be angry or spiteful about things done to use in the past, because otherwise we are “weak” or “they’ll never learn”. Just ignore your gut this one time, okay?
- Be Retaliatory: if someone has clearly crossed a line, immediately respond by at least re-establishing the line. No need to be harsh or hostile. Just stop cooperating and be clear about why. You can stand up for yourself and not be a pushover, without being an asshole.
- Be Clear: this is all about communication and logical thinking. Whenever you make a decision, do so based on strong arguments (think logically, think for yourself). Then teach yourself how to clearly communicate that chain of thought, or at least your final decision. Most people unfortunately cannot do either and aren’t interested in improving that. That’s why I’ve always said that, if school wants to actually be useful, it should only teach those two subjects: communication and logic.
I’ll give an example about being “retaliatory” (in the right way).
I once entered an agreement with a gaming website who wanted to buy some of my games. I cooperated. I made changes as they requested, I followed their procedures, I delivered things on time. I was nice. But they were (quite clearly) disappointed about the results, so they delayed and changed the terms, refusing to pay me.
I instantly sent a (nice) message that they violated contract and that I would stop any further work or cooperation. A few days later, they apologized and paid me. We’re back on good terms.
They obviously could have ignored it. In fact, I didn’t expect them to even respond. I assumed nothing! I just retaliated with non-cooperation and went on with my life.
What if they had ignored it? I would have a track record of being reasonable and nice, never an asshole. I wouldn’t have wasted any more time or energy on this issue than needed. And they would be stuck with even less of a return on investment.
They probably apologized and backtracked precisely because this is a cooperation with repeated interactions, so not doing it would have hurt in the long-term.
Conclusion
The conclusion is that cooperation following these four principles will always be stronger than anything else. Design your companies, systems, or habits to follow them. Train yourself to follow them.
However cliché it sounds, everyone is stronger together, and cooperation demonstrably wins even if environments where large numbers of people are non-cooperative.
The only true requirement here is longevity. This is a long-term strategy, only applicable on repeat interactions with the same person, group or system.
Because yes, you will lose sometimes. Some people might take advantage of you, then bail before they have any further interactions. Some opportunities are simply too enticing, so people become “stupid” and only think long-term, defecting at the detriment of everyone.
But in the long-term, over many days with many decisions, this strategy has proven to be the winner.
And in reality, as that Veritasium video so nicely states, most of life is not a zero sum game.
If at least one party follows these principles, the other is naturally nudged in the same direction. And once you have that nice cycle of cooperation going, most decisions in life can reach win-win scenarios.
Anyway, those are my thoughts, written at 1 PM and unsure if I want to publish this article at all.
When I made my blog, however, I created the rule that I’d write all my posts in one go and then schedule them to be published. To avoid doubt, to avoid taking breaks and never finishing stuff, to get thoughts out of my system while they’re still fresh.
So I’m being consistent, following my own clear rules, and publishing this.
Hopefully it helps some people,
Tiamo