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Neuro – Economics is partly the study of brain function imaging
when the brain is active in games to see what parts of the brain are active
In the Prisoner’s dilemma there are 2 prisoners. They have the option of tattling on each
other, which is called defecting or they can cooperate and not tattle. Do they cooperate or defect? If both cooperate each gets 3 points. If one cheats and the other cooperates the
cheater gets 5 points and they get 0. If
they both cheat then they each get one.
In the prisoners
dilemma imaging shows that the dopamine pleasure pathways lights up to become
most active when both parties cooperate.
This does not happen when one party is cheating. The frontal cortex lights up when it is resisting
the temptation to cheat although cheating provides a larger reward in the short
run. The brain evaluates work vs. reward. The frontal cortex has trouble resisting the harder better payoff. If it’s a no brainer like waiting one day
for better reward resisting is easy. If
it takes 4 years to get a reward the frontal cortex is very active in deciding
The optimal strategy for repeated prisoners dilemma is tit
for tat. Cooperators in tit for tat
loose the battle but win the war. This
is because groups that can cooperate score more points than the cheaters and
eventually dominate. Groups that share
kinship and are smart, social, and stable tend to cooperate. Groups that punish cheating, look at reputation,
and practice secondary punishment, and have multiple games also promote cooperation. Large anonymous populations select against
cooperation, Most of human society lives
in small groups.
Tit for tat is susceptible
to signaling error. Someone cheats by
accident. Forgiving tit for tat is an
answer to this.
.
Different areas of the brain decide problems depending on
their framing for example:
A trolley is out of control and will hit 5 people. You can pull a lever and make it change
tracks and it will hit one person. In
second case you have to push a person on the track to save 5 people. When this problem is posed people are 3 times
more likely to pull the level then push the person. Depending on the framing, when a person is
contemplating the pushing a person to his death with his own hands his brains limbic
system lights up compared with the frontal cortex lighting up when is
contemplating pushing the lever. For
the hard decision we use the cat brain.
We use different parts of the brain to decide even though it is the same
problem. This is not rational.
After an evening walk across the Hudson on the specular
River Walk in Poughkeepsie we met some friends for dinner at the Eveready
Diner. The subject of EOL came up and
our friends mentioned that they already had obtained their cemetery plots. Since I don’t know of any other people in
their 50s who have a burial plot, I thought it was unusual. They told us how their parents had obtained
these plots, as it was a family plot that had been bought years ago. However, their parents had changed plans and decided
to be cremated and so our friends were given the spaces. When their aunt learned they would be buried
next to her she complained to the cemetery.
The cemetery person told our friend this is the first time this had come
up in their hundred years of existence. I did come up on Larry David’s TV show Curb
your Enthusiasm. To resolved this
conflict and maintain family peace they had their plots moved to an adjacent
row.
