Oh. Well, I was basing my confusion on the original description of it, which said that if you both keep quiet, you both walk:

Oh yeah, I should have mentioned earlier that was not the way I understand it....

Frank can make you say anything.

Why didn't somebody tell me?

Frank made us not tell you.

Ephesians, those are the guys that always lie. Unless I am being wrong again.

Are you thinking of Epimenides Paradox?

You are totally right, MM. I garbled it all up. But the cartel thing is right.

Eta: yes, Laga, I must be. I'm going to take my wrong-remembering full-of-wrong information brain out to lunch, now, before I mislead again.

"crime makes you stupid."

The Prisoner's Dilemma can be solved under Tit for Tat under one condition, which is multiple trials.

In that you have just one run through, one time you answer the question, but that you (and you're fellow prisoner) are repeatedly asked questions, and you are told after each decision what your current prison sentence is, and so you knew whether your fellow prisoner has informed on you or not. It also assumes that the your information is true (no police lying.)

It's a logical representation of the problem of long-term interaction. Why do people cooperate as compared to screwing each other every chance they get. The id/super-ego, cooperative/competitive axis of human interaction.

So the prisoners know up front what will happen if they talk or don't talk?

Before Tit for Tat was worked out back in the very early 80s, there was no reliable way of modeling social behavior, ie communities over the long term. And quite frankly, social scientists were getting fairly depressed because it seemed that people were going to be pricks and that we were all doomed.

But in comparison to other solutions, Tit for Tat was an optimal, simple solution out of the Hobbesian representations of humanity towards Rousseau. Or at least Locke.

It's a logical representation of the problem of long-term interaction. Why do people cooperate as compared to screwing each other every chance they get.

Yeah. I've heard the Prisoners' Dilemma used to explain why there are so many asshole drivers in big cities. In a small town, it's like the multiple iteration of the Prisoners' Dilemma, so drivers that, say, regularly cut people off will soon find other drivers doing the same to them. But in a large city, a driver is essentially anonymous (in that other drivers will probably never see the driver again) so it's like the single iteration of the Prisoners Dilemma, so it makes sense (in a selfish way) to cut off other drivers so you can get ahead.